full biography about abraham lincoln?

Question

i need a full biography about abraham lincoln, and i need to write of his effects towards america which includes the use of mass communications.please i need anyone's help that can help me.

Answer 1

Carl Sandburg's Lincoln is the best bio ever written

Answer 2

Read Carl Sandburg's book "Abraham Lincoln The Prairie Years The War Years". It's the best Lincoln bio ever written and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Also, see below.

Answer 3

Go to any bookstore and you'll find at least a half-dozen good biographies of Lincoln. As to mass communications, there wasn't much in his day; you'd probably want to look to how he was portrayed and how he might have used newspapers, 'cause that's about all there was at the time.

Answer 4

Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it."

Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun.

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party's nomination for President, he sketched his life:

Answer 5

Interesting. The answer right before mine kind of pooh-pooh's Sandburg's marvelous work. But before that, he recommends a work by Doris Kearns Goodwin? She was caught plagiarizing. A plagiarist is not a good source to be quoting for a paper. Trust me, I am a college instructor. My school does not allow Kearns Goodwin as a source any longer.

You asked for a full biography. Sandburg fits the bill splendidly.

Answer 6

The life and times of Abraham Lincoln is facinating, and more complex, than we learned in high school history class.

Answer 7

There are a numerous solid Lincoln biographies, each with its own "take" on his life or some major piece or aspect of it. I don't know of one that is NARROWLY focused on Lincoln's use of "mass media" outlets (which would in his day been basically the NEWSPAPERS, and related to that, the making of PUBLIC SPEECHES, that the newspapers would disseminate). But here are a couple good ones that should be of SOME help on that area

*Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power* by Richard Carwardine (2006). I believe the second chapter examines some of his effective political methods (of shaping opinions) during the 1850s, but his methods leading up to and in the White House are also reflected in later chapters.

*Team of Rivals* by Doris Kearns Goodwin - not specifically about use of MEDIA, but very much about Lincoln's POLITICAL genius in the handling of his cabinet (several of whom thought THEY should have been President!) How that fit in with his use of (and response to... and sometimes REFUSAL to respond to) mass media is handled less directly (as it generally is in Lincoln biographies).

Note that there are OTHER Lincoln books (see below) that might not qualify as "biographies" but would help with your focus.


There are also some articles that might help with your particular focus on the "use of mass communications". Note that in Lincoln's day that basically means NEWSPAPERS...
Check out:
http://www.prmuseum.com/burger/chet_lincoln.html

and this one, based on an earlier book by Carwardine
http://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/Library/newsletter.asp?ID=131&CRLI=179

Some specific points to be looking for, in Lincoln's OWN use of the media --

1. His efforts at getting transcriptions from the Lincoln-Douglas debates out... and a good collected edition published (in book form) afterward. Related to this was his VERY hard work on his public speeches, which he was increasingly

2. His management of the press coverage of his trip East to make his "Cooper Union Address" in February 1860 (key to his Presidential chances)

3. His famous public letter of August 22, 1862 to Horace Greeley (responding to Greeley's criticism of L's slowness to act on the whole confiscation and emancipation issue). Some (like DiLorenzo below) cite it to "prove" that Lincoln did not care at all about the slaves, and perhaps only about his own political advantage. Political it WAS... but what the critics miss is that Lincoln had ALREADY written the Emancipation Proclamation (and presented it to his Cabinet as something he was about to do, on JULY 22), and was simply waiting the right time to RELEASE it (viz., after a Union VICTORY, so it would not seem an act of desperation --this all at the suggestion of Secretary of State Seward)... as he did on SEPTEMBER 22. The point is that this letter was a MEANS of PREPARING people for the Proclamation he would soon make, offering a justification for it that those who did not care about slavery per se could accept.


By the way -- some EXCELLENT work has been done on these specific subtopics recently, esp.

a) on Lincoln's key speeches
-- Ronald C White, The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words (2006)
-- Harold Holzer, Lincoln's Cooper Union Address: The Speech that Made Abraham Lincoln President (2004)
see review - http://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/Library/newsletter.asp?ID=2&CRLI=76

b) on the Emancipation Proclamation
Allen Guelzo, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery (Simon & Schuster, 2004)


___________

About the books others have mentioned -

Sandburg's biography is certainly an old standard, and very well told. The problem is that it's scholarship is a bit weak at many points, and certainly out-of-date. And I seriously doubt it would have much consideration of your particular topic.

I'm not sure what the answer recommending "The Real Lincoln" intended, but this book is, sad to say, a shoddy smear job.

The author (Thomas DiLorenzo) is NOT a Lincoln scholar, and shows no solid familiarity with either Lincoln scholarship (whom he frequently denigrates in similar manner) or, more importantly, with the RANGE of Lincoln's writings and actions. He carefully cherrypicks quotes and episodes which he thinks (or knows) will scandalize those who only have a passing acquaintance with Lincoln, interprets them WAY out of context, and totally ignores what doesn't fit his picture (OR, at times, . He pretends to uncover things Lincoln scholars hide, though anyone who has READ the scholars AND read Lincoln very much is quite familiar with everything he raises (and often twists) and can easily rebut him.

(If you need it I can send you links to some solid responses to DiLorenzo from Harry Jaffa and other Lincoln experts.)