Civil War Memoirs

This point in Lincoln's life is marked by a sudden return to the practice of law. Highly moral and judicious, he often took little or no money for cases, and would not represent a client if he didn't believe in his case. Lincoln tried to settle many cases out of court. He developed a persona of being affable and open, especially to juries, giving him a noted advantage. He also served on the circuit courts, where lawyers had to prepare cases quickly and where lodging was often quite difficult to find.

A companion audiobook to the provocative award-winning Civil War film of the same name, Union Bound is a powerful story of one man who understood what slavery is all about and who risked everything to do the right thing - to save his country, to free slaves. It is a story of compassion, resolve, and unity against a common evil. It is a story of our past to encourage us to be resolute today.

Most Americans are aware that their 16th president was mortally wounded by a man named Booth at a Washington theater in April 1865. These are facts that nobody can dispute. However, a closer look at this history-changing catastrophe raises questions that have still not been fully answered. The passing of the 150th anniversary of the United States' first presidential assassination is an ideal time for students and scholars to consider these questions.

Lincoln's studies lead to him becoming a successful lawyer in Illinois. He is often published anonymously during the political campaign of 1837 and his works include detailed rebuttals against opposing politicians. As a pivotal member of the Whig party, Lincoln openly begins to condemn mob violence and lynching, and begins to publicly denounce slavery in his speeches. This chapter details much of the wrongdoings and disorderly conduct that mark the political landscape of the time.

Noted historian Edward Steers, Jr., sets the record straight in this engaging and authoritative book, analyzing the facts and clarifying some of the most prominent misconceptions about the 16th president's life. He investigates claims that have found a foothold in mainstream lore, ranging from the contention that Lincoln had a troubled and perhaps scandalous early adulthood in Springfield, to more serious attacks on his character, such as the accusation that he was reluctant to emancipate enslaved people and held racist beliefs.

From a New Yorker staff writer and PEN award winner, a blend of memoir, history, and reportage on one of the most complex and least understood states in America. “In Alabama, we exist at the border of blessing and disaster….” Alexis Okeowo grew up in Montgomery—the former seat of the...

A rich and comic portrait of the radical changes in American life and the literary world over the last eighty years. An autobiography usually requires a justification. The great autobiographies—those by Benvenuto Cellini, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Brooks Adams—were...

Having once said “a military life had no charms to me,” U.S. Grant entered West Point to get through the course, secure a detail for a few years as assistant professor of mathematics at the Academy, and afterwards obtain a permanent position as professor at some respectable college. But the course his life took was quite different. Little did he ever dream that he would serve with distinction in the Mexican War, lead the Union to victory in the Civil War, and struggle through eight years as President of the United States.

"Hold On with a Bulldog Grip and Chew and Choke as Much as Possible": The Grand Offensive: (May–August 1864): The Spring Offensive is launched. A bogus presidential proclamation calling for volunteers and prayers causes panic throughout the North. Grant and Lee battle for six weeks until severe losses force them to a halt. Congressional Radicals pass a bill that will allow Southern States readmittance to the Union as long as they give an oath that they never supported the Confederacy. Southern leaders spread bogus peace overtures. Lincoln reaffirms his commitment to the Emancipation.

Horace Porter served as lieutenant colonel on Ulysses S. Grant's staff from April 1864 to the end of the Civil War. He accompanied Grant into battle in the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg campaigns, and was present at Lee's surrender at McLean's house. Throughout the war, he kept extensive notes that capture Grant's conversations, as well as his own observations of military life.

March 1865: The United States was at a crossroads, and, truth be told, Abraham Lincoln was a sick man. "I am very unwell," he confided to a close acquaintance. A vast and terrible civil war was winding down, leaving momentous questions for a war-weary president to address. A timely invitation from General Ulysses S. Grant provided the impetus for an escape to City Point, Virginia, a journey from which Abraham Lincoln drew much more than he ever expected.

For almost two decades, through the War of 1812, James Wilkinson was the senior general in the United States Army. Amazingly, he was also Agent 13 in the Spanish secret service at a time when Spain's empire dominated North America. Wilkinson's audacious career as a double agent is all the more remarkable because it was an open secret, circulated regularly in newspapers and pamphlets. His saga illuminates just how fragile and vulnerable the young republic was.

Robert E. Lee, one of the most famous figures in American history, vanished after his dramatic surrender at Appomattox. In fact, he lived only another five years, during which time he did more than any other American to heal the wounds between North and South during the tempestuous postwar period.

Civil War historian Earl J. Hess presents a compelling biography of Braxton Bragg, the commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee from the summer of 1862 to the end of 1863.

Following Lincoln from his humble origins in Kentucky to his assassination in Washington, D.C., Brookhiser shows us every side of the man: laborer, lawyer, congressman, president; storyteller, wit, lover of ribald jokes; depressive, poet, friend, visionary. And he shows that despite his many roles and his varied life, Lincoln returned time and time again to the Founders.

Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln had only three meetings, but their exchanges profoundly influenced the course of slavery and the outcome of the Civil War. Although Abraham Lincoln deeply opposed the institution of slavery, he saw the Civil War at its onset as being primarily about preserving the Union. Frederick Douglass, himself a former slave, by contrast saw the Wars mission to be the total and permanent abolition of slavery.

Fifty years of service at the White House in various capacities, including bodyguard to Abraham Lincoln, William H. Crook's memoir brings an astonishing array of personal details of life in the executive mansion. His sensitive observations of Lincoln are especially moving.

The battlefield reputation of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, long recognized as a formidable warrior, has been shaped by one infamous wartime incident. At Fort Pillow in 1864, the attack by Confederate forces under Forrest's command left many of the Tennessee Unionists and Black soldiers garrisoned there dead in a confrontation widely labeled as a "massacre".

Nineteenth-century African Americans felt deep affection for their "liberator" as a "homely" man who did not hold himself apart; Southerners felt a nostalgia for Abraham Lincoln as a humble "conciliator". Later, educators glorified Lincoln as a symbol of nationhood to help assimilate poor immigrants. Monument makers focused not only on a gigantic body but also on a nationalist "union", downplaying "emancipation". Among both Black and White liberals in the 1960s and 1970s, Lincoln was derided or fell out of fashion.

On the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, Union artillery lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson fell while bravely spurring his men to action. His father, Sam, a New York Times correspondent, was already on his way to Gettysburg when he learned of his son's wounding but had to wait until the guns went silent before seeking out his son, who had died at the town's poorhouse. Sitting next to his dead boy, Sam Wilkeson then wrote one of the greatest battlefield dispatches in American history.