The Long Pursuit

This is a readable portrait of the Lincoln/Douglas relationship although it doesn't really appear to have required much independent research on the part of the author, which, I doubt any is really needed, at least as far as Lincoln goes. You go look at the notes and it's just “I read some Douglas books and some Lincoln books and here you go for those of you interested in a summarization,” pretty much. Some takeaways:

1) the racism of the famous L-D debates on both sides; while Douglas is race baiting, Lincoln did not cover himself in glory either. The Lincoln we revere in hindsight was not the Lincoln of 1858.

2) I was particularly interested in the 1860 election and Douglas's last ditch attempt to stop the secession movement. Douglas was the only one campaigning for the office (it was not customary at the time for nominees to do so), but to some degree the general election result was predetermined. The breakup of the Democratic party convention was the real contest, which this book goes into. The election of a Republican president seems to have been the desired result brought about by pro-secession Southerners who, by breaking up the Democratic party, made it impossible for a Democrat to win the electoral college. Douglas's hopes for becoming president relied on no candidate receiving a majority and himself being the compromise choice by the House of Representatives.

3) it's an interesting counterfactual to think about what role Douglas might have played during the War if he hadn't dropped dead only a few months into Lincoln's term. Would he have “grown” in the direction Lincoln did? His life and politics were not very praiseworthy until the very last moment, so who knows. He narrowly missed some interesting times.