Lincoln: A Photobiography

Freeman, Russell (1987). Lincoln: A Photobiography. New York: Clarion. ISBN 0-89919-380-3.

As a biography subject, Abraham Lincoln can’t really be said to need more exposure. Perhaps it’s because of this that Russell Freeman’s biography is so immediately engaging. Freeman begins his book by acknowledging that, paradoxically, it’s very difficult to know what this supposedly well-known president was really like. People who knew Lincoln said he was funny and animated and even handsome when he was speaking, something that the serious posed photos of the day couldn’t capture. And Lincoln was a very private person. In the end, what we think we know about Lincoln might be obscuring what Lincoln was really like. The legend of Lincoln “hides the man behind it like a disguise” (2).

Freeman tries to lift the mask by, among other things, including the words of Lincoln’s friends and family as well as news reports of the day. I loved Mary Todd Lincoln’s comment on portraits of her and Lincoln: that they were precious to her because they were “taken when we were young and so desperately in love” (26). And many kids (and I, too) can relate to the fact that one of his law partners once found a bunch of Lincoln’s papers marked “When you can’t find it anywhere else, look here” (37).

Of course, any biography of Lincoln has to discuss the Civil War. If this book bogs down at all, it’s in the sections where Freeman tries to summarize major battles and their implications in a few pages. I found myself either wanting to know more detail so that I could make sense of the information (were the northern generals really as incompetent as they sound? Why?) or not to hear about it at all.

But the sections that discuss the war’s effect on Lincoln are the most poignant of all. His lament at the loss of life is illustrated with a series of pictures taken each year from 1861 to 1865, in which he seems to age at least ten years. It’s a vivid reminder that Lincoln wasn’t an icon but a real human being.

I think kids can understand Freeman’s premise that what we think we know about a person can keep us from really knowing them. Freeman uses a more complex vocabulary than in many of the books we’ve examined so far, but the text is broken up by photos on nearly every two-page spread, helping readers to picture the people and events Freeman is discussing. (I found the documents in Lincoln’s own handwriting to be particularly amazing.) The book includes three appendices: well known quotes by Lincoln, a listing of historical landmarks related to Lincoln, and a bibliography for further reading. Any one of these could fire kids’ imaginations and make them interested in knowing more.

Publisher’s Weekly said, “This Newbery Award-winning study of our 16th president is highly readable and meticulously organized.”

As an activity for this book, I would love to try something I used to do with my students when I taught college. (Not very many things would carry over to grade schoolers, but this might!) I would bring in several fictional books set in the same time period, like the Addy books in the American Girls series, or Pink and Say by Patricia Polacco. Then I would ask the kids to pretend to be any of the fictional characters and react to one of the events in the book as if they were that character. They could write their reaction, act it out, draw it, or whatever their character might actually do. It’s a surprisingly tough thing to do, since it means putting yourself into someone else’s mindset, but the results can be amazing and something to really be proud of!

Publisher’s Weekly. Qtd. in Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Photobiography-Russell-Freedman/dp/0899193803/ref=ed_oe_h/103-0423122-5982232?ie=UTF8&qid=1175206639&sr=1-1 .