Abraham Lincoln: A History (Volume 4)

The only history of Lincoln written by men who knew him. John Hay and John Nicolay served as his personal secretaries throughout the White House years, and their ten-volume masterpiece draws on direct access to documents, memories, and a nation still living in the shadow of assassination. Volume 4 transports readers to 1861, those tumultuous first months when the nation descended into civil war and a reluctant commander-in-chief discovered the terrible weight of leading a fractured republic through its greatest crisis. Hay captures Lincoln's evolution from provincial lawyer to wartime president, his sleepless nights over troop deployments, his anguish at early battlefield defeats, and the slow crystallizing of his conviction that emancipation would become both military necessity and moral imperative. This is history written by men who watched Lincoln pace the halls at midnight, who saw him receive word of disaster at Bull Run, who understood the man behind the mythology.