Review: Giants - The Parallel Lives....

Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln grew up very differently - Douglass as a slave in the eastern part of Maryland; Lincoln as a free white in Illinois.

Yet their lives were similar in many ways. Douglass rebelled under both cruel and "kind" masters; Lincoln chafed under his father's habit of renting him out for labor. Both married women of higher classes, they read much of the same literature, and both were intensely focused on improving themselves.

The book details how the two men grew up, what drove them, and what shaped their world views. It also describes the friendship that developed between the two, and how each one impacted the other.

I enjoyed the book because it helped me flesh out my understanding of what drove the nation to civil war in the 1860s. It also explains the motivations of white Northerners and Southerners, free blacks and slaves.

More interesting were the the parts about Lincoln's choice of bedfellows and his perspectives on the 1846 Mexican War.

The president at the time, James Polk, had stretched the truth quite a bit in presenting his case for pre-emptive war. On page 168, Lincoln is quoted as saying, "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, when he shall deem it necessary to repel [or preempt] an invasion, ... and you allow him to make war at pleasure." He viewed it as unconstitutional and without legal precedent.