Starting in 2016, Sidney Blumenthal has published installments of his multi-volume presidential biography, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln. Although it isn't mandatory to read A Self-Made Man (2016) and Wrestling with His Angel (2017) prior to All the Powers of Earth, doing so will offer valuable context for this volume's panoramic view of American politics leading up to the Civil War.
All the Powers of Earth focuses on the founding and growth of the new Republican Party, a development that would have been inconceivable if not for Democrat Stephen A. Douglas's presidential aspirations. Douglas united "his opponents into common cause. The more he tarred them as 'Black Republicans,' the more he galvanized them" into becoming a formidable political party. In this well-researched and easily readable biography, Blumenthal shows how Lincoln used this animosity to his advantage to help build the Republican party in which he was considered a rising star.
"Until his Senate contest with Douglas [Lincoln] was a minor provincial character without any reason to demand a wider attention," Blumenthal writes. Anticipating the 1860 presidential race, however, Lincoln saw opportunity; his victory assured that "a president pledged against [slavery's] expansion would soon be at the helm of the executive branch." It's a pivotal moment in history and an exciting endnote for All the Powers of Earth, a fine addition to Blumenthal's previous work on Lincoln. Historians and casual readers of history should eagerly await his next volume. --William H. Firman Jr., writer and presidential historian