Abraham Lincoln: The Enigmatic President

  Constituting America's 2026 Study is: The Consent of the Governed Today's essay is Samuel Adams and the Boston Tea Party by James D. Best. Read it here and explore Constituting America 250 . A fun and educational celebration of America's 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

  Book 2 in the American Exceptionalism Series Maelstrom, A Civil War Novel , is now available for Kindle preorder. Release Date June 1, 2026 (Hardcover and paperback will also be available on June 1, 2026) “I enjoyed this.”  Harold Holzer, Lincoln Prize winner and Chair of The Lincoln Forum “See Lincoln as you've never seen him before as he navigates the maelstrom of the Civil War.”  Larry Schweikart, NYTimes #1 bestselling author Maelstrom tells the story of the greatest rivalry in American history. Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis led their nations in a must-win fight, and Maelstrom shows how each dealt with the same issues, countered the other’s moves, led their respective governments, and used their political powers to sway the outcome. Read the first chapter free HERE .

  William C. Davis’s Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour is a major contribution to Civil War history. To get the full picture of a major historical event, you need to study both sides of an issue.  Davis helps us by presenting the Confederate view. (Since the author and subject have the same last name, although unrelated, I will use the term “author” for William C. Davis.) This highly researched book presents fascinating details of Davis’s life and actions. The writing is smooth and easy to understand. It gives a reasonable account of Confederate and Davis’s views. Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour is a good way to learn about the conflict from the secessionist perspective. The biography falters in its attempt to rationalize Davis’s personality flaws. The author seeks sympathy for Jefferson Davis, but his arrogance, combativeness, and stubbornness undermine this effort. At times, the author seems almost surprised by Davis’s failings, excusing them as "insecurity." Ul...

Maelstrom is a political novel about the Civil War.  It is also a sequel to Tempest at Dawn , my novel about the Constitutional Convention. Tempest at Dawn was about framing a nation and Maelstrom is about testing the tensile strength of the Framers work. Although both books stand alone, they share style and structure and some of the Framers descendants make brief appearances Maelstrom . I read stacks of books to get alternative perspectives on the players and events. One is The Impending Crisis in The South written in 1857 by Hinton Rowan Helper. Nothing like getting the skinny from someone who lived in the period. Helper begins his book with startling statistics. He compares the economies of slave and non-slave states at the time of the Framing of the Constitution to just prior to the Civil War. Here are some of his statistics comparing New York and Virginia.                               ...

President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878 is credited with initiating the White House Easter Egg Roll. Multiple historical accounts indicate that informal egg-rolling parties took place on the White House grounds as far back as Lincoln's time, and perhaps Lincoln’s young son, Tad, should get the credit for starting the Easter tradition. Tad even dyed his own eggs and showed them off to his father. During Lincoln’s time, rolling hard-boiled eggs down lawn slopes was a popular Easter pastime. The White House gatherings, however, were small, semi-private affairs rather than the large public spectacles of today. Uninvited kids typically rolled eggs on the Capitol grounds until the damage to the lawn became so extensive that Congress banned the practice in the mid-1870s. That’s when President Hays opened up the White House South Lawn to the public for the White House Easter Egg Roll. Other than Tad and friends rolling eggs on the lawn, Easter observances for the First Family were low-key an...