Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780451489012)

From acclaimed Abraham Lincoln historian Harold Holzer, a groundbreaking account of Lincoln's grappling with the politics of immigration against the backdrop of the Civil War.

In the three decades before the Civil War, some ten million foreign-born people settled in the United States, forever altering the nation's demographics, culture, and--perhaps most significantly--voting patterns. America's newest residents fueled the national economy, but they also wrought enormous changes in the political landscape and exposed an ugly, at times violent, vein of nativist bigotry.

Abraham Lincoln's rise ran parallel to this turmoil; even Lincoln himself did not always rise above it. Tensions over immigration would split and ultimately destroy Lincoln's Whig Party years before the Civil War. Yet the war made clear just how important immigrants were, and how interwoven they had become in American society.

Harold Holzer, winner of the Lincoln Prize, charts Lincoln's political career through the lens of immigration, from his role as a member of an increasingly nativist political party to his evolution into an immigration champion, a progression that would come at the same time as he refined his views on abolition and Black citizenship. As Holzer writes, "The Civil War could not have been won without Lincoln's leadership; but it could not have been fought without the immigrant soldiers who served and, by the tens of thousands, died that the 'nation might live.'" An utterly captivating and illuminating work, Brought Forth on This Continent assesses Lincoln's life and legacy in a wholly original way, unveiling remarkable similarities between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first.

Author: Harold Holzer
ISBN-10: 0451489012
ISBN-13: 9780451489012
Publisher: Dutton
Language: English
Published: 02/13/2024
Pages: 464
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.45lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.20w x 1.70d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 09/01/2023 pg. 20
Library Journal 01/01/2024 pg. 74
Kirkus Reviews 01/15/2024
Booklist 02/01/2024 pg. 13
Publishers Weekly 02/12/2024