"Boss Lincoln" by Matthew Pinsker

Abraham Lincoln has been characterized in many ways: as a father, statesman, lawyer, writer, speechmaker, and military leader. He served as U.S. President during this country’s Civil War, grappling under the intense pressure that could have split the nation in two permanently. There are probably more books written about Lincoln than about any other individual in U.S. history.

Add one more. Matthew Pinsker, a history professor at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., has written Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln. This is a look at Lincoln the politician. Honest Abe may have split rails and freed the slaves, but he also practiced politics. 

“Matthew Pinsker performs a small miracle by writing something fresh and important about Abraham Lincoln,” noted Alan Traylor, author of American Civil Wars, adding, “Pinsker reveals a pragmatic politician adept at building coalitions, doling out patronage, and even playing the dirty tricks of old-school politics.”

Lincoln was a tireless politician at a time when politics was a little different from what it is now, said Pinsker, calling his subject a workaholic. In the 19th century, a politician wrote letters, made speeches, traveled by rail or stagecoach (or steamboat when it was appropriate), all the while cultivating political allies who could be called on to provide support when needed.

Pinsker lays out how Lincoln hit the national stage when he made his first visit to Chicago in 1847 to speak at the River & Harbor Convention. The National Intelligencer, a Washington, D.C. paper, noted that “Mr. Lincoln … (made) some sound and sensible remarks.”

The following year, Lincoln made a series of speeches in Massachusetts. This was 1848, a time of movements. You had the civil rights movement with the Underground Railroad transporting runaway slaves to safety, and a burgeoning women’s rights movement highlighted that year by a conference in Seneca Falls, N.Y., with Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

“This was no era of good feeling,” noted Pinsker, pointing to political discontent that exceeded the polarization of our present period.

This was a growing nation. By 1850, there were 30 states and 23 million people, of which three million were slaves. There were a variety of political parties in that era, such as the Free Soil Party, the Liberty Party, the Whig Party, the American Party, and the Union Party.

The early 1850s found Lincoln heavily involved in patronage appointments. “By the mid-1850s, Lincoln the lawyer appeared to be almost everywhere,” stated Pinsker, noting that Lincoln averaged 150 days a year on the road.

Pinsker follows Lincoln’s rise to the White House and through the Civil War, a time when he was forced to straddle a fence between those who wanted to save the South while others wanted to punish it for secession.

Pinsker doesn't apologize for hanging the partisan label on Lincoln “It has always seemed an insult to call someone ‘partisan.’ The term feels like shorthand for petty combativeness. Lincoln’s partisanship was more dynamic and honorable. He fought with his opponents and endured their attacks but also learned how to bring people together to save a democratic nation,” noted Pinsker, adding that we need to think about that in these divided times.