Book Review: Lincoln & California: The President, the War, and the Golden State

Lincoln & California: The President, the War, and the Golden State. By Brian McGinty. Sterling, VA: Potomac Books, 2023. Hardcover, 296 pp. $34.95.

Reviewed by Derek D. Maxfield

Author Brian McGinty wastes no time in taking historians to task for their failure to appreciate Lincoln’s ties to California. “The ties that bound Abraham Lincoln to California, and California to Abraham Lincoln,” McGinty complains in the first line of his introduction, “have been ignored by too many writers and historians.” (xiii) Thus, the stage is set for the work at hand and a place marker defined for Lincoln & California in the historiography.

Author of a dozen books, including Lincoln’s Greatest Case: The River, the Bridge, and the Making of America, Brian McGinty has a fascination with the sixteenth-president borne out of “respect and sympathy for the issues he faced and the gifts he brought to the presidency in the time of its greatest crisis.” (xvii) As a long-time California resident, McGinty naturally appreciated the connections between the Golden State and the Kentucky rail-splitter and wished to illustrate these.

A substantial amount of attention in this work is paid to individuals Lincoln met whom had ties to California and influenced the president.  Perhaps the most important of these was Edward D. Baker, Lincoln’s “dearest personal friend.” (xvi) “Ned” Baker was Lincoln’s law partner in Springfield, Illinois, and an intimate of the Lincoln household. In fact, so tight were the partners that the rail-splitter’s second son, Edward Baker Lincoln, was named for Baker. A United States Senator from Oregon, Baker helped create the Republican establishment in California and campaigned for Lincoln in both states.  Baker’s appreciation for the west fired Lincoln’s imagination and, as McGinty demonstrates throughout the book, even manifested in Lincoln’s repeated wish to retire to California after his tenure as president.

One of the more curious chapters of Lincoln & California was entitled “Native Peoples” and sought to examine—and perhaps excuse—Lincoln’s limited understanding of the plight of indigenous people. “Lincoln,” McGinty says, “knew little about what was happening to the native peoples of California while he was in the White House.” Speculating on what the president might have done, had he known of the suffering of Native Americans, the author contends “If Lincoln had addressed their suffering directly, he would probably have tried to ameliorate it.” (113) What followed was a cursory history of Native Americans in California, appointments Lincoln made touching on Indian affairs in the west, as well as an examination—seemingly off topic—of the Sioux uprising in Minnesota. In conclusion, McGinty observes “Historians have carefully analyzed Lincoln’s relations with the native peoples. They have not found them terribly bad, but they have not found them terribly good either.” The author adds that Lincoln “did not know enough about the native peoples to fully understand their plight, or what he could—or should—do to improve their relations with other people in the United States.” (127) It is an interesting chapter, but feels like an afterthought that does not do much to forward the thesis of the book.

McGinty’s book concludes with a chapter about how California remembered Lincoln after his sudden demise—including immediate reaction to the assassination and the subsequent erection of monuments and memorials. In a disapproving tone, the author also examines the anti-Lincoln backlash in California and elsewhere following “news reports of the tragic deaths of African Americans at the hands of police” and the case of the San Francisco school board which threatened to remove Lincoln’s name from a school when members of the board learned that Lincoln had permitted the execution of thirty-eight Sioux rebels who led the uprising of 1862. In the end, McGinty happily observes, “Lincoln’s city hall statue was not taken down, his name was not removed from the San Francisco high school . . . his memory endured.” (185)

McGinty’s book is a fine read and undoubtedly makes important contributions to the body of Lincoln scholarship. The hole the author identified was real, and McGinty makes a valiant effort to fill it. Lincoln aficionados should welcome this work into their collections.