A Lincoln for Our Polarized Times

Allen C. Guelzo reviews Lincoln and the Fight for Peace, at The New York Times.

"Frederick Douglass insisted in 1866 that 'Mr. Lincoln would have been in favor of the enfranchisement of the colored race,' and Avlon is not wrong to see Lincoln favoring a reinvention of the South as a small-scale manufacturing economy to replace the plantation oligarchy that triggered the war. But Lincoln played his political cards so close to the chest that, beyond this, it is unclear exactly what directions he thought Reconstruction should take."

See Lincoln, "The Gettysburg Address", Gateway to the Great Books (10 Vol., 1963) volume 6;
We Hold These Truths: Understanding the Ideas and Ideals of the Constitution, by Mortimer J. Adler, p. 194.