In a masterful narrative, historian and biographer Charles Bracelen
Flood brings to life the drama of Lincoln's final year, in which he
oversaw the last campaigns of the Civil War, was reelected as
president, and laid out his majestic vision for the nation's future
in a reunified South and in the expanding West.
In "1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History," the reader is
plunged into the heart of that crucial year as Lincoln faced
enormous challenges. The Civil War was far from being won: as the
year began, Lincoln had yet to appoint Ulysses S. Grant as the
general-in-chief who would finally implement the bloody strategy
and dramatic campaigns that would bring victory.
At the same time, with the North sick of the war, Lincoln was
facing a reelection battle in which hundreds of thousands of "Peace
Democrats" were ready to start negotiations that could leave the
Confederacy as a separate American nation, free to continue the
practice of slavery. In his personal life, he had to deal with the
erratic behavior of his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and both Lincolns
were haunted by the sudden death, two years before, of their
beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie.
"1864" is the story of Lincoln's struggle with all this -- the
war on the battlefields and a political scene in which his own
secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase, was working against him
in an effort to become the Republican candidate himself. The North
was shocked by such events as Grant's attack at Cold Harbor, during
which seven thousand Union soldiers were killed in twenty minutes,
and the Battle of the Crater, where three thousand Union men died
in a bungled attempt to blow up Confederate trenches. The year
became so bleak that on August 23, Lincoln wrote in a memorandum,
"This morning, as for several days past, it seems exceedingly
probable that this Administration will not be reelected." But, with
the increasing success of his generals, and a majority of the
American public ready to place its faith in him, Lincoln and the
nation ended 1864 with the close of the war in sight and slavery on
the verge of extinction.
"1864" presents the man who not only saved the nation, but also,
despite the turmoil of the war and political infighting, set the
stage for westward expansion through the Homestead Act, the
railroads, and the Act to Encourage Immigration.
As 1864 ends and Lincoln, reelected, is planning to heal the
nation, John Wilkes Booth, whose stalking of Lincoln through 1864
is one of this book's suspenseful subplots, is a few weeks away
from killing him.
General
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