At the time of greatest tension in American history, the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln guided a turbulent, divided country toward a future that strengthened (imperfectly) equality amongst the races and fought for the unity of a singular democratic nation. Jon Meacham believes that we can use the experiences (and travails) of a figure like Lincoln, who looms so large in the American cultural imaginary, to reflect the tensions, imperfections, contradictions, and ideals of the present, when large swaths of the American public have felt the rising tide of political and cultural division. In the eyes of Meacham, and many others, recent threats to democracy and the overarching stability of the union are comparable to the threats in Lincoln’s time. Asked in a Today Show interview whether he sees parallels between the divisions emerging in pre-Civil War America and the divisiveness rampant in the 2020s, Meacham responded, “Tragically, yes” (“John Meacham Shares new complex view of Abraham Lincoln.” The Today Show, 19 Oct. 2022).

An important function of the study of history, for Meacham, is the light that it can shed on current affairs and political sentiments, and Meacham wrote a Lincoln biography for the contemporary historical and cultural moment using the national past as a tool for dissecting the national present.