Lincoln was a complicated man; unassuming but ambitious, honest but wily, humorous but occasionally despondent, spiritual but not religious, and he thought slavery was evil but condoned its legality until late in his life. The author, as narrator, tells of Lincoln’s magnanimity in both victory and defeat, his continual quest for self-improvement, his personal tragedies, and his compassion in the midst of war. However, Lincoln was a pragmatic politician who pushed the Emancipation Proclamation although it did not free many slaves, used patronage to secure votes, and ordered the extraordinary use of Presidential War Powers. His life story is told in a generally chronological series of chapters focused on a time or specific event in Lincoln’s life from his childhood to his time in New Salem on his own, his “adventure in the Law,” his close relationship with friends, his political career, his family, his unlikely rise to become President of the United States, and the monumental decisions he faced during the Civil War. There are over 16,000 books about Lincoln registered with the Library of Congress ranging from those which only extol his virtues (and he had many) to those which attempt to “de-myth” his legacy by exaggerating his faults (and he had a few). The fact is that Lincoln’s life defies simple characterizations. He had opposed President Polk’s “Unconstitutional use of power” during the Mexican War, but Lincoln later assumed War Powers beyond Polk’s or any other previous President. He was known as “Honest Abe” and even political opponents remarked that “his cards were always face-up,” but he once intentionally misled Congress. He agonized over the carnage inflicted on both sides of the War, but continually ordered his Generals to “push the fight” to the Southern armies. To Lincoln, however, these actions were not “transgressions” but strategies necessary to end the War and to achieve his overarching goal, the preservation of the Union. The issues of slavery, secession and the Civil War are discussed to explore the effect of certain events on Lincoln and the life-changing decisions he made. Lincoln’s personal and political philosophy toward slavery evolved over time, but he always believed secession was illegal and must be prohibited. Selected Civil War battles and the Generals who were in command are also presented, but only if there was a direct impact on Lincoln personally or on his management of the War. Mr. Dorris chose to not include a detailed account of the assassination conspiracy against Lincoln or the circumstance of his death, focusing instead on his life and the way he lived it. While every attempt was made to be historically accurate, Mr. Dorris chose to not present a history textbook with every page interrupted by footnotes to prove authenticity. Instead this narrative utilizes verifiable consensus information about Lincoln and it does not attempt to “plow new ground” by either challenging or embellishing Lincoln’s legacy. Mr. Dorris assumes the role of a narrator and simply tells his rendition of the fascinating life story of “Abraham Lincoln - an uncommon, common man.”

Our One Common Country explores the most critical meeting of the Civil War. Given short shrift or overlooked by many historians, the Hampton Roads Conference of 1865 was a crucial turning point in the War between the States. In this well written and highly documented book, James B. Conroy describes in fascinating detail what happened when leaders from both sides came together to try to end the hostilities. The meeting was meant to end the fighting on peaceful terms. It failed, however, and the war dragged on for two more bloody, destructive months. Through meticulous research of both primary and secondary sources, Conroy tells the story of the doomed peace negotiations through the characters who lived it. With a fresh and immediate perspective, Our One Common Country offers a thrilling and eye-opening look into the inability of our nation’s leaders to find a peaceful solution. The failure of the Hamptons Roads Conference shaped the course of American history and the future of America’s wars to come.

This biography of the sixteenth president explores Lincoln's life and political career along with insights into his philosophy, religious views, and moral character.

Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln were the preeminent self-made men of their time. In this masterful dual biography, award-winning Harvard University scholar John Stauffer describes the transformations in the lives of these two giants during a major shift in cultural history, when men rejected the status quo and embraced new ideals of personal liberty. As Douglass and Lincoln reinvented themselves and ultimately became friends, they transformed America. Lincoln was born dirt poor, had less than one year of formal schooling, and became the nation's greatest president. Douglass spent the first twenty years of his life as a slave, had no formal schooling-in fact, his masters forbade him to read or write-and became one of the nation's greatest writers and activists, as well as a spellbinding orator and messenger of audacious hope, the pioneer who blazed the path traveled by future African-American leaders. At a time when most whites would not let a black man cross their threshold, Lincoln invited Douglass into the White House. Lincoln recognized that he needed Douglass to help him destroy the Confederacy and preserve the Union; Douglass realized that Lincoln's shrewd sense of public opinion would serve his own goal of freeing the nation's blacks. Their relationship shifted in response to the country's debate over slavery, abolition, and emancipation. Both were ambitious men. They had great faith in the moral and technological progress of their nation. And they were not always consistent in their views. John Stauffer describes their personal and political struggles with a keen understanding of the dilemmas Douglass and Lincoln confronted and the social context in which they occurred. What emerges is a brilliant portrait of how two of America's greatest leaders lived.

A nuanced psychological portrait of Abraham Lincoln that finds his legendary political strengths rooted in his most personal struggles. Giving shape to the deep depression that pervaded Lincoln's adult life, Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Lincoln’s Melancholy reveals how this illness influenced both the President’s character and his leadership. Mired in personal suffering as a young man, Lincoln forged a hard path toward mental health. Shenk draws on seven years of research from historical record, interviews with Lincoln scholars, and contemporary research on depression to understand the nature of Lincoln’s unhappiness. In the process, Shenk discovers that the President’s coping strategies—among them, a rich sense of humor and a tendency toward quiet reflection—ultimately helped him to lead the nation through its greatest turmoil. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice SELECTED AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Washington Post Book World, Atlanta Journal-Constituion, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette As Featured on the History Channel documentary Lincoln “Fresh, fascinating, provocative.”—Sanford D. Horwitt, San Francisco Chronicle “Some extremely beautiful prose and fine political rhetoric and leaves one feeling close to Lincoln, a considerable accomplishment.”—Andrew Solomon, New York Magazine “A profoundly human and psychologically important examination of the melancholy that so pervaded Lincoln's life.”—Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., author of An Unquiet Mind

In his acclaimed book Lincoln's Virtues, William Lee Miller explored Abraham Lincoln's intellectual and moral development. Now he completes his "ethical biography," showing how the amiable and inexperienced backcountry politician was transformed by constitutional alchemy into an oath-bound head of state. Faced with a radical moral contradiction left by the nation's Founders, Lincoln struggled to find a balance between the universal ideals of Equality and Liberty and the monstrous injustice of human slavery. With wit and penetrating sensitivity, Miller brings together the great themes that have become Lincoln's legacy—preserving the United States of America while ending the odious institution that corrupted the nation's meaning—and illuminates his remarkable presidential combination: indomitable resolve and supreme magnanimity.

Hailed as the definitive portrait of the sixteenth president, Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame's impressive two-volume biography has been masterfully abridged and revised. Sixteenth president of the United States, the Great Emancipator, and a surpassingly eloquent champion of national unity, freedom, and democracy, Abraham Lincoln is arguably the most studied and admired of all Americans. Michael Burlingame's astonishing Abraham Lincoln: A Life, an updated, condensed version of the 2,000-page two-volume set that The Atlantic hailed as one of the five best books of 2009, offers fresh interpretations of this endlessly fascinating American leader. Based on deep research in unpublished sources as well as newly digitized sources, this work reveals how Lincoln's character and personality were the North's secret weapon in the Civil War, the key variables that spelled the difference between victory and defeat. He was a model of psychological maturity and a fully individuated man whose influence remains unrivaled in the history of American public life. Burlingame chronicles Lincoln's childhood and early development, romantic attachments and losses, his love of learning, legal training, and courtroom career as well as his political ambition, his term as congressman in the late 1840s, and his serious bouts of depression in early adulthood. Burlingame recounts, in fresh detail, the Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln marriage and traces the mounting moral criticism of slavery that revived his political career and won this Springfield lawyer the presidency in 1860. This abridgement delivers Burlingame's signature insight into Lincoln as a young man, a father, and a politician. Lincoln speaks to us not only as a champion of freedom, democracy, and national unity but also as a source of inspiration. Few have achieved his historical importance, but many can profit from his personal example, encouraged by the knowledge that despite a lifetime of troubles, he became a model of psychological maturity, moral clarity, and unimpeachable integrity. His presence and his leadership inspired his contemporaries; his life story will do the same for generations to come.