Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (63 page)

George Crooks,
The Life of Bishop Matthew Simpson of the Methodist Episcopal Church
(London: Wesleyan Methodist Book Room, 1891), pp. 377–86; J. Matthew Gallman,
Mastering Wartime: A Social History of Philadelphia During the Civil War
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 148–51.

Northwestern Christian Advocate,
8 Jan., 12 Feb., 13 Aug. 1862.

George M. Fredrickson, “The Coming of the Lord: The Northern Protestant Clergy and the Civil War Crisis,” in Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, eds.,
Religion and the American Civil War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 110–30; Moorhead,
American Apocalypse,
pp. 129–72; David B. Cheseborough, ed.,
God Ordained This War: Sermons on the Sectional Crisis, 1830
–
1865
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 6–8, 83–122.

CW,
7:368.

F. P. Blair, Sr., to AL, 18 Dec. 1862, ALP.

Lincoln Observed,
p. 237.

Lincoln Observed,
pp. 35–45, 92, 107, 235–36, 238.

William C. Davis,
Lincoln’s Men: How President Lincoln Became Father to an Army and a Nation
(New York: The Free Press, 1999), p. 130.

Davis,
Lincoln’s Men,
pp. 54, 56–57, 68, 134–35.

Davis,
Lincoln’s Men,
p. 141.

Davis,
Lincoln’s Men,
p. 87.

J. M. Palmer to D. Davis, 26 Nov. 1862, ALP; James M. McPherson,
What They Fought For, 1861
–
1865
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), pp. 4–6; Joseph Allan Frank,
With Ballot and Bayonet: The Political Socialization of American Civil War Soldiers
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998).

Reid Mitchell,
Civil War Soldiers
(New York: Viking Penguin, 1988), pp. 11–12, 16–17, 20–21.

Davis,
Lincoln’s Men,
pp. 99, 101;
RWAL,
p. 429; McPherson,
What They Fought For,
p. 62.

Gerald Linderman,
Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War
(New York: The Free Press, 1987), pp. 216–29; Frank,
With Ballot and Bayonet,
pp. 166–68; McPherson,
What They Fought For,
pp. 5–6.

McPherson,
What They Fought For,
p. 43; Steven E. Woodworth,
While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001), pp. 98–99, 107, 110–11.

Frank,
With Ballot and Bayonet,
p. 170; Davis,
Lincoln’s Men,
p. 107; Robert Hubbard to wife, 25 Feb. 1863, Letters of Robert Hubbard, Civil War Manuscripts Collection, Yale University Library, quoted in Adam I. P. Smith, “Partisan Partisanship: The Northern Political Experience During the Civil War” (unpublished paper), pp. 16–17.

Davis,
Lincoln’s Men,
p. 106; Frank,
With Ballot and Bayonet,
pp. 171–73;
Chicago Tribune,
8 Feb. 1864; Frank,
With Ballot and Bayonet,
p. 173.

Davis,
Lincoln’s Men,
p. 107.

DJH,
p. 208;
RWAL,
p. 278.

RWAL,
pp. 418, 506;
Lincoln Observed,
pp. 66–68.

Michael Burlingame, ed.,
With Lincoln in the White House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay, 1860
–
1865
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), p. 139.

Burlingame, ed.,
With Lincoln in the White House,
p. 131.

Smith, “The Presidential Election of 1864,” p. 109.

Carpenter,
Inner Life,
p. 283.

CW,
7:435, 451.

Burlingame, ed.,
At Lincoln’s Side,
pp. 92–93; Burlingame, ed.,
With Lincoln in the White House,
pp. 151–54.

H. J. Raymond to AL, 22 Aug. 1864, ALP;
CW,
7:514.

RWAL,
pp. 393–94; S. F. Cary to AL, 1 Sept. 1864, ALP.

Burlingame, ed.,
With Lincoln in the White House,
pp. 157–58.

J. Conkling to AL, 6 Sept. 1864, T. Tilton to J. G. Nicolay, 6 Sept. 1864, H. Wilson to AL, 5 Sept. 1864, ALP.

Carpenter,
Inner Life,
p. 275; J. W. Forney to AL, 14 Sept. 1864, ALP;
DJH,
pp. 229–30, 359.

See, for example,
The Scioto Gazette
[Chillicothe, OH], 1 Nov. 1864;
Chicago Tribune,
18, 19 Oct. 1864.

Granville Moody,
A Life’s Retrospect: Autobiography of Rev. Granville Moody, D.D.,
ed. Sylvester Weeks (Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe, 1890), pp. 441–45; Peck,
Life and Times,
pp. 378–81; Crooks,
Life of Bishop Matthew Simpson,
p. 396.

Howard,
Religion and the Radical Republican Movement,
pp. 68–89; James M. McPherson,
The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 260–86;
RWAL,
p. 446.

Scioto Gazette,
20 Sept. 1864; T. M. Eddy Diary, IEG.

Independent,
27 Oct. 1864; Gilbert Haven,
Sermons, Speeches and Letters on Slavery and Its War: From the Passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill to the Election of President Grant
(New York: Carlton & Lanahan, 1869), pp. 481–82.

CW,
7:533–34, 8:55–56; Joel H. Silbey,
A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860
–
1869
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), pp. 75–76. Davis called nine days of national fasting. Cheseborough,
God Ordained This War,
p. 226.

Independent,
1 Sept., 27 Oct., 3 Nov. 1864; Clark,
Life of Matthew Simpson,
pp. 240–43. Mark Hoyt, a wealthy Methodist layman and Union-Republican party activist, judged that Simpson’s speech, just five days before the presidential ballot, would “give ample time for it to produce its result on the election.” Jones,
The Sectional Crisis and Northern Methodism,
pp. 42–43. Gulliver’s panegyric to Lincoln in the columns of the
Independent,
he explained in a letter to the president in the dark days of August, was designed to counteract “the present vacillating feverish state of feeling in the Republican party toward you.” The article prompted cries of “hoax” from Democrats, but the Yankee clergyman was real enough. His church deacons included Governor William A. Buckingham; his acquaintances numbered Theodore Tilton, who urged Gulliver to let him publish the article immediately on the heels of the Democratic convention. J. P. Gulliver to AL, 26 Aug., 12 Sept. 1864, ALP.

L. E. Chittenden,
Recollections of President Lincoln and His Administration
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1891), pp. 446–51; William Sutton, “Seeing Through a Glass Darkly: Abraham Lincoln and the Northern Evangelical Clergy, 1860–1865” (unpublished typescript, University of Illinois, 1985), pp. 24–25; Moorhead,
American Apocalypse,
pp. 141–42.

J. B. Maxfield to AL, 21 Oct. 1864, ALP.

Northwestern Christian Advocate,
12 Oct. 1864;
Chicago Tribune,
8 Nov. 1864.

Chicago Tribune,
4 Aug., 28 Sept. 1864.

Chicago Tribune,
19 Oct. 1864.

Christian Advocate and Journal,
25 Aug., 27 Oct. 1864; Address of the National Union Executive Committee,
Chicago Tribune,
19, 22 Oct. 1864.

R. E. Fisk to J. Hay, 22 Sept. 1864, ALP; Burlingame, ed.,
With Lincoln in the White House,
p. 158 (summarizing Grant’s views as set out in the
New York Times
);
Northwestern Christian Advocate,
26 Oct. 1864.

Christian Advocate and Journal,
11 Aug., 27 Oct. 1864;
Harper’s Weekly,
quoted in
Northwestern Christian Advocate,
14 Sept. 1864;
Chicago Tribune,
19, 20 Oct., 8 Nov. 1864.

DJH,
pp. 40–41.

Northwestern Christian Advocate,
23 Nov. 1864.

Christian Advocate and Journal,
17 Nov. 1864;
Independent,
17 Nov. 1864;
Northwestern Christian Advocate,
23 Nov. 1864;
Zion’s Herald,
24 Sept. 1864;
Chicago Tribune,
4 Nov. 1864; Howard,
Religion and the Radical Republican Movement,
pp. 88–89; Dale Baum,
The Civil War Party System: The Case of Massachusetts, 1848
–
1876
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), pp. 91, 95–100; Stephen L. Hansen,
The Making of the Third Party System: Voters and Parties in Illinois, 1850
–
1876
(Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1980), pp. 142–43;
Independent
10, 17 Nov. 1864.

DJH,
p. 252;
Northwestern Christian Advocate,
2 Nov. 1864.

Burlingame, ed.,
With Lincoln in the White House,
p. 157.

DJH,
p. 196. Cf. M. Sutliff to AL, 4 Sept. 1864, ALP.

7.
The Potency of Death

Nicolay,
Oral History,
p. 83.

Gideon Welles,
Lincoln and Seward. Remarks upon the Memorial Address of Chas. Francis Adams, on the Late William H. Seward, with Incidents and Comments Illustrative of the Measures and Policy of the Administration of Abraham Lincoln
(New York: Sheldon & Company, 1874), p. 32;
HI,
p. 167.

F. B. Carpenter,
The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln: Six Months at the White House
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995; originally published New York, 1866), pp. 148–49;
DJH,
p. 132.

CW,
6:538;
HI,
p. 166; John W. Forney,
Anecdotes of Public Men,
2 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873, 1881), 1:176.

Forney,
Anecdotes of Public Men,
1:39; Robert S. Harper,
Lincoln and the Press
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951), p. 322.

HI,
p. 165.

HI,
p. 162.

Carpenter,
Inner Life,
pp. 30–31;
CW,
6:16–17.

Reminiscences of Carl Schurz,
3 vols. (New York: The McClure Co., 1907–8), 2:91; Forney,
Anecdotes of Public Men,
1:86; Carpenter,
Inner Life,
pp. 149–53, 278.

Michael Burlingame, ed.,
At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), p. 137; Don E. Fehrenbacher,
Lincoln in Text and Context: Collected Essays
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 157–63.

Lincoln Observed,
p. 250; Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner,
Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), pp. 284–85.

Carpenter,
Inner Life,
pp. 62–67. In fact, Grant and his wife declined the invitation to attend.

Leaping from Lincoln’s box, Booth broke a leg and rode off in great pain, to take refuge with Confederate sympathizers. Twelve days later he was tracked down and shot by Union cavalry. Several of his band of accomplices—who failed in their assigned roles as assassins of the secretary of state and the vice president—were brought to trial and hanged. Subsequent theories, which have embraced in the plot the Confederate leadership and high-ranking Unionists (including Edwin Stanton), are as groundless as they are sensational.

David B. Chesebrough, “
No Sorrow like Our Sorrow
”
: Northern Protestant Ministers and the Assassination of Lincoln
(Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1994), pp. 16–17;
Northwestern Christian Advocate,
10 May 1865.

Merrill D. Peterson,
Lincoln in American Memory
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 21, 191; David W. Blight,
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 369.

Northwestern Christian Advocate,
10 May 1865; Chesebrough, “
No Sorrow like Our Sorrow,
” p. 67.

Chesebrough, “
No Sorrow like Our Sorrow,
” p. 30;
Northwestern Christian Advocate,
10 May 1865.

Chesebrough, “
No Sorrow like Our Sorrow,
” pp. 16, 33–36, 39, 68–69; Gilbert Haven,
The Uniter and Liberator of America: A Memorial Discourse on the Character and Career of Abraham Lincoln Delivered in the North Russell Street, M.E. Church, Boston, Sunday, April 23, 1865
(Boston: James P. Magee, 1865), pp. 4, 30.

Harriet Beecher Stowe reported Lincoln as telling her, “Whichever way it ends, I have the impression that I shan’t last long after it’s over.”
RWAL,
p. 428. Chase, Stanton, and Seward were all dead within eight years of the war’s end.

Chesebrough, “
No Sorrow like Our Sorrow,
” pp. 76–77.

Northwestern Christian Advocate,
10 May 1865; Chesebrough, “
No Sorrow like Our Sorrow,
” pp. 74, 106; Thomas Reed Turner,
Beware the People Weeping: Public Opinion and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), p. 45.

Afterword

Benjamin P. Thomas,
Portrait for Posterity: Lincoln and His Biographers
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1947), pp. 209–10.

Frank Owen,
Tempestuous Journey: Lloyd George, His Life and Times
(London: Hutchinson [1954]), pp. 28–29, 670; Thomas Jones,
Lloyd George
(London: Oxford University Press, 1951), pp. 204–6.

FURTHER READING

No short bibliography can possibly do justice to the rich and ever-growing trove of scholarly writings about Abraham Lincoln, let alone about the political era in which he lived. What follows is chiefly designed as a guide to some of the best and most influential works relating to Lincoln himself, and offers a fuller indication of the studies on which I have drawn than can be gleaned from the citations for each chapter.

Biographies

Amongst the shelf of modern one-volume biographies, three in particular stand out. Benjamin P. Thomas,
Abraham Lincoln: A Biography
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), is a superbly crafted work of synthesis and was the first biography to benefit from the opening of the Abraham Lincoln Papers in the Library of Congress in 1947. Beautifully written, and offering a master class in the art of compression and storytelling, is David Herbert Donald,
Lincoln
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), though it overstates the president’s “passivity.” Allen C. Guelzo,
Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President
(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999), treats Lincoln’s Whiggish ideas and personal beliefs with unusual but compelling seriousness. Beyond these, two succinct biographies are noteworthy: Mark E. Neely,
The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), and William E. Gienapp,
Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), which is especially good on Lincoln’s presidential leadership.

Of the several multivolume lives, two demand particular attention. If few today have the stamina to digest all ten volumes of John G. Nicolay and John Hay’s “official” work,
Abraham Lincoln: A History
(New York: The Century Co., 1890), and if its obvious bias and life-and-times approach appear limiting, it still remains an essential source, one characterized by scholarship and real candor. The finest multivolume modern biography is James G. Randall,
Lincoln the President,
4 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1945–55), completed by Richard N. Current, which follows a “revisionist” line and presents Lincoln as a liberal and realist in vexatious conflict with the Radical Republicans.

1.
Inner Power (1809
–
54)

Essential for Lincoln’s early life in Kentucky and Indiana, for his young manhood in New Salem, and for his nonpolitical life in Springfield are the mass of recollections which William Herndon elicited after Lincoln’s death, though in many cases it is a matter of fine judgment whether they offer a searchlight or a distorting mirror. The material informed William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik,
Herndon’s Life of Lincoln,
ed. Paul M. Angle (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1942), and is superbly set out in Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds.,
Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements About Abraham Lincoln
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998). Walter B. Stevens,
A Reporter’s Lincoln,
ed. Michael Burlingame (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), and Michael Burlingame, ed.,
An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), provide additional recollections.

For the New Salem period, Benjamin P. Thomas’s useful
Lincoln’s New Salem
(Springfield, IL: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1934) should be read in conjunction with Douglas L. Wilson,
Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), a shrewd and original book which is also revelatory about Lincoln’s early years in Springfield. There are further insights in Douglas L. Wilson,
Lincoln Before Washington: New Perspectives on the Illinois Years
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), and valuable social context in Kenneth J. Winkle,
The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln
(Dallas: Taylor, 2001). Lincoln’s economic ideas and his Whig perspectives are the subject of Gabor S. Boritt,
Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream
(Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1978); Olivier Frayssé,
Lincoln, Land, and Labor, 1809
–
1860,
trans. Sylvia Neely (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Daniel Walker Howe,
The
Political
Culture
of
the
American
Whigs
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Joel H. Silbey, “ ‘Always a Whig in Politics’: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln,”
Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association
8 (1986); and Guelzo’s biography.

Lincoln’s political career before 1850 is the subject of Paul Simon,
Lincoln’s Preparation for Greatness: The Illinois Legislative Years
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965; repr. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971); Donald W. Riddle,
Lincoln Runs for Congress
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1948); Donald W. Riddle,
Congressman Abraham Lincoln
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979); and Paul Findley,
A. Lincoln: The Crucible of Congress
(New York: Crown, 1979).

Of the many works which consider Lincoln’s temperament and personality, and his understanding of religion, the following warrant particular attention: Michael Burlingame,
The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Charles B. Strozier,
Lincoln’s Quest for Union: Public and Private Meanings
(New York: Basic Books, 1982); William J. Wolf,
The Almost Chosen People: A Study of the Religion of Abraham Lincoln
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959); Hans J. Morgenthau and David Hein,
Essays on Lincoln’s Faith and Politics,
ed. Kenneth W. Thompson (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983); Allen C. Guelzo, “Abraham Lincoln and the Doctrine of Necessity,”
Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association
18 (1997); Robert V. Bruce, “The Riddle of Death,” in Gabor S. Boritt, ed.,
The Lincoln Enigma: The Changing Faces of an American Icon
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Stewart Winger,
Lincoln, Religion, and Romantic Cultural Politics
(DeKalb: Northern Illinios University Press, 2003).

2.
The Power of Opinion (1854
–
58)

Don E. Fehrenbacher,
Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850’s
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), remains the outstanding work on Lincoln and the political upheaval wrought by the Kansas-Nebraska Act: it has rightly achieved the status of a classic. Also helpful in placing Lincoln within the evolving Republican coalition are Don E. Fehrenbacher,
Chicago Giant: A Biography of Long John Wentworth
(Madison, WI: American History Research Center, 1957); Mark M. Krug,
Lyman Trumbull: Conservative Radical
(New York: A. S. Barnes, 1965); and Edward Magdol,
Owen Lovejoy: Abolitionist in Congress
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967). The wider national context of party realignment is best pursued in two magisterial works: Michael F. Holt,
The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), and William E. Gienapp,
The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852
–
1856
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). The state setting is delineated in Stephen L. Hansen,
The Making of the Third Party System: Voters and Parties in Illinois, 1850
–
1876
(Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1980).

Lincoln’s oratorical style and engagement with the public are pursued in Waldo W. Braden,
Abraham Lincoln: Public Speaker
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988). Of the several scholarly editions of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the most imaginative is Harold Holzer, ed.,
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete Unexpurgated Text
(New York: HarperCollins, 1993), which exposes the unedited reality behind the polished texts that appeared in the friendly partisan press. Harry V. Jaffa,
Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959, 1982), is a political philosopher’s exploration of the principles and continuities underpinning Lincoln’s political thought; David Zarefsky,
Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), offers a rhetorical analysis of the candidates’ arguments. William Lee Miller,
Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), rightly emphasizes Lincoln’s devotion to a moral standard while yet remaining an effective democratic politician.

3.
The Power of Party (1858
–
60)

The Republican party that elected Lincoln is contrastingly delineated in Eric Foner,
Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); Richard H. Sewell,
Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 183
7
–
1860
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); Michael F. Holt,
The Political Crisis of the 1850s
(New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978); and William E. Gienapp, “The Republican Party and the Slave Power,” in R. H. Abzug and S. E. Maizlish, eds.,
New Perspectives on Race and Slavery in America
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986). Lincoln’s increasingly evident appetite for the presidency and the 1860 campaign itself are the subjects of William E. Baringer,
Lincoln’s Rise to Power
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1937), and Reinhard H. Luthin,
The First Lincoln Campaign
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1944). The maneuvers at the Chicago convention are further examined in Willard L. King,
Lincoln’s Manager: David Davis
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960). For the Democrats’ predicament, see in particular Robert W. Johannsen,
Stephen A. Douglas
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). The most helpful analysis of voting patterns is William E. Gienapp’s essay “Who Voted for Lincoln?,” in John L. Thomas, ed.,
Abraham Lincoln and the American Political Tradition
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), pp. 68–72. The religious dimension of the campaign is set in wider context in Richard J. Carwardine,
Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), and William E. Gienapp, “Nativism and the Creation of a Republican Majority in the North Before the Civil War,”
Journal of American History
72 (1985).

4.
The Limits of Power (1860
–
61)

Phillip Shaw Paludan’s
The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994) offers a fresh and incisive examination of Lincoln’s term of office and its immediate antecedents. James M. McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), and Peter J. Parish,
The American Civil War
(New York: Holmes & Meier, 1975), provide the two most readable and authoritative single-volume treatments of the conflict. Each of these is relevant to the subject of this and later chapters, as is Allan Nevins,
The War for the Union,
4 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959–71).

David M. Potter,
Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942, 1962); Kenneth M. Stampp,
And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1950); and William E. Baringer,
A House Dividing: Lincoln as President Elect
(Springfield, IL: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1945), are indispensable for understanding Lincoln’s options and actions in the months that climaxed in hostilities at Fort Sumter. Harry V. Jaffa,
A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), examines Lincoln’s political thought as expressed in this crisis of the Union, and places it in a wide philosophical context. On the Sumter crisis itself, Richard N. Current,
Lincoln and the First Shot
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1963), provides a compelling analysis.

The significance of the border states, and Lincoln’s strategy toward them, is the subject of William E. Gienapp, “Abraham Lincoln and the Border States,” in Thomas F. Schwartz, ed., “
For a Vast Future Also
”
: Essays from the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association
(New York: Fordham University Press, 1999), and William W. Freehling,
The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Lincolnians’ efforts to cement Democrats into the war coalition are addressed in Joel H. Silbey,
A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860
–
1869
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), and Christopher Dell,
Lincoln and the War Democrats: The Grand Erosion of Conservative Tradition
(Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1975). Lincoln’s grappling with the international dimension of the conflict and his determination to keep the European powers from intervening is the focus of Howard Jones,
Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992).

For this period of the presidency, as for the later years, historians are especially dependent on the pens and historical self-awareness of Lincoln’s secretaries. Probably the single most valuable source for Lincoln in the White House context is Hay’s diary, now available in a fine modern edition: Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds.,
Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997). Hay’s sparkling newspaper commentaries, dating chiefly from the early presidency, are in Michael Burlingame, ed.,
Lincoln’s Journalist: John Hay’s Anonymous Writings for the Press, 1860
–
1864
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999). Important, too, are Michael Burlingame, ed.,
At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), and Michael Burlingame, ed.,
With Lincoln in the White House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay, 1860
–
1865
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), as well as Burlingame’s edition of Nicolay’s interviews and essays, noted earlier.