Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend

Reconsidering Lincoln as Commander in Chief

Kenneth W. Noe, T. Michael Parrish

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780807185957
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: History

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 canonical status in the 1950s Cold War era and during the Civil War Centennial of the 1960s. Historians became torchbearers of the heroic legend and much else that we know about Lincoln, reorienting his biography forever. Based on lessons and language from the world wars, their arguments were so timely and powerful that they seized the field. Since then, biographers and historians have reevaluated many aspects of Lincoln's life, but have rarely revisited his performance as commander in chief. Noe's reappraisal is long overdue.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART 1. WAR: ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE HEROIC LEGEND
• 1. The War Power: Lincoln and the Genesis of the Heroic Legend, January 1861–January 1862
• 2. The Arc and the Chord: Lincoln, McClellan, and the Heroic Legend Defined, January–November 1862
• 3. I Could Have Whipped Them Myself: Lincoln, His Generals, and the Heroic Legend, November 1862–November 1863
• 4. Martyr Victorious: Lincoln, Grant, and the Heroic Legend, September 1863–April 1865
• PART 2. MEMORY: HISTORIANS AND THE HEROIC LEGEND
• 5. Lincoln Men: Lincoln’s Generation and the Heroic Legend at Bay, 1865–1911
• 6. Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight: American Historians and the Heroic Legend in Limbo, 1895–1945
• 7. Blades of Grass in the Shenandoah: Great Britain, World War I, and the Heroic Legend Revived, 1916–1939
• 8. The Stern Standard of Victory: World War II, the Cold War, and the Triumph of the Heroic Legend, 1945–1959
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index