RaveThe New RepublicFoner not only illuminates Lincoln’s developing views on the question of slavery, but also places him in the broad context of America’s most divisive and consequential political conflict ... We come to understand, in Foner’s telling, the extent of slavery’s dominion in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the enormous obstacles that slavery’s enemies would face ... Foner is the leading authority on this period of our history, and interested readers could have no better guide through the thicket of action that propelled Lincoln to the forefront of American politics and the country into the cauldron of civil war.
