We Are Lincoln Men

We Are Lincoln Men PDF Author: David Herbert Donald
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416589589
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
In this brilliant and illuminating portrait of our sixteenth president, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner David Herbert Donald examines the significance of friendship in Abraham Lincoln's life and the role it played in shaping his career and his presidency. Though Abraham Lincoln had hundreds of acquaintances and dozens of admirers, he had almost no intimate friends. Behind his mask of affability and endless stream of humorous anecdotes, he maintained an inviolate reserve that only a few were ever able to penetrate. Professor Donald's remarkable book offers a fresh way of looking at Abraham Lincoln, both as a man who needed friendship and as a leader who understood the importance of friendship in the management of men. Donald penetrates Lincoln's mysterious reserve to offer a new picture of the president's inner life and to explain his unsurpassed political skills.

We Are Lincoln Men

We Are Lincoln Men PDF Author: David Herbert Donald
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416589589
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
In this brilliant and illuminating portrait of our sixteenth president, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner David Herbert Donald examines the significance of friendship in Abraham Lincoln's life and the role it played in shaping his career and his presidency. Though Abraham Lincoln had hundreds of acquaintances and dozens of admirers, he had almost no intimate friends. Behind his mask of affability and endless stream of humorous anecdotes, he maintained an inviolate reserve that only a few were ever able to penetrate. Professor Donald's remarkable book offers a fresh way of looking at Abraham Lincoln, both as a man who needed friendship and as a leader who understood the importance of friendship in the management of men. Donald penetrates Lincoln's mysterious reserve to offer a new picture of the president's inner life and to explain his unsurpassed political skills.

Lincoln's Men

Lincoln's Men PDF Author: Daniel Mark Epstein
Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN: 9780061565496
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
During the Civil War three intelligent, articulate young men served as Abraham Lincoln's secretaries. John Nicolay and John Hay lived in the White House across the hall from the president's office and, together with William Stoddard, spent more time with Lincoln than anyone else outside his immediate family. Lincoln's Men is a fascinating, intimate, and moving portrait of life in the Civil War White House and of the beleaguered president's extraordinary relationship with the indispensable trio he used as a sounding board—the best and the brightest of their day who had a place near the center of Washington's grandest galas and a front-row seat on the drama of war.

Lincoln's Men

Lincoln's Men PDF Author: William C. Davis
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684823519
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
I sit down to write you (a Soldier's Friend!)...My kind Friend of Friends you have the power to help me a grate deal...I have great Confidence in our Good President hoe has dun a grate deal for us poor Soldiers... So wrote Private Joe Hass to Abraham Lincoln, February 20, 1864. Like an extraordinary number of his fellow Union soldiers, he loved Lincoln as a father. Lincoln inspired feelings unlike those instilled by any previous commander-in-chief in America. In Lincoln's Men, William C. Davis draws on thousands of unpublished letters and diaries to tell the hidden story of how a new and untested president could become "Father Abraham" throughout both the army and the North as a whole. How did the Army of the Potomac, yearning for the grandeur of McClellan, turn instead to the comfort of Old Abe, and how was this change of loyalty crucial to final victory? How did Lincoln inspire the faith and courage of so many shattered men, wandering the inferno of Shiloh or entrenched in the siege of Vicksburg? Why did soldiers visiting Washington feel free to stroll into the White House and sit down to relax, as if it were their own home? Davis removes layers of mythmaking to recapture the moods and feelings of an army facing one of history's bloodiest conflicts. Tracing the popular fate of decisions to invoke conscription, to fire McClellan, and to free the slaves, Lincoln's Men casts a new light on our most famous president -- the light, that is, of the peculiar mass medium that was the Union Army. A motley band of talkers and letter writers, the soldiers spread news of Lincoln's appearances like wildfire, chortling at his ungainly posture in the saddle, rushing up to shake his hand and talk to him. The volunteers knew they could approach "Old Abe," "Honest Abe," "Uncle Abe," and "Father Abraham," and they cheered him thunderously. "The men could not be restrained from so honoring him," said Private Rice Bull. "He really was the ideal of the Army." The story of the making of Father Abraham is the story of America's second revolution, its rebirth. As one Union soldier and journalist put it, "Washington taught the world to know us, Lincoln taught us to know ourselves. The first won for us our independence, the last wrought out our manhood and self-respect."

Lincoln's Loyalists

Lincoln's Loyalists PDF Author: Richard Nelson Current
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781555531249
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
With this path-breaking book, Richard Nelson Current closes a major gap in our understanding of the important role of white southerners who fought for the Union during the Civil War. The ranks of the Union forces swelled by more than 100,000 of these men known to their friends as "loyalists" and to their enemies as "tories". They substantially strengthened the Union, weakened the Confederacy, and affected the outcome of the Civil War. Despite the assertions of southern governors that Lincoln would get no troops from the South to preserve the Union, every Confederate state except South Carolina provided at least a battalion of white troops for the Union Army. The role of black soldiers (including those from the South) continues to receive deserved attention. Curiously, little heed has been paid to the white southern supporters of the Union cause, and nothing has been published about the group as a whole. Relying almost entirely on primary sources, Current here opens the long-overdue investigation of these many Americans who, at great risk to themselves and their families, made a significant contribution to the Union's war effort. Current meticulously explores the history of the loyalists in each Confederate state during the war. Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia provided over 70 percent of the loyalist troops, but 10,000 from Arkansas, 7,000 from Louisiana, and thousands from North Carolina, Texas, and Alabama volunteered as well. The author weaves the separate state stories into an intriguing and detailed tapestry. The loyalists served in a variety of capacities--some performing mundane tasks, some fighting with valor. Whatever his individual role, each southerner joining the Unionconstituted a double loss to the Confederacy: a subtraction from its own ranks and an addition to the Union's. Undoubtedly, this played an important role in the Confederate defeat.

Seward

Seward PDF Author: Walter Stahr
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439121184
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 720

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Book Description
Presents a profile of the leader of Lincoln's "team of rivals," examining the many political roles he had in his lifetime, including governor of New York, Secretary of State, and Lincoln's closest advisor during the Civil War.

Giants

Giants PDF Author: John Stauffer
Publisher: Twelve
ISBN: 0446543004
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln were the preeminent self-made men of their time. In this masterful dual biography, award-winning Harvard University scholar John Stauffer describes the transformations in the lives of these two giants during a major shift in cultural history, when men rejected the status quo and embraced new ideals of personal liberty. As Douglass and Lincoln reinvented themselves and ultimately became friends, they transformed America. Lincoln was born dirt poor, had less than one year of formal schooling, and became the nation's greatest president. Douglass spent the first twenty years of his life as a slave, had no formal schooling-in fact, his masters forbade him to read or write-and became one of the nation's greatest writers and activists, as well as a spellbinding orator and messenger of audacious hope, the pioneer who blazed the path traveled by future African-American leaders. At a time when most whites would not let a black man cross their threshold, Lincoln invited Douglass into the White House. Lincoln recognized that he needed Douglass to help him destroy the Confederacy and preserve the Union; Douglass realized that Lincoln's shrewd sense of public opinion would serve his own goal of freeing the nation's blacks. Their relationship shifted in response to the country's debate over slavery, abolition, and emancipation. Both were ambitious men. They had great faith in the moral and technological progress of their nation. And they were not always consistent in their views. John Stauffer describes their personal and political struggles with a keen understanding of the dilemmas Douglass and Lincoln confronted and the social context in which they occurred. What emerges is a brilliant portrait of how two of America's greatest leaders lived.

Commander in Chief

Commander in Chief PDF Author: Geoffrey Perret
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429923083
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
How Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq Made The Commander In Chief and Foretell the Future of America This is a story of ever-expanding presidential powers in an age of unwinnable wars. Harry Truman and Korea, Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam, George W. Bush and Iraq: three presidents, three ever broader interpretations of the commander in chief clause of the Constitution, three unwinnable wars, and three presidential secrets. Award-winning presidential biographer and military historian Geoffrey Perret places these men and events in the larger context of the post-World War II world to establish their collective legacy: a presidency so powerful it undermines the checks and balances built into the Constitution, thereby creating a permanent threat to the Constitution itself. In choosing to fight in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, Truman, Johnson, and Bush alike took counsel of their fears, ignored the advice of the professional military and major allies, and were influenced by facts kept from public view. Convinced that an ever-more powerful commander in chief was the key to victory, they misread the moment. Since World War II wars have become tests of stamina rather than strength, and more likely than not they sow the seeds of future wars. Yet recent American presidents have chosen to place their country in the forefront of fighting them. In the course of doing so, however, they gave away the secret of American power—for all its might, the United States can be defeated by chaos and anarchy.

Lincoln's Boys

Lincoln's Boys PDF Author: Joshua Zeitz
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143126032
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
From the author of the forthcoming Building the Great Society (February 2018), an intimate look into Lincoln’s White House and the aftermath of his death, via the lives of his two closest aides In this timely look into Abraham Lincoln’s White House, and the aftermath of his death, noted historian and political advisor Joshua Zeitz presents a fresh perspective on the sixteenth U.S. president—as seen through the eyes of Lincoln’s two closest aides and confidants, John Hay and John Nicolay. Lincoln’s official secretaries, Hay and Nicolay enjoyed more access, witnessed more history, and knew Lincoln better than anyone outside of the president’s immediate family. They were the gatekeepers of Lincoln’s legacy. Drawing on letters, diaries, and memoirs, Lincoln’s Boys is part political drama and part coming-of-age tale—a fascinating story of friendship, politics, war, and the contest over history and remembrance.

The Black Man's President

The Black Man's President PDF Author: Michael Burlingame
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643138146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Frederick Douglass called the martyred president "emphatically the black man's president” as well as “the first who rose above the prejudice of his times and country.” This narrative history of Lincoln’s personal interchange with Black people over the course his career reveals a side of the sixteenth president that, until now, has not been fully explored or understood. In a little-noted eulogy delivered shortly after Lincoln's assassination, Frederick Douglass called the martyred president "emphatically the black man's president," the "first to show any respect for their rights as men.” To justify that description, Douglass pointed not just to Lincoln's official acts and utterances, like the Emancipation Proclamation or the Second Inaugural Address, but also to the president’s own personal experiences with Black people. Referring to one of his White House visits, Douglass said: "In daring to invite a Negro to an audience at the White House, Mr. Lincoln was saying to the country: I am President of the black people as well as the white, and I mean to respect their rights and feelings as men and as citizens.” But Lincoln’s description as “emphatically the black man’s president” rests on more than his relationship with Douglass or on his official words and deeds. Lincoln interacted with many other African Americans during his presidency His unfailing cordiality to them, his willingness to meet with them in the White House, to honor their requests, to invite them to consult on public policy, to treat them with respect whether they were kitchen servants or leaders of the Black community, to invite them to attend receptions, to sing and pray with them in their neighborhoods—all those manifestations of an egalitarian spirit fully justified the tributes paid to him by Frederick Douglass and other African Americans like Sojourner Truth, who said: "I never was treated by any one with more kindness and cordiality than were shown to me by that great and good man, Abraham Lincoln.” Historian David S. Reynolds observed recently that only by examining Lincoln’s “personal interchange with Black people do we see the complete falsity of the charges of innate racism that some have leveled against him over the years.”

To Address You as My Friend

To Address You as My Friend PDF Author: Jonathan W. White
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469665093
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Many African Americans of the Civil War era felt a personal connection to Abraham Lincoln. For the first time in their lives, an occupant of the White House seemed concerned about the welfare of their race. Indeed, despite the tremendous injustice and discrimination that they faced, African Americans now had confidence to write to the president and to seek redress of their grievances. Their letters express the dilemmas, doubts, and dreams of both recently enslaved and free people in the throes of dramatic change. For many, writing Lincoln was a last resort. Yet their letters were often full of determination, making explicit claims to the rights of U.S. citizenship in a wide range of circumstances. This compelling collection presents more than 120 letters from African Americans to Lincoln, most of which have never before been published. They offer unflinching, intimate, and often heart-wrenching portraits of Black soldiers' and civilians' experiences in wartime. As readers continue to think critically about Lincoln's image as the "Great Emancipator," this book centers African Americans' own voices to explore how they felt about the president and how they understood the possibilities and limits of the power vested in the federal government.