The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
by Eric Foner
View on GoodreadsFrom his youth in Kentucky and Indiana to the presidency, Lincoln's thinking on slavery kept moving. He opposed it on moral grounds early and still spent years backing gradual, compensated emancipation and colonization abroad, and the thread Eric Foner hands you is Lincoln's capacity for growth.
Core ideas
- The middle position: Early in his career Lincoln tried to hold ground between abolitionists and conservatives, including conservatives from slave states.
- The war moved him: He shifted once he concluded that winning required ending slavery, and Black soldiers' service and meetings with Black leaders helped push him there.
- Where he ended: By the war's end he backed immediate abolition and limited Black suffrage, though never full social equality, and the book won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for History.
Published2010
Pages336
ISBN9780393066180
ReadAug 2020
