Ambitious Quote by Eric Foner

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.

— Barack Obama

I admire Lincoln enormously and I think what's interesting about Lincoln is how he changes, it's not that he held the same view throughout…

— Eric Foner

I'm not a Lincoln expert, rather a biographer who has had the pleasure of reading much of what has been written about him from…

— Fred Kaplan

Abraham Lincoln was not all brooding and melancholy and patient understanding. There was a hard core in him, and plenty of toughness. He could…

— Bruce Catton

“Lincoln had a masterful grasp of great subjects. He was able to look at events from all sides, so as to appreciate how they…

— Henry Ketcham

“Whatever greatness Lincoln achieved cannot be explained as a triumph over personal suffering. Rather, it must be accounted for as an outgrowth of the…

— Joshua Wolf Shenk

Lincoln is such an iconic figure in American history. He seems to reflect so many elements of American culture that we consider essential, whether…

— Eric Foner

The general consensus among historians, among the ones who can handle the fact that 'Lincoln' is, in fact, historical fiction, is that we demonstrate…

— Tony Kushner

The big biography of Lincoln necessarily had to do so much with his political career, his ambitions, his accomplishments in public, with less time…

— David Herbert Donald

I think also there's no question that Lincoln has been diluted down through history in some way, almost by becoming as iconic as he…

— James Spader

Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy…

— Henry Louis Gates

“The problem is that we tend too often to read Lincoln's growth backward, as an unproblematic trajectory toward a predetermined end. This enables scholars…

— Eric Foner