Abraham Lincoln

Emil Ludwig

Posted on December 9, 2015 Updated on May 13, 2018

PREFACE
The art of portraying human characters cannot be achieved by merely studying historical documents: it is practiced and learned in a never-ending study of living men and women. But we want the inspiring light of a great character to make documents breathe with the vividness and veracity of to-day.
I am sure that my American friends are not expecting me to give them a new Lincoln, or to open up fresh and undiscovered material, but rather to present Lincoln in a new historical method.
Consequently, I have made no effort to cover the history of slavery and of the great Civil War, but only to paint a picture of Abraham Lincoln. Excepting the English, Europeans, even intelligent and scholarly men and women, know far less about American history than Americans about the story of Europe, so I consider it one of the happiest privileges of my career to be able to present this greatest of American characters to the Old World.
In the New World, a number of American specialists, particularly Miss Ida M. Tarbell and Mr. Frazier Hunt, have earned my thanks by their advice and cooperation. I have no doubt, however, that many of my American readers will find faults in my story, and I can only beg them to consider the portrait as a whole and not to be too critical of minute parts. Lincoln’s career, more than that of any other man in history, is so grandly conceived by Fate that the first act is illuminated by the last, and every scene is bound together by dramatic destiny.
I see him like one of Shakespeare’s characters, absolutely original, comparable to none, immemorably unique. He has fascinated me for years, and if some good may be found in this effort of mine, it has sprung from a personal sympathy which I have never felt so strongly for any other great man of history.
E. L.

By Emil Ludwig,”Abraham Lincoln: And the Times that Tried His Soul”