Selected Speeches and Writings: Abraham Lincoln (Vintage)

About this book

Ranging from finely honed legal argument to dry and sometimes savage humor to private correspondence and political rhetoric of unsurpassed grandeur the writings collected in this volume are at once the literary testament of the greatest writer ever to occupy the White House and a documentary history of America in Abraham Lincolns time. They record Lincolns campaigns for public office; the evolution of his stand against slavery; his pyrotechnic debates with Stephen Douglas; his conduct of the Civil War; and the great public utterances of his presidency including the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address. For the first time the authoritative editions of works by major American novelists poets scholars and essayists collected in the hardcover volumes of The Library of America are being published singly in a series of handsome paperback books. A distinguished writer has contributed an introduction for each volume which also includes a chronology of the authors life and career an essay on the text and notes.