Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend - Kenneth W. Noe

Kenneth W. Noe's Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend boldly questions the long-accepted notion that the sixteenth president was an almost-perfect commander in chief, more intelligent than his generals. The legend originated with Lincoln himself, who early in the war concluded that he possessed a keen strategic and tactical mind. Noe explores the genesis of this powerful idea and asks why so many have tenaciously defended it. George McClellan, Lincoln's top general, emerged in Lincoln's mind and the American psyche as his chief adversary, and to this day, the Lincoln-McClellan relationship remains central to the enduring legend. Lincoln came to view himself as a wiser warrior than McClellan, and as the war proceeded, a few members of Lincoln's inner circle began to echo the president's thoughts on his military prowess. Convinced of his own tactical brilliance, Lincoln demanded that Ulysses Grant, McClellan's replacement, turn to the "hard, tough fighting" of the Overland and Petersburg campaigns, when Grant's first instinct was to copy McClellan and swing into the Confederate rear. Noe suggests that the growth and solidification of the heroic legend began with Lincoln's assassination; it debuted in print only months afterward and was so cloaked in religious piety that for decades it could not withstand the counternarratives offered by secular contemporaries. Although the legend was debated and neglected at times, it reemerged in interwar Great Britain and gained ca
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