This original and wide-ranging work reveals how Abraham Lincoln responded to prompts from around the globe to shape his personal appearance, political appeal, and presidential policies. Throughout his life, he learned lessons about slavery, American politics, and international relations from sources centered in Africa, Britain, and the European continent. Answering questions that previous scholars have not thought to ask, the book opens the vision of Lincoln as a global republican. Thanks to its new stories and compelling analyses, this book provides a provocative and stimulating read that will generate debate at both high and popular levels.

'With this striking contribution to Lincoln studies, Louise L. Stevenson demonstrates how well the percipient Union president understood what the American republic meant to aspiring democrats worldwide. Deft, assured, and marked by no little originality, Lincoln in the Atlantic World is essential for an authentic reading of Lincoln’s political thought and practice.'

Richard Carwardine - President, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and winner of the Lincoln Prize with Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power

'With this impressive new work, Louise L. Stevenson offers an astonishing breadth of analysis. This book succeeds in sketching out an entirely new, more global framework for understanding the intellectual and quite cosmopolitan influences that affected Lincoln in his own life.'

Matthew Pinsker - Pohanka Chair in American Civil War History, Dickinson College, and author of Lincoln’s Sanctuary

'The source base for Louise L. Stevenson’s book is as wide as the oceans, while her writing is smooth sailing. Best of all, the new findings and the big interpretations are original and stimulating. This work will surely be debated at a high as well as a popular level, because the stories are so interesting and the topic so necessary.'

James Cornelius - Curator, Lincoln Collection, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

'Lincoln had an astonishing capacity for absorbing knowledge and making practical meaning of it, and Louise L. Stevenson’s original and quite imaginative book shows how he incorporated knowledge from abroad or from his contact with foreigners in the United States. The ‘rail-splitter’ was quite a worldly man who always located the nation in the larger context of the world.'

Thomas Bender - New York University

'Louise L. Stevenson convincingly demonstrates Lincoln’s concern for the world beyond the United States by placing his everyday life in a series of contexts probably unfamiliar to most Lincoln fans today. She is particularly eloquent describing Lincoln’s relationship with his British audience.'

Daniel Walker Howe - Pulitzer Prize-winning author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848

‘Lincoln in the Atlantic World illuminates Lincoln’s political visions, not merely of the United States as a successful republic, but also of the nation as a model for republican government across the world. The book is a truly valuable addition to our understanding of Lincoln the person and the politician and, more broadly, of the nineteenth-century United States in a global context.’

Martha Hodes - author of Mourning Lincoln

'Analyze[s] several well-known stories of Lincoln’s actions in terms of then-current events in Africa, Europe, Germany, and England, and how Lincoln applied what he had learned. Stevenson investigates new avenues into the mind, workings, and effect of this unusual man … Recommended.'

R. J. Havlik Source: Choice

'Louise L. Stevenson’s Lincoln in the Atlantic World reminds us that, for Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War was a ‘testing’ of the single greatest accomplishment of Enlightenment political ideas, the creation of a large-scale republic … this book adds a series of important bricks in the rebuilding of the worldwide context of the Civil War …'

Allen C. Guelzo Source: Civil War News

'Stevenson seeks to illuminate the president’s view of the world and America’s place within it. She succeeds in giving readers an unexpected portrait of a self-taught, American provincial who became worldly in his understanding of America’s experiment in self-government and in his grasp of what was at stake in the Union’s struggle to survive, not only for America but for all nations, and not only for his day but ‘for a vast future also.’

Don H. Doyle Source: H-Diplo

'Lincoln in the Atlantic World is well organized and introduces new interpretations of underutilized sources to enrich our understanding of Lincoln’s sophisticated and nuanced view of the world. Stevenson explains that Lincoln translated his beliefs into an idealistic and pragmatic approach to foreign affairs. This exciting and intriguing study provides a unique and broader appreciation of the influence of the Atlantic world on Lincoln.'

Charles M. Hubbard Source: The Journal of American History