Books: Lincoln-Makers

PORTRAIT FOR POSTERITY (329 pp.)—Benjamin P. Thomas—Rutgers University ($3).

Abraham Lincoln distrusted biographies and seldom read them. His son, Robert T, Lincoln, shared his distrust; he included in it the biographers of his father. He seldom gave them help and never encouragement. As a result, when Lincoln scholars recently scrambled to Washington to see the Lincolniana that had been ordered sealed until 21 years after Robert's death they found few surprises and no answers to some of the major questions abou Abraham Lincoln's life.

There is a suspicion that Robert destroyed some Lincoln papers....

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