1861-1865

Do you have what it takes to run off and join the army, leaving your family behind? That's what John Lincoln Clem, a nine-year-old boy living in Ohio, does as the American Civil War rages on.

Discusses the United States history leading up to and after the Emancipation Proclamation.

"Walter Stahr, award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Seward, tells the story of Abraham Lincoln's indispensable Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, the man the president entrusted with raising the army that preserved the Union. Of the crucial men close to President Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814-1869) was the most powerful and controversial. Stanton raised, armed, and supervised the army of a million men who won the Civil War. He organized the war effort. He directed military movements from his telegraph office, where Lincoln literally hung out with him. He arrested and imprisoned thousands for "war crimes," such as resisting the draft or calling for an armistice. Stanton was so controversial that some accused him at that time of complicity in Lincoln's assassination. He was a stubborn genius who was both reviled and revered in his time. Stanton was a Democrat before the war and a prominent trial lawyer. He opposed slavery, but only in private. He served briefly as President Buchanan's Attorney General and then as Lincoln's aggressive Secretary of War. On the night of April 14, 1865, Stanton rushed to Lincoln's deathbed and took over the government since Secretary of State William Seward had been critically wounded the same evening. He informed the nation of the President's death, summoned General Grant to protect the Capitol, and started collecting the evidence from those who had been with the Lincolns at the theater in order to prepare a murder trial. Now with this worthy complement to the enduring library of biographical accounts of those who helped Lincoln preserve the Union, Stanton honors the indispensable partner of the sixteenth president. Walter Stahr's essential book is the first major biography of Stanton in fifty years, restoring this underexplored figure to his proper place in American history"--.

Presents the historical context and importance of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, the document that formally promised freedom to American slaves.

"Though the Emancipation Proclamation is widely thought of as having brought an end to the despicable institution of slavery in the United States, the truth is a bit more complicated. The document actually freed slaves only in the lands in rebellion against the United States, so it had little immediate effect. That said, the proclamation did eventually free millions of people, enable African Americans to become Union soldiers, and make ending slavery one of the stated goals of the war. This volume explains how closely examining those sources gives us a better understanding of historical events and figures"--Provided by publisher.

In this ambitious story of American imperial conquest and capitalist development, Pulitzer Prize?winning historian Steven Hahn takes on the conventional histories of the nineteenth century and offers a perspective that promises to be as enduring as it is controversial.

Abraham Lincoln was born to poor parents, in a log cabin on the western frontier of a young nation. The unity of the United States, which had been built on the ideal that all people are created equal, was cracking under the heavy yoke of slavery. As Lincoln embarked on his presidency, the slaveholding states in the South left the Union, causing him to face the American Civil War. Lincoln said the war was no less than a fight to save government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Though his life was cut short, Lincoln's leadership and his written words continue to inspire Americans.

Uses puppets, songs, and live performance to explain various aspects of the American Civil War era.

A brief biography of Abraham Lincoln and the events of the Civil War including the Battle of Gettysburg and the Emancipation Proclamation.

Follows Abraham Lincoln from his childhood to the presidency, showing how he spoke up about fairness and eventually led the country to abolish slavery.