There have probably been more books written about Lincoln than any other American. So it’s hard to come up with something new (though in recent years I’ve read good books about his “Team of Rivals,” the Gettysburg address, and the people all the employees working at Ford’s Theater the night the president was assassinated). This book is about the Second Inaugural Address, as the subhead signals. But in order to put that short speech in context, the author provides details about the war, the re-election campaign, John W. Booth and his conspirators, and the life and times of the nation and DC residents in the 1860s.
It’s a very readable, very relatable look at the action and pressures around the president as the war intensified and then ended. It places the reader in an army hospital as volunteers, including Walt Whitman, care for the wounded. . . and in the War Department . . . and the White House. I learned more about this topic from this book than I did in my high school AP history class.