This essay collection "draws together some of the best and brightest Abraham Lincoln scholars around" for a fresh and enlightening view of his life ( The Journal of American History).More than 150 years after his death, Abraham Lincoln remains the most written-about figure in American history. Lincoln Revisited is a brilliant gathering of fresh scholarship by the leading Lincoln historians of our time. Brought together by the Lincoln Forum, these ...

Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman served as Gen. George Gordon Meade's aide-de-camp from September 1863 until the end of the Civil War. Lyman was a Harvard-trained natural scientist who was exceptionally disciplined in recording the events, the players, and his surroundings during his wartime duty. His private notebooks document his keen observations. Published here for the first time, Meade's Army: The Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman contains anecdotes, concise vignettes of of...

Written in the early twentieth century for her children and grandchildren and first published in 1975, these eloquent memoirs detail the life of General Ulysses S. Grant’s wife. First Lady Julia Dent Grant wrote her reminiscences with the vivacity and charm she exhibited throughout her life, telling her story in the easy flow of an afternoon conversation with a close friend. She writes fondly of White Haven, a plantation in St. Louis County, Missouri, where she had an idyllic girlhood and ...

Written in the early twentieth century for her children and grandchildren and first published in 1975, these eloquent memoirs detail the life of General Ulysses S. Grant’s wife. First Lady Julia Dent Grant wrote her reminiscences with the vivacity and charm she exhibited throughout her life, telling her story in the easy flow of an afternoon conversation with a close friend. She writes fondly of White Haven, a plantation in St. Louis County, Missouri, where she had an idyllic girlhood and ...

In this powerful and moving memoir, Robert Beecham tells of his Civil War experiences, both as an enlisted man in the fabled Iron Brigade of the Army of the Potomac and as an officer commanding a newly raised African-American unit. Written in 1902, Beecham recounts his war experiences with a keen eye toward the daily life of the soldier, the suffering and brutality of war, and the remarkable acts of valor, by soldiers both black and white, that punctuated the grind of long campaigns. A...

Union general John Pope was among the most controversial andmisunderstood figures to hold major command during the Civil War.Before being called east in June 1862 to lead the Army of Virginia against General Robert E. Lee, he compiled an enviable record in Missouri and as commander of the Army of the Mississippi. After his ignominious defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run, he was sent to the frontier. Over the next twenty-four years Pope held important department commands o...

In February 2009, America celebrates the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, and the pace of new Lincoln books and articles has already quickened. From his cabinet’s politics to his own struggles with depression, Lincoln remains the most written-about story in our history. And each year historians find something new and important to say about the greatest of our Presidents.Lincoln Revisited is a masterly guidePub to what’s new and what’s noteworthy in this unfolding story...

John A. Logan, called "Black Jack" by the men he led in Civil War battles from the Henry-Donelson campaign to Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and on to Atlanta, was one of the Union Army’s most colorful generals.James Pickett Jones places Logan in his southern Illinois surroundings as he examines the role of the political soldier in the Civil War. When Logan altered his stance on national issues, so did the southern part of the state. Although secession, civil strife, Copperheadism, and th...

As the American Civil War recedes into the past, popular fascination continues to rise. Once a matter that chiefly concerned veterans, separately organized North and South, who gathered to refight old battles and to memorialize the heroes and victims of war, the Civil War has gradually become part of a collective heritage.Issues raised by the war, including its causes and consequences, reverberate through contemporary society. Family and community connections with the war exist eve...

From the moment the battle ended, Gettysburg was hailed as one of the greatest triumphs of the Union army. Celebrations erupted across the North as a grateful people cheered the victory. But Gabor Boritt turns our attention away from the rejoicing millions to the dark mood of the White House--where Lincoln cried in frustration as General Meade let the largest Confederate army escape safely into Virginia. Such unexpected portraits abound in Lincoln's Generals, as a team of distingu...

In a startlingly innovative format, journalist Stephen A. Wynalda has constructed a painstakingly detailed day-by-day breakdown of president Abraham Lincoln’s decisions in office-including his signing of the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862; his signing of the legislation enacting the first federal income tax on August 5, 1861; and more personal incidents like the day his eleven-year-old son, Willie, died. Revealed are Lincoln’s private frustrations on September 28, 1862, as he wrote to vice ...

More than 140 years ago, Mark Twain observed that the Civil War had "uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations." In fact, five generations have passed, and Americans are still trying to measure the influence of the immense fratricidal conflict that nearly tore the nation a...