The Rail Splitter as Hatchet Man: Review of Boss Lincoln by Matthew Pinsker

Why should you read another book about Abraham Lincoln?

Because you have never seen him as Matthew Pinsker reveals him in his new, deeply researched, provocative Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln.

“At times a cold-blooded hatchet man” is how Pinsker describes our 16^th President, who is so often portrayed as a lonely, politically naive man, frustrated and hobbled by his cabinet members and his generals.

This is a deep dive into the back story of the man who became our 16^th President by building a political party strong enough to support his vision of a nation devoted to achieving the ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

It is an intimate portrait of Lincoln the partisan political animal. Sometimes he is boosting his political allies; sometimes he is severing ties; sometimes he is ghost writing propaganda. Without “mentors or intimate advisors,” Lincoln had “supreme self-confidence” as he maneuvered himself and his party to victory in the November 1860 presidential election. In March of that year, Lincoln’s name had not been included in a list of nearly three dozen potential presidents.

So many books about Lincoln quote his law partner’s observation that Lincoln’s ambition was “a little engine that knew no rest.” That has generally been interpreted as an indication of his personal ambition for higher office and greater power. Pinsker shows us instead that Lincoln’s ambition was not merely for his own victory at the polls, but for the success of the succession of partisan political coalitions he played such an important role in creating.

As Pinsker says, the term “partisan” usually “feels like shorthand for petty combativeness,” but “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.”

All his life, Lincoln worked to bring men into whatever political faction he was building at the time (with the notably fascinating exception of Stephen Douglas). He and others called that process “fusion.” Over the years, Lincoln moved further and further away from the label of “Republican.” In fact, after 1862, he never referred to himself by that affiliation. In 1864, he ran for reelection as president under the banner of the National Union Party, a name chosen to attract a wide spectrum of political opinions.

While he willingly changed his labels (from Whig to Republican to Unionist), Lincoln never altered his principles. He believed wholeheartedly in the value of elections, a belief rooted in Lincoln’s trust in a government “of the people, for the people, and by the people.” And he believed that preserving the rights of the minority was as important as preserving rule by majority vote, since only those rights could prevent overreach by the majority.

Although other political portraits of Lincoln have been written by prominent historians and political insiders, Pinsker’s Lincoln is the missing Lincoln in the vast historiography of the Rail Splitter – the man who believed that “saving the country required building a party, not merely winning office.”

Visit Candice Shy Hooper’s website at the link here. A Wall Street Journal Review of Boss Lincoln is available at the link here.