Ray of Light: The Struggle for American Independence and Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln is often considered to be the greatest of the American presidents, a distant legend, or a politician whose actions were motivated more by calculation than by conviction. Despite the fact that he is both well-known and enigmatic, his legacy lives on. An imperfect man whose moral antislavery commitment, essential to the story of fairness in America, began as he grew up in an antislavery Baptist community; who insisted that slavery was a decent evil; and who sought, as he put it, to do right as God gave him to see the right. This illuminating new portrait gives us a very human Lincoln; a man who insisted that slavery was a decent evil; and who sought, as he put it, to do right as God

This book recounts the life of Abraham Lincoln, beginning with his birth on the Kentucky frontier in 1809 and continuing through his tragic assassination in 1865: his rise to power, his self-education, his loves, his bouts with depression, his political failures, his growing faith, and his steadfast conviction that slavery must be abolished. Lincoln's story exemplifies the ways and means of politics in a democracy, the roots and durability of racism, as well as the capacity of conscience to shape events in a nation that was shaped by the bravery of the enslaved of the era and by the brave witness of Black Americans. This nation was shaped by the courageous witness of Black Americans.