This striking portrait of Abraham Lincoln found in this book is drawn entirely from the writing of his contemporaries and extends from his political beginnings in Springfield to his assassination. It reveals a more severely beleaguered, less godlike, and finally a richer Lincoln than has come through many of the biographies of Lincoln written at a distance after his death. To those who are familiar only with the various retouchedversions of Lincoln's life, Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait will be a welcome-if sometimes surprising-addition to the literature surrounding the man who is perhaps...

Concentrating on ideology and cultural values, Liberty, Virtue, and Progress explores the motivations that casued Northerners to fight America's Civil War. Arguing for the primary significance of ideals and cultural values in defining a war, the book examines the opinions of both the Northern soldier and civilian about the meaning of the Civil War in terms of defining American nationalism, the character of the American people, and the future of free government. The book addresses the intellectual and social elites of Northern society, but gives a new emphasis to the opinions of the common man...

Melting Pot Soldiers is the story of the way immigrants responded to the drama of the Civil War. When the war began in 1861, there were, in most states in the North (primarily from Western Europe), large populations of immigrants whose leaders were active in American politics at the local, state, and national levels. Just as native-born Americans, both individually and collectively, reacted to war, so did these newcomers. A charicteristic feature of the formation of the Union armies was the role played by politicians in the recruitment of the regiment, the basic unit of the army. Ethnic...

The biography of Carl Schurz is a story of an amazing life. At the age of 19, Schurz, a student at the University of Bonn, became involved in the Revolution of 1848. Participating in the revolutionary army, he managed to escape through a sewer during the siege of Rastatt, flee across the Rhine to France, and come back to rescue his professor, Gottfried Kinkel, from a jail near Berlin. This deed made him famous, and when he came to American in 1852, Schurz was nominated for lieutenant governor of Wisconsin on the Republican ticket. He quickly rose in the party and was the head of the Wisconsin...

Affairs of party, Jean Baker asserts, were a central feature of public life in nineteenth-century America. In this book she explores the way in which the Northern Democrats of the mid-eighteen hundreds lived their public lives. She begins with a psychobiographical explanation of how people became Democrats, weighing the importance of such influences as education and family life. She then discusses two major elements that set Democrats apart from members of other political organizations: a modified Republican ideology tailored to the circumstances of the Civil War, and a mordant racism...

Frank L. Klement reassesses Clement L. Vallandigham, the passionate critic of Lincoln's policies, and history's judgment of him.

New Masters: Northern Planters during the Civil War and Reconstruction, analyzes the North's efforts to transform the South, both during and after the war, into a free labor economy and society. In this ground-breaking work, Lawrence N. Powell addresses the role that the twenty to fifty thousand new masters, or northern planters, had on the post-reconstruction system. Covering evidence of over five hundred northern planters, Powell asserts that northern emigrants provided much of the capital that hard-pressed southern planters used to stave off bankruptcy; showing that these planters became...

For a Vast Future Also: Essays from The Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, brings together the most informative and thoughtful articles by fourteen accomplished scholars in the Lincoln field. The essays provide compact, detailed treatments concerning different facets of three general themes: Lincoln and the problems of emancipation; Lincoln and presidential politics; and the Lincoln legacy. Readers of the collection will understand why the Civil War profoundly changed the nation. These essays give insight into how Lincoln and his administration dealt with the profound issues of war...

Oliver Otis Howard devoted his life to the service of his country, both as a distinguished army officer in two wars and as the founder of two universities. Oliver Otis Howard was a graduate of Bowdoin College and of West Point. Being reared in a pious New England (Maine) atmosphere gave him a deep sense of obligation to lead a Christian life, for the good of others and for the development of his own best self. He was often disturbed by the conflict presented him in his dual career in peace and war.General Howard's strong sense of duty to his country brought about his distinguished career of...

Abner Small wrote one of the most honest, poignant, and moving memoirs to come out of the Civil War. He served as a non-commissioned officer in the Third Maine Infantry during the summer of 1861, experiencing battle for the first time at First Bull Run. As a recruiting officer, he helped to raise the Sixteenth Maine Infantry and served as its adjutant. The Sixteenth Maine gained fame for its heroic delaying action on July 1 at Gettysburg, where it lost 180 of its 200 men. It went on to serve in Grant's Overland Campaign in Virginia. Small was an articulate observer of all this. He wrote his...