Popular History vs. Real History

I recently slogged through Michael Beschloss' book Presidential Courage, subtitled "Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989." I found the book profoundly disappointing on many levels. Just having finished Dorin Kearns Goodwin's superb Team of Rivals on Lincoln's life and presidency, Beschloss' entry in the popular history sweepstakes comes off looking singularly pathetic.

The entire book read like the academic equivalent of cotton candy. You don't have to be a trained academician to be disappointed with Beschloss's mamby-pamby history-for-the-masses style. Aside from Goodwin's magisterial Team of Rivals, other recent examples of excellent popular histories abound: see, for example, Joseph Ellis (His Excellency George Washington, Founding Brothers), David McCullough (John Adams, Truman) and Walter Isaacson (Benjamin Franklin). All of these authors have run rings around Beschloss in terms of the depth and weight they bring to their books, without sacrificing readability and enjoyability in the slightest.

The single most damning aspect of Beschloss' pathetic entry in the popular history market is his tendency to give such short shrift to knotty historical details as to render his "analysis" (so called) misleading or even false. One of the most egregious examples occurs in a chapter on Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Beschloss writes: "[That] July, he [Lincoln] summoned his Cabinet and read them his draft of a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. On New Year's 1863, 'all persons held as slaves within any state' would become 'forever' free." (page 109) (Incidentally, this two-sentence squib constitutes an entire paragraph. This is par for the course in this book, in which the paragraphs are rarely even three short sentences long.)

This is the closest Beschloss ever comes to telling the reader what the Emancipation Proclamation actually said. In fact, the full text of the document is as follows: "[A]ll persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." (Italics added.) Beschloss simply omits any mention of the fact Lincoln's proclamation only freed the slaves in the Confederacy, over which he had no actual power, and declined to free the slaves in the Union slave states over which he did have power (specifically, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and West Virginia).

One is left with the unmistakable impression that Beschloss simply doesn't want to surprise his readers with the unpleasant historical reality that Lincoln chose to limit the Emancipation Proclamation to freeing the slaves in the Confederacy while leaving those in the Union still in bondage, either because revealing such a fact might upset their idealistic preconceptions, or because any analysis of the actual political and strategic reasons Lincoln had for doing so would unduly tax their patience. Apparently, Beschloss thinks popular histories must be dumbed down to sell. How dumb.