Abraham Lincoln and the forge of national memory

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Last edited by ImportBot
July 31, 2020 | History

Abraham Lincoln and the forge of national memory

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Abraham Lincoln has long dominated the pantheon of American presidents. From his lavish memorial in Washington and immortalization on Mount Rushmore, one might assume he was a national hero rather than a controversial president who came close to losing his 1864 bid for reelection. In Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory, Barry Schwartz aims at these contradictions in his study of Lincoln's reputation, from the president's death through the industrial revolution to his apotheosis during the Progressive Era and First World War.

Schwartz draws on a wide array of materials—painting and sculpture, popular magazines and school textbooks, newspapers and oratory—to examine the role that Lincoln's memory has played in American life. He explains, for example, how dramatic funeral rites elevated Lincoln's reputation even while funeral eulogists questioned his presidential actions, and how his reputation diminished and grew over the next four decades. Schwartz links transformations of Lincoln's image to changes in the society. Commemorating Lincoln helped Americans to think about their country's development from a rural republic to an industrial democracy and to articulate the way economic and political reform, military power, ethnic and race relations, and nationalism enhanced their conception of themselves as one people.

Lincoln's memory assumed a double aspect of "mirror" and "lamp," acting at once as a reflection of the nation's concerns and an illumination of its ideals, and Schwartz offers a fascinating view of these two functions as they were realized in the commemorative symbols of an ever-widening circle of ethnic, religious, political, and regional communities. The first part of a study that will continue through the present, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory is the story of how America has shaped its past selectively and imaginatively around images rooted in a real person whose character and achievements helped shape his country's future.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
367

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Abraham Lincoln and the forge of national memory
Abraham Lincoln and the forge of national memory
2000, University of Chicago Press
in English

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Book Details


Published in

Chicago

Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. 327-353) and index.

Genre
Biography.

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
973.7/092, B
Library of Congress
E457.2 .S38 2000, E457.2.S38 2000, E 457.2 S38 2000

The Physical Object

Pagination
xiii, 367 p. :
Number of pages
367

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL118108M
Internet Archive
abrahamlincolnfo00schw
ISBN 10
0226741974
LCCN
99462226
Library Thing
1524977
Goodreads
818583

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History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON
July 31, 2020 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
April 26, 2017 Edited by Thurman E. Dalrymple Edited without comment.
December 4, 2010 Edited by Open Library Bot Added subjects from MARC records.
April 28, 2010 Edited by Open Library Bot Linked existing covers to the work.
December 9, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page