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Article: Lincoln's Rise to the Presidency.(Book review)
- Article from:
- The Historian
- Article date:
- December 22, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Lincoln's Rise to the Presidency. By William C. Harris. (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Pp. 412. $34.95.)
There are several questions that must haunt the imagination of most Lincoln scholars at one time or another. What if the Republican convention in 1860 had done the predictable thing and nominated a nationally prominent figure for the presidency, such as William Seward or Edward Bates? What would we then know of Abraham Lincoln? Is Lincoln's place in history dependent on a fluke?
In Lincoln's Rise to the Presidency, William C. Harris shows that the convention's choice of Lincoln, though surprising, was no fluke: it was based on a ...