ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

The book's chief virtue is Carwardine's ability to give us a palpable sense of a man who lived over a century and a half ago, and not merely by sharing in the laughter but in better understanding how he used it; as sword and shield, refuge and release, charity and instruction.

As many shades as Lincoln's humor had, and as many uses, its reception was anything but monolithic. Carwardine, in a helpful bit of historiographical clarification, demonstrates that the "positive and benign" characterization of Lincoln as a folksy frontier storyteller only emerged after his death. During the dark days of war, he was criticized and derided for laughing in the midst of death and devastation. In the Confederacy, this was no surprise. That he was criticized so vehemently in the North--publicly and privately--will surprise many readers who last encountered Lincoln in a textbook or in the Bardo. But even seasoned students of Civil War politics and history will likely be impressed by the range of attacks on the president. And, lest we think our own age has a monopoly on partisan nastiness, it is a healthy reminder what the Republic--even when ravaged by war--can bear from the worst angels of our nature.

Carwardine clarifies another aspect of Lincoln's humor that was as misunderstood then as it is now. Known for his delight in the vulgar and the bawdy--a reflection of life spent on the western frontier--Lincoln, Carwardine argues, did not relish crude jokes for their crudity but always with a view toward the wisdom or moral instruction they imparted. "Beneath his levity," Carwardine says, "lay a stratum of ethical rock." When Lincoln told a bawdy story to friend David Davis, any moral of the story was lost on the irate man, who scolded the president saying, "Lincoln, if the country knew you were telling those stories, you could never be elected and you know it." But when a visitor to his law office in Springfield told a lewd joke, one with no point but its lewdness, Lincoln became so irritated that he complained to William Herndon that he nearly threw the man out. Still, despite Lincoln's widely known dark spells and brooding temperament, he was roundly and repeatedly criticized for his mirth. Carwardine quotes one Connecticut newspaperman saying of the president, "I verily believe he would crack a joke at the crack of doom."

Sorting through the complexities of Lincoln's humor is where Carwardine excels. One of the ways he does this is by showing how Lincoln's sense of humor evolved over time and relative to the case before a jury, the opportunity for political advancement, or the gravity of the nation's existential crisis. This approach rectifies a dichotomy often seen in popular renderings of Lincoln in which he is portrayed as either a "smutty joker" or a melancholic depressive awaiting the next revelation as the new Moses, or both. The man was somewhere in between--a fact Carwardine is not the first to suggest but one given profound and nuanced treatment in his book.

Russell Kirk, whose regard for Lincoln rankled more than a few conservatives, observed, "Here was a man of sorrows. It has always been true that melancholy men are the wittiest; and Lincoln's off-colour yarns, told behind a log barn or in some dingy Springfield office, were part and parcel of his consciousness that this is a world of vanities." Lincoln's humor and melancholy, then, ought to be seen in relationship, not opposition. Carwardine is adept at drawing out such connections in so limited a study.

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