Works
Donald is best known for his biography of Abraham Lincoln, which has been praised by the historian Eric Foner as the best biography of Lincoln. It was praised by President Bill Clinton who called it "one of the best biographies on any person in politics." In addition, he wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning biographies of politician Charles Sumner and writer Thomas Wolfe. Weaving in a wealth of new historical material, he also revised his former mentor's classic textbook, Civil War and Reconstruction (1961, 2001).
Donald's first book Lincoln's Herndon (1948) was a biography of William Herndon, the junior partner in Abraham Lincoln's law firm in Springfield, Illinois. Herndon was Lincoln's trusted aide until Lincoln became president and, in 1889 published a highly controversial biography of Lincoln based on numerous interviews. Donald concluded that Herndon, "stands, in the backward glance of history, as myth-maker and truth-teller." In his introduction, Carl Sandburg, the poet and Lincoln biographer, hailed Donald's book as the answer to scholars' prayers: “When is someone going to do the life of Bill Herndon. Isn't it about time? Now the question is out.” David M. Potter, whose own credentials as a Lincoln scholar gave his words authority, said Donald's biography of Charles Sumner portrayed, "Sumner as a man with acute psychological inadequacies” and exposed Sumner's "facade of pompous rectitude." Donald's evenhanded approach to Sumner, Potter concluded, was a model for biographers working with a difficult subject. "If it does not make Sumner attractive certainly makes him understandable."
Donald argues that the American Civil War was a needless war caused or hastened by the fanaticism of people like Charles Sumner; he admires Abraham Lincoln.
Read more about this topic: David Herbert Donald
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