Lincoln's Autocrat

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469622505
Total Pages : 632 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis Lincoln's Autocrat by : William Marvel

Download or read book Lincoln's Autocrat written by William Marvel and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edwin M. Stanton (1814-1869), one of the nineteenth century's most impressive legal and political minds, wielded enormous influence and power as Lincoln's secretary of war during most of the Civil War and under Johnson during the early years of Reconstruction. In the first full biography of Stanton in more than fifty years, William Marvel offers a detailed reexamination of Stanton's life, career, and legacy. Marvel argues that while Stanton was a formidable advocate and politician, his character was hardly benign. Climbing from a difficult youth to the pinnacle of power, Stanton used his authority--and the public coffers--to pursue political vendettas, and he exercised sweeping wartime powers with a cavalier disregard for civil liberties. Though Lincoln's ability to harness a cabinet with sharp divisions and strong personalities is widely celebrated, Marvel suggests that Stanton's tenure raises important questions about Lincoln's actual control over the executive branch. This insightful biography also reveals why men like Ulysses S. Grant considered Stanton a coward and a bully, who was unashamed to use political power for partisan enforcement and personal preservation.

Stanton

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1476739307
Total Pages : 768 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (767 download)

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Book Synopsis Stanton by : Walter Stahr

Download or read book Stanton written by Walter Stahr and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Of the crucial men close to President Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814-1869) was the most powerful and controversial. Stanton raised, armed, and supervised the army of a million men who won the Civil War. He organized the war effort. He directed military movements from his telegraph office, where Lincoln literally hung out with him ... Now with this worthy complement to the enduring library of biographical accounts of those who helped Lincoln preserve the Union, Stanton honors the indispensable partner of the sixteenth president"--

Nicholas I, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias

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Author :
Publisher : Midland Books
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Nicholas I, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias by : W. Bruce Lincoln

Download or read book Nicholas I, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias written by W. Bruce Lincoln and published by Midland Books. This book was released on 1978 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **** The Indiana U. Press edition (1978) is cited in BCL3. A scholarly biography that provides a view of Russian autocracy. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Lincoln's Spies

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Publisher : Simon & Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1501126857
Total Pages : 624 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis Lincoln's Spies by : Douglas Waller

Download or read book Lincoln's Spies written by Douglas Waller and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major addition to the history of the Civil War is a “fast-paced, fact-rich account” (The Wall Street Journal) offering a detailed look at President Abraham Lincoln’s use of clandestine services and the secret battles waged by Union spies and agents to save the nation—filled with espionage, sabotage, and intrigue. Veteran CIA correspondent Douglas Waller delivers a riveting account of the heroes and misfits who carried out a shadow war of espionage and covert operations behind the Confederate battlefields. Lincoln’s Spies follows four agents from the North—three men and one woman—who informed Lincoln’s generals on the enemy positions for crucial battles and busted up clandestine Rebel networks. Famed detective Allan Pinkerton mounted a successful covert operation to slip Lincoln through Baltimore before his inauguration after he learns of an assassination attempt from his agents working undercover as Confederate soldiers. But he proved less than competent as General George McClellan’s spymaster, delivering faulty intelligence reports that overestimated Confederate strength. George Sharpe, an erudite New York lawyer, succeeded Pinkerton as spymaster for the Union’s Army of the Potomac. Sharpe deployed secret agents throughout the South, planted misinformation with Robert E. Lee’s army, and outpaced anything the enemy could field. Elizabeth Van Lew, a Virginia heiress who hated slavery and disapproved of secession, was one of Sharpe’s most successful agents. She ran a Union spy ring in Richmond out of her mansion with dozens of agents feeding her military and political secrets that she funneled to General Ulysses S. Grant as his army closed in on the Confederate capital. Van Lew became one of the unsung heroes of history. Lafayette Baker was a handsome Union officer with a controversial past, whose agents clashed with Pinkerton’s operatives. He assembled a retinue of disreputable spies, thieves, and prostitutes to root out traitors in Washington, DC. But he failed at his most important mission: uncovering the threat to Lincoln from John Wilkes Booth and his gang. Behind these operatives was Abraham Lincoln, one of our greatest presidents, who was an avid consumer of intelligence and a ruthless aficionado of clandestine warfare, willing to take whatever chances necessary to win the war. Lincoln’s Spies is a “meticulous chronicle of all facets of Lincoln’s war effort” (Kirkus Reviews) and an excellent choice for those wanting “a cracking good tale” (Publishers Weekly) of espionage in the Civil War.

A Place Called Appomattox

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 0807860832
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis A Place Called Appomattox by : William Marvel

Download or read book A Place Called Appomattox written by William Marvel and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-02-11 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Appomattox Court House is one of the most symbolically charged places in America, it was an ordinary tobacco-growing village both before and after an accident of fate brought the armies of Lee and Grant together there. It is that Appomattox--the typical small Confederate community--that William Marvel portrays in this deeply researched, compelling study. He tells the story of the Civil War from the perspective of those who inhabited one of the conflict's most famous sites. The village sprang into existence just as Texas became a state and reached its peak not long before Lee and Grant met there. The postwar decline of the village mirrored that of the rural South as a whole, and Appomattox served as the focal point for both Lost Cause myth-making and reconciliation reveries. Marvel draws on original documents, diaries, and letters composed as the war unfolded to produce a clear and credible portrait of everyday life in this town, as well as examining the galvanizing events of April 1865. He also scrutinizes Appomattox the national symbol, exposing and explaining some of the cherished myths surrounding the surrender there.

American Brutus

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Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0307430618
Total Pages : 546 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis American Brutus by : Michael W. Kauffman

Download or read book American Brutus written by Michael W. Kauffman and published by Random House. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a tale as familiar as our history primers: A deranged actor, John Wilkes Booth, killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre, escaped on foot, and eluded capture for twelve days until he met his fiery end in a Virginia tobacco barn. In the national hysteria that followed, eight others were arrested and tried; four of those were executed, four imprisoned. Therein lie all the classic elements of a great thriller. But the untold tale is even more fascinating. Now, in American Brutus, Michael W. Kauffman, one of the foremost Lincoln assassination authorities, takes familiar history to a deeper level, offering an unprecedented, authoritative account of the Lincoln murder conspiracy. Working from a staggering array of archival sources and new research, Kauffman sheds new light on the background and motives of John Wilkes Booth, the mechanics of his plot to topple the Union government, and the trials and fates of the conspirators. Piece by piece, Kauffman explains and corrects common misperceptions and analyzes the political motivation behind Booth’s plan to unseat Lincoln, in whom the assassin saw a treacherous autocrat, “an American Caesar.” In preparing his study, Kauffman spared no effort getting at the truth: He even lived in Booth’s house, and re-created key parts of Booth’s escape. Thanks to Kauffman’s discoveries, readers will have a new understanding of this defining event in our nation’s history, and they will come to see how public sentiment about Booth at the time of the assassination and ever since has made an accurate account of his actions and motives next to impossible–until now. In nearly 140 years there has been an overwhelming body of literature on the Lincoln assassination, much of it incomplete and oftentimes contradictory. In American Brutus, Kauffman finally makes sense of an incident whose causes and effects reverberate to this day. Provocative, absorbing, utterly cogent, at times controversial, this will become the definitive text on a watershed event in American history.

The Great Comeback

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Author :
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1429933852
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis The Great Comeback by : Gary Ecelbarger

Download or read book The Great Comeback written by Gary Ecelbarger and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-09-02 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the fall of 1858, Abraham Lincoln looked to be anything but destined for greatness. Just shy of his fiftieth birthday, Lincoln was wallowing in the depths of despair following his loss to Stephen Douglas in the 1858 senatorial campaign and was taking stock in his life. The author takes us on a journey with Abraham Lincoln from the last weeks of 1858 until the end of May in 1860, on the road to his unlikely Republication presidential nomination. In tracing Lincoln's steps from city to city, from one public appearance to the next along the campaign trail, we see the future president shape and polish his public persona. Although he had accounted himself well in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, the man from Springfield, Illinois, he was nevertheless seen as the darkest of dark horses for the highest office in the land. Upon hearing Lincoln speak, one contemporary said, "I will not say he reminded me of Satan, but he certainly was the ungodliest figure I had ever seen." The reader sees how this "ungodliest" of figures shrewdly spun his platform to crowds far and wide and, in doing so, became a public celebrity on par with any throughout the land. This is a story teeming with drama and intrigue about an event that no one could fathom occurring today...yet it absolutely happened in with America seven score and eight years ago, when Lincoln, the man, took his first steps on the way toward becoming Abraham Lincoln, the legendary leader and most respected president of American history.

Thunder at the Gates

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Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465096654
Total Pages : 450 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (65 download)

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Book Synopsis Thunder at the Gates by : Douglas R Egerton

Download or read book Thunder at the Gates written by Douglas R Egerton and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate, authoritative history of the first black soldiers to fight in the Union Army during the Civil War Soon after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, abolitionists began to call for the creation of black regiments. At first, the South and most of the North responded with outrage-southerners promised to execute any black soldiers captured in battle, while many northerners claimed that blacks lacked the necessary courage. Meanwhile, Massachusetts, long the center of abolitionist fervor, launched one of the greatest experiments in American history. In Thunder at the Gates, Douglas Egerton chronicles the formation and battlefield triumphs of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry and the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry-regiments led by whites but composed of black men born free or into slavery. He argues that the most important battles of all were won on the field of public opinion, for in fighting with distinction the regiments realized the long-derided idea of full and equal citizenship for blacks. A stirring evocation of this transformative episode, Thunder at the Gates offers a riveting new perspective on the Civil War and its legacy.

Lincoln's Gamble

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1451693893
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (516 download)

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Book Synopsis Lincoln's Gamble by : Todd Brewster

Download or read book Lincoln's Gamble written by Todd Brewster and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant, authoritative, and riveting account of the most critical six months in Abraham Lincoln's presidency, when he penned the Emancipation Proclamation and changed the course of the Civil War.

Grant Under Fire

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781943177004
Total Pages : 816 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (77 download)

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Book Synopsis Grant Under Fire by : Joseph Rose

Download or read book Grant Under Fire written by Joseph Rose and published by . This book was released on 2015-06-06 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grant Under Fire comprehensively dissects the military career of Ulysses S. Grant. Rigorously based on a wealth of primary sources--many not cited before--the book resolves scores of controversies, such as his drunken partying with the enemy on flag-of-truce boats out of Cairo, dishonestly blaming Lew Wallace for the march to Shiloh, pretending that he had the ultimate plan to pass Vicksburg all along, stealing the credit for the charge up Missionary Ridge, and leaving wounded men to suffer and die between the lines at Cold Harbor.Despite his sterling reputation as an officer and a gentleman, he suffered the biggest surprise of the American Civil War, committed the worst official act of anti-Semitism on this nation's soil, and came closest of all Union generals to losing Washington. Defenders rank his generalship above Robert E. Lee's, but to do so, they must ignore his simplistic, aggressive strategies that led to a war of attrition and the amateurish tactics of impetuous, frontal assaults, all along the line and against fortified positions.Grant Under Fire overturns the familiar renditions by detailing Grant's corruption at Cairo, his occupation of Paducah under orders, his incapacity in the Mississippi Delta, and the army's non-triumphal exit from the Wilderness, as well as debunking a host of other oft-told tales and myths.

Radical Sacrifice

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469661861
Total Pages : 491 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis Radical Sacrifice by : William Marvel

Download or read book Radical Sacrifice written by William Marvel and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-02-10 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born into a distinguished military family, Fitz John Porter (1822-1901) was educated at West Point and breveted for bravery in the war with Mexico. Already a well-respected officer at the outset of the Civil War, as a general in the Union army he became a favorite of George B. McClellan, who chose him to command the Fifth Corps of the Army of the Potomac. Porter and his troops fought heroically and well at Gaines's Mill and Malvern Hill. His devotion to the Union cause seemed unquestionable until fellow Union generals John Pope and Irvin McDowell blamed him for their own battlefield failures at Second Bull Run. As a confidant of the Democrat and limited-war proponent McClellan, Porter found himself targeted by Radical Republicans intent on turning the conflict to the cause of emancipation. He made the perfect scapegoat, and a court-martial packed with compliant officers dismissed him for disobedience of orders and misconduct before the enemy. Porter tenaciously pursued vindication after the war, and in 1879 an army commission finally reviewed his case, completely exonerating him. Obstinately partisan resistance from old Republican enemies still denied him even nominal reinstatement for six more years. This revealing new biography by William Marvel cuts through received wisdom to show Fitz John Porter as he was: a respected commander whose distinguished career was ruined by political machinations within Lincoln's administration. Marvel lifts the cloud that shadowed Porter over the last four decades of his life, exposing the spiteful Radical Republicans who refused to restore his rank long after his exoneration and never restored his benefits. Reexamining the relevant primary evidence from the full arc of Porter's life and career, Marvel offers significant insights into the intersections of politics, war, and memory.

Surviving Autocracy

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593188942
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (931 download)

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Book Synopsis Surviving Autocracy by : Masha Gessen

Download or read book Surviving Autocracy written by Masha Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-06-02 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.” —The New York Times “A reckoning with what has been lost in the past few years and a map forward with our beliefs intact.” —Interview As seen on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and heard on NPR’s All Things Considered: the bestselling, National Book Award–winning journalist offers an essential guide to understanding, resisting, and recovering from the ravages of our tumultuous times. This incisive book provides an essential guide to understanding and recovering from the calamitous corrosion of American democracy over the past few years. Thanks to the special perspective that is the legacy of a Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, Masha Gessen has a sixth sense for the manifestations of autocracy—and the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate their emergence to Americans. Gessen not only anatomizes the corrosion of the institutions and cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years changed us from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility. Surviving Autocracy is an inventory of ravages and a call to account but also a beacon to recovery—and to the hope of what comes next.

Stanton

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1476739323
Total Pages : 637 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (767 download)

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Book Synopsis Stanton by : Walter Stahr

Download or read book Stanton written by Walter Stahr and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 637 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author Walter Stahr tells the story of Edwin Stanton, who served as Secretary of War in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet. “This exhaustively researched, well-paced book should take its place as the new, standard biography of the ill-tempered man who helped to save the Union. It is fair, judicious, authoritative, and comprehensive” (The Wall Street Journal). Of the crucial men close to President Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814–1869) was the most powerful and controversial. Stanton raised, armed, and supervised the army of a million men who won the Civil War. He directed military movements. He arrested and imprisoned thousands for “war crimes,” such as resisting the draft or calling for an armistice. Stanton was so controversial that some accused him at that time of complicity in Lincoln’s assassination. He was a stubborn genius who was both reviled and revered in his time. Stanton was a Democrat before the war and a prominent trial lawyer. He opposed slavery, but only in private. He served briefly as President Buchanan’s Attorney General and then as Lincoln’s aggressive Secretary of War. On the night of April 14, 1865, Stanton rushed to Lincoln’s deathbed and took over the government since Secretary of State William Seward had been critically wounded the same evening. He informed the nation of the President’s death, summoned General Grant to protect the Capitol, and started collecting the evidence from those who had been with the Lincolns at the theater in order to prepare a murder trial. Now Walter Stahr’s “highly recommended” (Library Journal, starred review) essential book is the first major account of Stanton in fifty years, restoring this underexplored figure to his proper place in American history. “A lively, lucid, and opinionated history” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

Braxton Bragg

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469628767
Total Pages : 544 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis Braxton Bragg by : Earl J. Hess

Download or read book Braxton Bragg written by Earl J. Hess and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-09-02 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a leading Confederate general, Braxton Bragg (1817–1876) earned a reputation for incompetence, for wantonly shooting his own soldiers, and for losing battles. This public image established him not only as a scapegoat for the South's military failures but also as the chief whipping boy of the Confederacy. The strongly negative opinions of Bragg's contemporaries have continued to color assessments of the general's military career and character by generations of historians. Rather than take these assessments at face value, Earl J. Hess's biography offers a much more balanced account of Bragg, the man and the officer. While Hess analyzes Bragg's many campaigns and battles, he also emphasizes how his contemporaries viewed his successes and failures and how these reactions affected Bragg both personally and professionally. The testimony and opinions of other members of the Confederate army--including Bragg's superiors, his fellow generals, and his subordinates--reveal how the general became a symbol for the larger military failures that undid the Confederacy. By connecting the general's personal life to his military career, Hess positions Bragg as a figure saddled with unwarranted infamy and humanizes him as a flawed yet misunderstood figure in Civil War history.

Conflict of Command

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Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 080718103X
Total Pages : 491 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Conflict of Command by : George C. Rable

Download or read book Conflict of Command written by George C. Rable and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2023-08-30 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fraught relationship between Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan is well known, so much so that many scholars rarely question the standard narrative casting the two as foils, with the Great Emancipator inevitably coming out on top over his supposedly feckless commander. In Conflict of Command, acclaimed Civil War historian George C. Rable rethinks that stance, providing a new understanding of the interaction between the president and his leading wartime general by reinterpreting the political aspects of their partnership. Rable pays considerable attention to Lincoln’s cabinet, Congress, and newspaper editorials, revealing the role each played in shaping the dealings between the two men. While he surveys McClellan’s military campaigns as commander of the Army of the Potomac, Rable focuses on the political fallout of the fighting rather than the tactical details. This broadly conceived approach highlights the army officers and enlisted men who emerged as citizen-soldiers and political actors. Most accounts of the Lincoln-McClellan feud solely examine one of the two individuals, and the vast majority adopt a steadfast pro-Lincoln position. Taking a more neutral view, Rable deftly shows how the relationship between the two developed in a political context and ultimately failed spectacularly, profoundly altering the course of the Civil War itself.

Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9783337922764
Total Pages : 112 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (227 download)

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Book Synopsis Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet by : Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection

Download or read book Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet written by Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Lincoln's Informer

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Author :
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 0700635173
Total Pages : 528 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis Lincoln's Informer by : Carl J. Guarneri

Download or read book Lincoln's Informer written by Carl J. Guarneri and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2023-03-17 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a recent poll of leading historians, Charles A. Dana was named among the “Twenty-Five Most Influential Civil War Figures You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.” If you have heard of Dana, it was probably from his classic Recollections of the Civil War (1898), which was ghostwritten by muckraker Ida Tarbell and riddled with errors cited by unsuspecting historians ever since. Lincoln’s Informer at long last sets the record straight, giving Charles A. Dana his due in a story that rivals the best historical fiction. Dana didn’t just record history, Carl J. Guarneri notes: he made it. Starting out as managing editor of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, he led the newspaper’s charge against proslavery forces in Congress and the Kansas territory. When his criticism of the Union’s prosecution of the war became too much for Greeley, Dana was drafted by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to be a special agent—and it was in this capacity that he truly made his mark. Drawing on Dana’s reports, letters, and telegrams—“the most remarkable, interesting, and instructive collection of official documents relating to the Rebellion,” according to the custodian of the Union war records—Guarneri reconstructs the Civil War as Dana experienced and observed it: as a journalist, a confidential informant to Stanton and Lincoln, and, most controversially, an administration insider with surprising influence. While reporting most of the war’s major events, Dana also had a hand in military investigations, the cotton trade, Lincoln’s reelection, passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, and, most notably, the making of Ulysses S. Grant and the breaking of other generals. Dana’s reporting and Guarneri’s lively narrative provide fresh impressions of Lincoln, Stanton, Grant, and other Union war leaders. Lincoln’s Informer shows us the unlikely role of a little-known confidant and informant in the Lincoln administration’s military and political successes. A remarkable inside look at history unfolding, this book draws the first complete picture of a fascinating character writing his chapter in the story of the Civil War.