The Age of Lincoln

“The Age of Lincoln offers a major reinterpretation of nineteenth-century American history from the age of Jackson to the Progressive era. Professor Burton portrays Lincoln as a product of his time and the Southern yeoman culture in which he grew up; and in turn he shows how Lincoln’s ideas, so essential for Northern victory in the war, affected the way Americans defined themselves in the postwar generation. Filled with fresh insights, The Age of Lincoln should open a new era in Civil War-Reconstruction scholarship.”

David Herbert Donald, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Lincoln

“Vernon Burton offers a bold new synthesis of the Civil War era in The Age of Lincoln. He shows how the ferment of religious reform merged with the dynamism of free-labor capitalism to forge a Northern political culture that triumphed over the South and slavery.”

Jim McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom

“In magisterial fashion Vernon Burton’s The Age of Lincoln covers the broad panorama of the American nation’s most perilous years…Especially striking is his treatment of the Reconstruction South when the victor’s bi-racial, ‘national building’ experiment failed, a situation analogous to the current sectarian strife in Iraq.”

Bertram Whatt-Brown, professor emeritus of history, University of Florida

“Burton’s intriguing thesis is that Lincoln's most profound achievement was not the abolition of slavery but the enshrinement of the principle of personal liberty protected by a body of law…For readers seeking to comprehend the sweeping social, religious and cultural backdrop to the Civil War, Burton’s book is a worthy heir to Schlesinger’s [The Age of Jackson].”

Publishers Weekly