| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

On Hallowed Ground: Abraham Lincoln and the Foundations of American History. By John Patrick Diggins. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. xxii, 330 pp. $27.95, ISBN 0-300-08237-1.)

This is not a book about Abraham Lincoln, but a collection of historiographical essays. Lincoln is, however, frequently quoted as an authoritative interpreter of the nature of American society. Those who are familiar with the previous writings of John Patrick Diggins will not be surprised to learn that the essays present a polemical defense of liberal pluralism as a paradigm for understanding the history of the United States. At the core of the author's presentation is an appreciative reconsideration of Louis Hartz, scattered across several chapters. Diggins emphasizes that Hartz recognized the limitations of the liberal tradition in America that he so brilliantly analyzed. Hartz regarded America as exceptional, a middle-class fragment of European society, constricted by a Lockean straitjacket and tragically unable to understand the nonbourgeois rest of the world. By contrast, Diggins himself repeatedly extols the blessings of liberalism. . . .

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