Freedman notes at the very beginning of his biography that while almost every American becomes familiar at an early age with the gaunt face and tall figure of Abraham Lincoln, much about him remains a mystery. Even his contemporaries did not really know him.

Despite this, Lincoln has become the most mythologized subject in American political history. The reasons for this are complex, but Lincoln's reticence about his early life has certainly contributed to his popular image. He did not enjoy remembering the life he had led in frontier Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. His Republican campaigners in the election of 1860 made much of Lincoln the onetime rail-splitter, working man, and humble son of the common people, but even though Lincoln was an expert with his axe, he preferred to forget the backbreaking labor of farm life. An ambitious person who realized that he possessed...