the momentous second inauguration of Abraham Lincoln
"By March 4, 1865, the Civil War had slaughtered more than 700,000 Americans and left intractable wounds on the nation. That day, after a morning of rain-drenched fury, tens of thousands crowded Washington's Capitol grounds to see Abraham Lincoln take the oath for a second term. As the sun emerged, Lincoln rose to give perhaps the greatest inaugural address in American history, stunning the nation byarguing, in a brief 701 words, that both sides had been wrong, and that the war's unimaginable horrors--every drop of blood spilled--might well have been God's just verdict on the national sin of slavery . . . [the author] captures the frenzy in the nation's capital at this crucial moment in America's history and the tension-filled hope and despair afflicting the country as a whole, soon to be heightened by Lincoln's assassination"--Provided by publisher.
