America's Crisis:
Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War

America has faced many crises in its history, but the worst by far was the Civil War. the country was torn asunder, hundreds of thousands died, and both cities & swaths of countryside lay in ruins. But we did have Abraham Lincoln, a man considered by many to have been our greatest president, to lead the nation through and out of the chaos.

2009 marks the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. The Sachem Library honors this great American with a 10-month book discussion highlighting significant works about Lincoln.

The book discussion group will meet the 4th Monday of each month (due to a holiday, the first meeting will be Tuesday, September 29 from 3:00--4:30 pm in the Board Room. Registration for the September book discussion (Lincoln at Cooper Union by Harold Holzer) begins Friday, 21 August.

September 29, 2009

"Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech that Made Abraham, by Harold Holzer. S&S, 2004.
When he delivered his speech on February 27 1860 at Cooper Union in New York City, Lincoln was not yet the Republican nominee for the presidency. Not one of his better known speeches, it is considered one of his most important, since many argue that it was responsible for propelling him toward the presidency. Holzer explores the speech that reassured conservatives of his moderation while reaffirming his opposition to slavery to Republican progressives. Until that point in his career, Mr. Lincoln had been little known in the East — except as the able opponent of Illinois Senator Stephen M. Douglas and the protagonist in the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates that helped define partisan policy differences over the extension of slavery to the territories.

October 26, 2009

"If you don’t want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while. Yours respectfully, A. Lincoln."

To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign, by Stephen W. Sears. T&F, 1992.
The first major campaign for the Army of the Potomac, the Peninsula Campaign was the concept of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, who felt the best way to end the rebellion was to capture the Confederate capital. While McClellan was initially successful against the equally cautious General Joseph E. Johnston, but the emergence of the aggressive General Robert E. Lee turned the subsequent Seven Days Battles into a humiliating Union defeat. McClellan chronically overestimated the strength of enemy units and his reluctance to engage large portions of his army drove Lincoln to distraction.

November 23, 2009

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman, by William Lee Miller. Knopf, 2008.
Follows America's sixteenth president from inexperienced back-country politician to a head of state confronted by grave issues and moral dilemmas, as he struggled to preserve the United States of America while ending the unjust horrors of human slavery. 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.

December 21, 2009

"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party - and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose."

Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, by James M. McPherson. OUP, 2002.
The battle between North and South fought on 17 September, 1862 near Antietam Creek, Maryland, constitutes the bloodiest single day in American history, with more than 23,000 casualties. Although outnumbered two-to-one, Lee committed his entire force, while McClellan sent in less than three-quarters of his army, enabling Lee to fight the Federals to a standstill, largely because McClellan had failed to commit the number of troops necessary to smash his enemy (a third of his army did not fire a shot!). Lee's battered army ultimately escaped McClellan's grasp to fight another day, but this battle proved a critical victory for the Union on several levels: it restored morale in the North and kept Lincoln's party in control of Congress. It also crushed Confederate hopes of British intervention. And it freed Lincoln to deliver the Emancipation Proclamation, which instantly changed the character of the war.

January 25, 2010

"I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves...are, and henceforward shall be free...."

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery, by Allen C. Guelzo. S&S, 2004.
During the war Lincoln moved gradually to grapple with the issue of freeing the slaves. On March 13, 1862, Lincoln forbade Union Army officers from returning fugitive slaves. And on April 10, 1862, Congress declared that the federal government would compensate slave owners who freed their slaves. But he held off on issuing his Emancipation Proclamation until his army could deliver a Union victory on the battlefield. While not a clear victory, the turning back of Robert E. Lee at the battle of Antietam was seized upon by Lincoln to issue the Proclamation. Although the Proclamation brought freedom to thousands of slaves the day it went into effect, it was criticized at the time because it freed only those slaves in states in open rebellion against the United States (meaning had any seceding state rejoined the Union before January 1, 1863, it could have kept slavery, at least temporarily). The Emancipation Proclamation, which represented a shift in the war objectives of the North—reuniting the nation was no longer the only goal. It represented a major step toward the ultimate abolition of Slavery in the United States and a "new birth of freedom," even as it was denounced by Copperhead Democrats who opposed the war and tolerated both secession and slavery.

February 22, 2010

"...we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."

Gettysburg , by Stephen W. Sears. HM, 2003.
In July of 1863, Lee's Army Of Northern Virginia of 75,000 men and the 97,000 man Union Army Of The Potomac under General George G. Meade met, by chance, at the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. What started as a skirmish became a three-day struggle that became a turning point in both the war and American history. In the end, Lee's great gamble to break the Union line ("Pickett's Charge') failed and he was was forced to abandon his dead and withdraw his army back to Virginia. Meade's failure to capitalize on his victory and destroy Lee infuriated Lincoln and while he did not replace Meade, he eventually promoted U.S Grant to Lt. Gen. and appointed him commander of all Union armies. Grant's decision to make his headquarters with Meade's Army of the Potomac for the remainder of the war essentially made him Lee's primary opponent. No longer would the capture of Richmond be the Army's goal, but the destruction of Lee's Army.

March 22, 2010

"...that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America, by Garry Wills. S&S, 1992.
After the Battle of Gettysburg was over the townspeople were left with thousands of bodies to bury. David Wills, a wealthy 32-year-old attorney, wrote to the Governor of Pennsylvania suggesting a National Cemetery be funded. Five months later, a cemetery was erected on the site and ready to be dedicated. Almost as an afterthought, Wills and the event committee invited President Lincoln to participate in the ceremony and make a few "appropriate remarks." Lincoln spoke for only two minutes, but those 272 words have become one of the most famous speeches in world history.

April 26, 2010

"I cannot spare this man - he fights"

The Battle of the Wilderness, by Gordon C. Rhea. LSUP, 1994.
In Ulysses S. Grant, Lincoln finally found a general who was prepared to fight to the finish, no matter what the cost. The Battle of the Wilderness marked the start of Grant's overland campaign against Richmond. In the two days of fighting, Grant suffered heavy casualties (2,246 dead, 12,037 wounded and 3,383 missing for a total of 17,666 compared to probable Confederate losses of around 7,500.) These were higher Union losses than at either Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville, two of the worst Union defeats of the war. But unlike his predecessors, Grant did not retreat after the mauling his army took. With the words "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," Grant engaged in a long and bloody battle of attrition that Lee and the South could not hope to win.

May 24, 2010

"I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom."

Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief, by James M. McPherson. Penguin, 2004.
Evaluates Lincoln's talents as the nation's first wartime commander in chief (in spite of his limited military experience), during the greatest crisis our nation has ever endured. He was not a West Point graduate like his Southern opponent, Jefferson Davis, and even though he had to teach himself about military strategy and theory, Lincoln observed the successes and failures of his own and the enemy's military commanders and drew apt conclusions. He learned from his mistakes and as the war progressed took a greater role in directly influencing and managing events. He rid the army of scores of incompetent political generals at great risk to his reelection. He relieved McClellan, the most popular commander of the first year and a half of the war, a man fiercely idolized by his men, because he suffered from what Lincoln termed “the slows.” By the time of the 1864 presidential campaign, the common soldiers also had come to recognize the greatness of Lincoln’s strategic leadership. Their votes went overwhelmingly to Lincoln, ensuring his victory over the man who ran against him--McClellan. Pulitzer Prize-winning author McPherson details the leadership of a man whose strategic vision and firmness of purpose won the Civil War and started the nation on the road to reunion.

June 28, 2010

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April-June 1865, by Noah Andre Trudeau. LB, 1994.
In this concluding volume of a trilogy (Bloody Roads South; The Last Citadel) Trudeau traces the last days of the Civil War (a conflict in which over 620,000 Americans died), Lee's surrender on 9 April, 1865, the collapse of the Confederacy, the assassination of Lincoln on 14 April, the flight of Jefferson Davis, and the last battles of the war in the west.

Titles chosen by Brad Silverman

Previous America's History Book Discussion Titles

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