Abraham Lincoln: A History (Volume 2)

Abraham Lincoln: A History is an extraordinary work of primary witness. John Hay and John Nicolay were Lincoln's personal secretaries during his presidency and the Civil War, and they wrote this monumental ten-volume history from direct personal knowledge, contemporaneous records, and access to documents no later historian could match. Volume Two covers the transformative years from 1856 to 1860, tracing Lincoln's emergence from Illinois lawyer to Republican standard-bearer. Here is the rise of the Republican Party, the seismic Lincoln-Douglas debates, the devastating 1858 Senate defeat that was somehow a victory, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, and the frantic convention politics that nominated the unlikely candidate. Hay writes with the insider's access to Lincoln's private thoughts and public maneuvers, capturing the doubt, ambition, and steel that built a president. For anyone seeking to understand how Lincoln became Lincoln, this is indispensable, intimate history from men who stood in the room where it happened.