The Fiery Trial

According to Grammarphobia (specifically https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2006/08/why-isnt-there-a-fire-in-fiery.html):

"The Old English word 'fyr' (fire) was transcribed into Middle English as 'fier.' (The Old English letter y, representing a long 'i' sound, was written as 'ie' in the Middle English version of the word.) The Modern English spelling 'fire' didn’t become firmly established until about 1600, but a trace of the old spelling survived in the adjective 'fiery'.”

So there's that. The reason that feels relevant to me is because I think it that it would be reasonable...not to mention logical...to think that FIERY was spelled FIREY. In fact, you might even look at the word FIERY and see FIREY. (Of course I am implicitly confessing here.) But you'd be wrong. What "you" saw would be what you expected to see...not the reality. And The Reality is trapped in a bit of nonsensical history...a prehistoric mosquito trapped in the amber of archaism. 

I just finished reading The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner. Winner of The Pulitzer Prize. 

I have to confess that I had no interest in reading this book at all. I was talking to a friend and mentioned that I was going to read Moby Dick with my daughter-in-law, and friend immediately said, "I want to read a book with you, too. Let's read something about Abraham Lincoln. I'd like to understand how he came to end slavery." Words to that effect, anyway. Then she suggested one of the Lincoln biographies, and when I looked it up it was over 500 pages long. So I had a look, but I looked specifically for a book about Lincoln and the abolition of slavery. And found The Fiery Trial. The fact that it had a Winner of The Pulitzer Prize sticker on the cover made me think it would be pretty okay. And the fact that it only had 326 pages of text was a clincher. I told my friend about it, giving enough detail that nudged her into choosing it. 

Pretty much from the start I knew I was in trouble. Foner's writing is so devoid of any hint of an interesting style caused me to just plod through the first couple of dozen pages. If my friend had been tearing it up I might have been able to push myself, but when I checked, she wasn't even as far as I was.

Well. I've been in more than a few reading groups in my time. Most of them have pooped out before finishing the book. Part of me was hoping that that's what would happen here...that Friend would say, "I just can't do it. Let's call it a day." But every time I talked to her, she'd say that she was still working on it, that she liked it but it took a lot of concentration, etcetera. So I kept bearing down. Kept getting farther ahead of Friend. Finally I just thought, "I'm not going to be the one to poop out on this," and I buckled down and pushed through. Just finished it a couple of hours ago.

I can't not recommend this lowly enough. I often felt that I was reading the same words over and over again, because there was so little progress in the book. I'm sorry to say it, but Eric Foner is just not my kind of writer. He almost never shifts into a story telling kind of mode, it's just a shitload of overview and context and then a dry recitation of facts. If you went to college and had a really boring professor, then you know how bone crushing an hour of that can be. And this book was like that...times 18. (The audiobook lasts 18 hour and 7 minutes.) 

And it was just so disappointing, too. It's obvious that Lincoln had no respect for Black people for most of his life. He called them "niggers," he supported laws that worked against them at times, and he talked about their ontological inferiority and had no intention of making Blacks the social equals of Whites. It really wasn't until the last few years of his life that he moved off of this racist perspective. 

I guess that you could say that it's good that a racist man like Lincoln grew to the point where he could be (seen as) The Great Emancipator, but the truth is that it was primarily political necessity which caused Lincoln to move in that direction. He even said that if he could save the Union without freeing a single slave he would do it. 

So there's that.

I suppose it's possible that there's another story out there...one in which I don't end up feeling like Lincoln was just another lousy fuckin' political...but I'm probably not going to be reading it, as I've had enough. If you haven't, good luck to you. I strongly suggest that you skip reading this book, though, as your make your journey down that road.