Abraham Lincoln: The Enigmatic President

  The Truth of the War Conspiracy of 1861 A Reassessment of Why the American Civil War Began by H W Johnstone   This booklet was published in 1921 by a Civil War veteran. The author’s intent is to advocate for The Lost Cause and expose the “truth.” I’ve read several modern-day defenses of The Lost Cause, but I wanted to get the perspective of someone closer in time to the conflict. A participant was even better, although Johnstone served for only an unexplained eight months. Unfortunately, time and participation provided few novel insights. I shouldn't have been surprised because years earlier, Jefferson Davis had articulated the dogma of The Lost Cause in his two histories of the Confederate States of America. Johnstone argues that a duplicitous President Lincoln started the war by reinforcing Forts Sumter and Pickens, the last Union military presence in the seceded states. First, the duplicitous part. In his inaugural, Lincoln said, “The power confided to me will be used to...

    Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War by David Williams  Bitterly Divided by David Williams makes sense. If the political establishment in a bunch of states decided to secede, there would obviously be inhabitants who retained a stronger loyalty to the United States of America. After all, they had been proud U.S. citizens for their entire lives. I bet you saw a but coming. The but is that although Williams presents voluminous evidence of insurgence within the CSA, it is not clear that it materially hampered the Confederacy’s war efforts until the last year or so. The catchphrase, ‘rich man’s war, poor man’s fight,’ may have been a truism, but Southern men continued to fight until victory became hopeless or they received news from home that their families were starving. Williams contends that slaveholders masterminded the war, but, for the most part, non-slaveholders fought it. Three-fourths of southern whites owned no slaves, so arithmetic alone proves Wi...

  Abraham Lincoln and The Second American Revolution  by James M. McPherson This book is a collection of seven essays on the Civil War. Originally, these essays were lecture notes. They are well-written and thoughtful. The common theme is that the Civil War was a second revolution because it brought revolutionary transformations to the country and was followed by a counter-revolution a couple of decades after Appomattox. Each essay covers a single premise and can be read separately. Slavery divided the nation in 1787 and severed the country in 1860. Many have said that the Civil War settled the key issue that the Constitutional Convention kicked down the road. Did the Civil War finish the Founders’ work or was it in and of itself revolutionary? Read Abraham Lincoln and The Second American Revolution and decide for yourself. Ending slavery in the United States was horrendously difficult. It took a four-year war with about 620,000 deaths. The politics were byzantine, and t...

  The Partisan Rangers of the Confederate States Army   by Adam Rankin Johnson When I am trying to get a perspective on a historical period, I like to read books written by people who lived through the period. Examples would include The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin , Roughing It by Mark Twain, The Virginian by Owen Wister,   An Editor on the Comstock Lode by Wells Drury, James Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention, A Short History of the Confederate States of America by Jefferson Davis, and The Impending Crisis of the South by Hinton Rowan Helper. When I began researching the partisan rangers of the Civil War, I was thrilled to find General Johnson’s memoir. However, I found the book to be dull and largely uninformative. The Partisan Rangers of the Confederate States Army is a short autobiography, with over half of the content comprising recollections from minor participants. The autobiographical section was a screed of flawless military derring-do...

Ted Widmer made a great choice of subject matter. Lincoln on the Verge concentrates on the thirteen days it took Lincoln to journey by train from Springfield to Washington. It’s a fascinating story that illustrates the political savvy of this supposed country bumpkin. Widmer introduces us to the president-elect as he travels across a great land he knows will soon be thrown into turmoil. What could Lincoln accomplish on this tedious trip? You’ll discover he could do quite a bit. Foremost in his mind was solidifying his support in the North for the coming maelstrom. His twisted path took him to state capitals and major cities where he could converse with political power brokers and influencers. He engineered the Presidential Special’s journey in preparation to govern the nation after inauguration. Widmer has a clear, concise writing style that keeps the narrative moving, and his matter-of-fact presentation allows the reader to mine for new insights without being led to the trough. ...

During the Civil War, politicians claimed the conflict was about issues other than slavery. Jefferson Davis adamantly denied that slavery caused the war, arguing that the dispute was about states’ rights. However, as Lincoln noted in his First Inaugural Address, the only state right truly in question was slavery. Not that Yankee politicians were more forthright. In the early years of the war, Lincoln said he was fighting solely to restore the Union. Since then, most books by participants and historians have downplayed slavery as the primary cause of the conflict. During and after the Constitutional Convention, slaveholding states threatened to secede if they did not get their way. With a few interludes, slaveholders or slave tolerant politicians controlled the national government from its inception. The slave states had grown accustomed to their dominance, but a new party emerged that threatened their “peculiar institution.” With the election of the first Republican President, the slav...

Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were fascinating figures—precisely the kind of characters a novelist needs to carry a story. Both presidents had strong personalities, enormous drive, and inner confidence. They were also strikingly different people. Perfect for storytelling. In Maelstrom , I strived to give Lincoln and Davis equal billing. I got the idea from the 1979 novel, Kane and Abel , by Jeffrey Archer. There are always two sides to a story, and Archer did a masterful job of alternating chapters between characters to present the alternative perspectives. The idea intrigued me, and I used it in Tempest at Dawn , my dramatization of the Constitutional Convention. Although it requires extensive preplanning of chapters, it is an excellent technique for presenting opposing views. There are no more strident opposing views than in a civil war. In Maelstrom , I alternate chapters between Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, allowing the two narratives to show how each dealt with the s...

In early 1860, Abraham Lincoln was a little-known regional politician from Springfield, Illinois. The Republican Party was new and had failed running national hero John C. Frémont for president in 1856. Lincoln's chances of ascending to the presidency under the Republican banner were slight. All that changed in New York City on February 27, 1860. That afternoon, Lincoln had his photograph taken by Mathew Brady, and in the evening, he gave a historic speech at the Cooper Union. Lincoln often claimed that Brady’s photograph and his Cooper Union address propelled him to the presidency. Here is the full speech . Below is a highly abridged version of Lincoln's Cooper Union Speech.  We hear that you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that event, you say you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, ‘Stand and deliver, or I...

   The Framers debated every detail of the Constitution extensively. Did they ultimately get the presidential term and election right? The Civil War suggests that they may have, and nothing puts more stress on the government than a civil war. Superficially, the Confederate Constitution appeared very similar to the United States Constitution. However, there were differences. The Confederate Constitution openly used the word slavery, where the Framers adopted the euphemism, “other persons.” Many of the Framers abhorred slavery and refused to see it referred to outright in the language of the Constitution. The Confederacy made more than semantic changes. In their minds, they corrected errors they felt were decided improperly seventy-three years prior. Some of these, arguably, contributed to the South's loss in the War for Southern Independence. In Philadelphia, the Framers argued numerous times over the proper length of term for the president. Some wanted a short-term optio...