Lincoln and the Democrats describes the vexatious behavior of a two-party system in war and points to the sound parts of the American system which proved to be the country's salvation: local civic pride, and quiet nonpartisanship in mobilization and funding for the war, for example. While revealing that the role of a noxious 'white supremacy' in American politics of the period has been exaggerated - as has the power of the Copperheads - Neely revives the claim that the Civil War put the country on the road to 'human rights', and also uncovers a previously unnoticed tendency toward deceptive and impractical grandstanding on the Constitution during war in the United States.

Did preoccupations with family and work crowd out interest in politics in the nineteenth century, as some have argued? Arguing that social historians have gone too far in concluding that Americans were not deeply engaged in public life and that political historians have gone too far in asserting that politics informed all of Americans' lives, Mark Neely seeks to gauge the importance of politics for ordinary people in the Civil War era. Looking beyond the usual markers of political activity, Neely sifts through the political bric-a-brac of the era--lithographs and engravings of political heroes, campaign buttons, songsters filled with political lyrics, photo albums, newspapers, and political cartoons. In each of four chapters, he examines a different sphere--the home, the workplace, the gentlemen's Union League Club, and the minstrel stage--where political engagement was expressed in material culture. Neely acknowledges that there were boundaries to political life, however. But as his investigation shows, political expression permeated the public and private realms of Civil War America.

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 everywhere, as do battlefields, memorials, and other physical reminders of the conflict. We, as Americans, are fascinated by the sheer magnitude of the war fought over thousands of miles of American soil and resulting in awesome casualties. It was a gigantic national drama enacted by people who seem both contemporary and remote. Here for the first time, leading Civil War scholars gather to sort out the fact and fiction of our collective memories. Contributors include Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark E. Neely, Jr., Alan T. Nolan, John Y. Simon, James I. 'Bud' Robertson, Jr., Gary W. Gallagher, Joseph T. Glatthaar, and Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.

Lincoln and the Democrats describes the vexatious behavior of a two-party system in war and points to the sound parts of the American system which proved to be the country's salvation: local civic pride, and quiet nonpartisanship in mobilization and funding for the war, for example. While revealing that the role of a noxious 'white supremacy' in American politics of the period has been exaggerated - as has the power of the Copperheads - Neely revives the claim that the Civil War put the country on the road to 'human rights', and also uncovers a previously unnoticed tendency toward deceptive and impractical grandstanding on the Constitution during war in the United States.

On the day Fort Sumter surrendered to Confederate authorities, General Braxton Bragg reacted to a newspaper report that might have revealed the position of gun emplacements by placing the correspondent, a Southern loyalist, under arrest. Thus the Confederate army's first detention of a citizen occurred before President Lincoln had even called out troops to suppress the rebellion. During the civil war that followed, not a day would pass when Confederate military prisons did not contain political prisoners.

Based on the discovery of records of over four thousand of these prisoners, Mark E. Neely Jr.'s new book undermines the common understanding that Jefferson Davis and the Confederates were scrupulous in their respect for constitutional rights while Lincoln and the Unionists regularly violated the rights of dissenters. Neely reveals for the first time the extent of repression of Unionists and other civilians in the Confederacy, and uncovers and marshals convincing evidence that Southerners were as ready as their Northern counterparts to give up civil liberties in response to the real or imagined threats of wartime.

From the onset of hostilities, the exploits of drunken recruits prompted communities from Selma to Lynchburg to beg the Richmond government to impose martial law. Southern citizens resigned themselves to a passport system for domestic travel similar to the system of passes imposed on enslaved and free blacks before the war. These restrictive measures made commerce difficult and constrained religious activity. As one Virginian complained, "This struggle was begun in defence of Constitutional Liberty which we could not get in the United States." The Davis administration countered that the passport system was essential to prevent desertion from the army, and most Southerners accepted the passports as a necessary inconvenience, ignoring the irony that the necessities of national mobilization had changed their government from a states'-rights confederacy to a powerful, centralized authority.

After the war the records of men imprisoned by this authority were lost through a combination of happenstance and deliberate obfuscation. Their discovery and subtle interpretation by a Pulitzer Prize&emdash;winning historian explodes one of the remaining myths of Lost Cause historiography, revealing Jefferson Davis as a calculated manipulator of the symbols of liberty.

Late in 1863 a young painter named Francis B. Carpenter wished to commemorate the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. The likable and well-connected Carpenter received President Lincoln's consent during a visit to the White House. "Well, Mr. Carpenter, we will turn you loose in here," said Lincoln. The painter set up a studio in the state dining room and worked for months in 1864 under a lighted chandelier. It was a marvelous opportunity to observe the president and converse with him."" "The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln "is Carpenter's account of his experience. He watched the daily parade of petitioners who came to Lincoln's office--worried mothers, desperate job-seekers, needy widows and orphans. He heard Lincoln's own account of the decision to abolish slavery by proclamation, heard him recite Shakespeare, and heard him say often, "That reminds me of a story. . . ." He dealt with little Tad, gathered anecdotes from insiders, excerpted published reminiscences from former associates like William H. Herndon. He added his own impressions of the president, noting a deep melancholy underneath the famous humor. This book, originally published in 1866, struck a chord with a public hungering for intimate details about the fallen president. Carpenter's painting, The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation before the Cabinet, was finished earlier, displayed in the rotunda of the Capitol before Lincoln's second inauguration, and then exhibited on a northern tour. Reproductions hung in many homes, offices, and schoolrooms.

The Lincoln Family Album offers a rare and revealing glimpse into the private life of Abraham Lincoln and the first family. Showcasing original and previously unpublished photographs collected and preserved by Mary Todd Lincoln and four generations of descendants, the volume includes pictures displayed in a family album when the Lincolns lived in the White House. Chronicled are the lives of the Lincolns' three sons, including the tragic death of Willie in 1862, the rapid change of Tad during the war, and Robert's marriage, children, and political career. Soldiers and statesmen of the Civil War, period figures such as Tom Thumb and Henry Ward Beecher, and even the family dog also graced the album that became the nucleus of the Lincolns' personal collection. This updated edition, which provides both additional pictures and new introductory materials by renowned Lincoln scholars Mark E. Neely Jr. and Harold Holzer, paints a portrait of the Lincolns' rise to prominence and the exclusion of poorer relations after the family moved to the nation's capital. With 150 illustrations and detailed captions, this authoritative and enlightening nineteenth-century history also includes capsule biographies of the Lincolns' friends and relatives. In such images as the First Lady in mourning or the assassin John Wilkes Booth, the pictures cannot disguise the painful truth about a family that suffered as many tragedies as triumphs. Willie's death at the age of eleven abruptly ended Mary and Abraham's personal collecting, but Lincoln descendants continued the tradition. The last pages of ""The Lincoln Family Album"" conclude with the death of Robert Lincoln's last grandchild, Robert Todd Lincoln Beck - with, in 1985, ending the direct line of Abraham and Mary Lincoln.

In "Lincoln's Generals," Gabor S. Boritt and a team of distinguished historians examine the interaction between Abraham Lincoln and his five key Civil War generals: McClellan, Hooker, Meade, Sherman, and Grant, providing fresh insight into this mixed bag of officers and the president's tireless efforts to work with them. The president's relationship with his generals was never easy. Stephen W. Sears underscores McClellan's perverse obstinacy as Lincoln tried to drive him ahead. Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark E. Neely Jr. sheds new light on the president's relationship with Hooker, arguing that he was wrong to push the general to attack at Chancellorsville. Boritt writes about Lincoln's prickly relationship with the victor of Gettysburg, "old snapping turtle" George Meade. Michael Fellman reveals the political stress between the White House and Sherman, a staunch conservative who did not want blacks in his army but who was crucial to the war effort. And John Y. Simon looks past the legendary camaraderie between Lincoln and Grant to reveal the tensions in their relationship. These authors take us inside the personalities and relationships that shaped the course of the nation's most costly war.

The Fate of Liberty is a comprehensive look at the issues of civil liberties during Lincoln's administration, placing them in the political context of the time. It examines the practical impact on civil liberties of the policies Lincoln developed to save the Union. Neely focuses on Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in a turbulent time of unforeseen events that threatened the stability of the nation - the threat to Washington as Maryland flirted with secession, disintegrating public order in the border states, corruption among military contractors, contraband trade with the South and the outcry against the first draft in United States history. Drawing upon letters from prisoners, records of military courts and federal prisons, memoirs, and federal archives, he paints a vivid picture of how Lincoln responded to these problems, how his policies were actually executed, and the virulent political debates that followed.

This volume explores Abraham Lincoln’s ties to the American West, bringing together a variety of scholars and experts who offer a look at the sixteenth president’s legacy in the territory beyond the Mississippi River. Included in this collection are an examination of Lincoln’s opposition to the Mexican War; a discussion of antislavery politics as applied to the West; perspectives on Lincoln’s views on the Thirteenth Amendment and his reluctance to admit Nevada to the Union; a look at the impact of the Radical Republicans on Lincoln’s patronage and appointments; and discussion of Lincoln’s favorable treatment of New Mexico and Arizona in an effort to garner their loyalty to the Union. Also analyzed is “The Tribe of Abraham�—Lincoln’s less-than-competent appointments in Washington Territory—and the ways in which Lincoln’s political friends in the Western Territories influenced his western policies. Other essays look at Lincoln’s dealings with the Mormons of Utah, who supported the president in exchange for his tolerance, and Native Americans, whose relations with the government suffered as the president’s attention was consumed by the Civil War. Loaded with a wealth of information, Lincoln Looks West explores yet another dimension to this dynamic leader and to the history of the American West.

The Civil War is often portrayed as the most brutal war in America's history, a premonition of twentieth-century slaughter and carnage. In challenging this view, Mark E. Neely, Jr., considers the war's destructiveness in a comparative context, revealing the sense of limits that guided the conduct of American soldiers and statesmen.

Neely begins by contrasting Civil War behavior with U.S. soldiers' experiences in the Mexican War of 1846. He examines Price's Raid in Missouri for evidence of deterioration in the restraints imposed by the customs of war; and in a brilliant analysis of Philip Sheridan's Shenandoah Valley campaign, he shows that the actions of U.S. cavalrymen were selective and controlled. The Mexican war of the 1860s between French imperial forces and republicans provided a new yardstick for brutality: Emperor Maximilian's infamous Black Decree threatened captured enemies with execution. Civil War battles, however, paled in comparison with the unrestrained warfare waged against the Plains Indians. Racial beliefs, Neely shows, were a major determinant of wartime behavior.

Destructive rhetoric was rampant in the congressional debate over the resolution to avenge the treatment of Union captives at Andersonville by deliberately starving and freezing to death Confederate prisoners of war. Nevertheless, to gauge the events of the war by the ferocity of its language of political hatred is a mistake, Neely argues. The modern overemphasis on violence in Civil War literature has led many scholars to go too far in drawing close analogies with the twentieth century's "total war" and the grim guerrilla struggles of Vietnam.

In 1863, Union soldiers from Illinois threatened to march from the battlefield to their state capital. Springfield had not been seized by the Rebels--but the state government was in danger of being captured by the Democrats. In The Union Divided, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mark E. Neely, Jr., vividly recounts the surprising story of political conflict in the North during the Civil War. Examining party conflict as viewed through the lens of the developing war, the excesses of party patronage, the impact of wartime elections, the highly partisan press, and the role of the loyal opposition, Neely deftly dismantles the argument long established in Civil War scholarship that the survival of the party system in the North contributed to its victory. The many positive effects attributed to the party system were in fact the result of the fundamental operation of the Constitution, in particular a four-year president who was commander in chief. In several ways, the party system actually undermined the Northern war effort; Americans uneasy about normal party operations in the abnormal circumstances of civil war saw near-treason in the loyal opposition. Engagingly written and brilliantly argued, The Union Divided is an insightful and original contribution to Civil War studies and American political history.

Mark E. Neely, Jr., gives us the first compact biography of Abraham Lincoln based on new scholarship. Neely, a Pulitzer prize-winning historian, vividly recaptures the central place of politics in Lincoln's life. Richly illustrated, nuanced and accessible, written with attention to the age in which Lincoln lived, yet ever alert to universal moral questions, this book provides a portrait of Lincoln as an extraordinary man in his own time and ours.