In this highly original work, Ms. Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius as he rises from the obscurity of a one-term congressman/prairie lawyer to become president and prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation.
On May 18, 1860, William Seward, Salmon Chase, Edward Bates and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results of the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged victorious, his rivals where dismayed and angry.
Throughout the turbulent 1850s Goodwin demonstrates that Lincoln's success was the result of a character that had been forged by life experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling and to understand their motives and desires.
It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln, as president, to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in presidential history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war.
We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes the obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through the struggle thatwas the Civil War. This brilliant,multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's ability to create a team out divergent personalities, and how that personality shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history.
Doris Kearns Goodwin won the Pulitzer Prize in history for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. She is also the author of Wait Until Next Year, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. Steven Spielberg is loosely basing his upcoming Lincoln movie on Team of Rivals. She lives in Concord, MA , with her husband, Richard Goodwin.
This program is made possible in part by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Illinois General Assembly.
Simon & Schuster
Civil War hero General Ulysses S. Grant has been unfairly maligned because of the bloody 1864 campaigns he conducted against Robert E. Lee to secure final victory for the Union. Victor, Not A Butcher takes you into those decisive campaigns to prove that far from being a crude butcher (as he has been characterized not only by Southern partisans, but by historians) Grant’s casualty rates actually compared favorably with those of other Civil War generals. Grant was an inspired military leader with a genius for issuing lucid orders, maneuvering his troops adroitly, and making excellent use of his staff. His perseverance, decisiveness, moral courage, and political acumen place him among the greatest generals of the Civil War—indeed, of all military history.
Author Ed Bonekemper traces Grant's record of unparalleled success-Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, Iuka, Corinth, Raymond, Jackson, Champion’s Hill, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, the Overland Campaign, the James River crossing, Five Forks, Petersburg, and Appomattox-showing how Grant won his victories through expert execution of carefully planned military strategies, not the meat-grinder tactics of myth.
This book also explores the paradoxes of Grant's early life, discussing how he was reluctant to attend West Point and never distinguished himself among his contemporaries there. Bonekemper also deals forthrightly with Grant’s struggles in civilian life-and particularly the allegations of alcoholism and other factors that led his contemporaries (as well as historians of later generations) to underestimate him.
Bonekemper identifies the key elements of Grant's success as a general. He even demonstrates that as a military strategist and leader, Grant outshone his much-lionized rival, Robert E. Lee. He examines casualty records that prove that Grant lost fewer men in his successful effort to take Richmond and end the war than his predecessors lost in making the same attempt and failing. Bonekemper proves that it was no historical accident that Grant accepted the surrender of three entire Confederate armies-at Fort Donelson in 1862, Vicksburg in 1863, and Appomattox Court House in 1865. (No other general on either side accepted the surrender of even one army until Sherman accepted the capitulation of the remnants of the Army of Tennessee at the war's end, in mid-April 1865.) His tactics are studied carefully by American military personnel to this day.
Ulysses Grant won the Civil War. He was responsible for virtually all major Union victories in the West, the "Middle," and the East. Bonekemper ably silences Grant’s critics and restores Grant to the heroic reputation he so richly deserves.
Regnery Publishing
