ALSO BY DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN Wait Till Next Year A Memoir No Ordinary Time Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream SIMON & SCHUSTER Rockefeller Center 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Copyright © 2005 by Blithedale Productions, Inc All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc Maps © 2005 Jeffrey L Ward Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for ISBN-10: 1-4165-4983-8 ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-4983-3 Visit us on the World Wide Web: http://www.SimonSays.com For Richard N Goodwin, my husband of thirty years “The conduct of the republican party in this nomination is a remarkable indication of small intellect, growing smaller They pass over…statesmen and able men, and they take up a fourth rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar.” —The New York Herald (May 19, 1860), commenting on Abraham Lincoln’s nomination for president at the Republican National Convention “Why, if the old Greeks had had this man, what trilogies of plays—what epics—would have been made out of him! How the rhapsodes would have recited him! How quickly that quaint tall form would have enter’d into the region where men vitalize gods, and gods divinify men! But Lincoln, his times, his death—great as any, any age—belong altogether to our own.” —Walt Whitman, “Death of Abraham Lincoln,” 1879 “The greatness of Napoleon, Caesar or Washington is only moonlight by the sun of Lincoln His example is universal and will last thousands of years… He was bigger than his country—bigger than all the Presidents together…and as a great character he will live as long as the world lives.” —Leo Tolstoy, The World, New York, 1909 CONTENTS Maps and Diagrams Introduction PART I THE RIVALS Four Men Waiting The “Longing to Rise” The Lure of Politics “Plunder & Conquest” The Turbulent Fifties The Gathering Storm Countdown to the Nomination Showdown in Chicago “A Man Knows His Own Name” 10 “An Intensified Crossword Puzzle” 11 “I Am Now Public Property” PART II MASTER AMONG MEN 12 “Mystic Chords of Memory”: Spring 1861 13 “The Ball Has Opened”: Summer 1861 14 “I Do Not Intend to Be Sacrificed”: Fall 1861 15 “My Boy Is Gone”: Winter 1862 16 “He Was Simply Out-Generaled”: Spring 1862 17 “We Are in the Depths”: Summer 1862 18 “My Word Is Out”: Fall 1862 19 “Fire in the Rear”: Winter–Spring 1863 20 “The Tycoon Is in Fine Whack”: Summer 1863 21 “I Feel Trouble in the Air”: Summer–Fall 1863 22 “Still in Wild Water”: Fall 1863 23 “There’s a Man in It!”: Winter–Spring 1864 24 “Atlanta Is Ours”: Summer–Fall 1864 25 “A Sacred Effort”: Winter 1864–1865 26 The Final Weeks: Spring 1865 Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Illustration Credits About the Author Photographic Insert MAPS AND DIAGRAMS Washington, D.C., During the Civil War Political Map of the United States, circa 1856 Second Floor of the Lincoln White House The Peninsula Campaign Battlefields of the Civil War Seventy-five-year-old General Winfield Scott (42), veteran of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, commanded the U.S Army when Lincoln took office Shown here with the cabinet (41), Scott suffered from a variety of ailments that limited his active role in military planning Even during the Civil War, ordinary people had nearly unlimited access to the White House Volunteer troops bivouacked in the East Room in May 1861 (43), while large public receptions (44) attracted a “living tide of humanity” who poured in to shake hands with the president and first lady In February 1862, while Mary Lincoln (45) hosted a triumphant reception downstairs, her twelveyear-old son, Willie, lay dying upstairs After Mary fell into a depression (46), Lincoln was left to care for their youngest son, Tad (47), who was equally devastated by Willie’s death When Seward became secretary of state (48), he installed his son Fred as his second in command (49) and settled his close-knit family, including Augustus (50), Fred (left), Fanny (right), and Fred’s wife, Anna (foreground), into an elegant mansion on Lafayette Square Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase (51) craved the presidency with every fiber of his being, an ambition shared by his beautiful daughter Kate (53 left, and seated, right) Rumors circulated that her 1863 marriage to William Sprague (52) “was a coldly calculated plan to secure the Sprague millions” to finance her father’s 1864 campaign When his first war secretary, Simon Cameron (54), resigned under fire, Lincoln called on Edwin M Stanton (55), who overcame his initial contempt for the president to embrace a deep friendship The Lincoln and Stanton families spent their summers together at the Soldiers’ Home (56) Francis P Blair and his wife, Eliza (59), presided over a political dynasty that included their sons, Postmaster General Montgomery Blair (61) and Union general Frank (60) Daughter Elizabeth’s (58) voluminous letters to her husband, Captain Samuel P Lee (57), left a vivid record of life in Washington during the Civil War In addition to their cabinet duties, both Navy Secretary Gideon Welles (62) and Attorney General Edward Bates (63) kept detailed diaries that recorded the inner workings of the Lincoln administration In letters to his wife, Mary Ellen (64), General George B McClellan regularly derided Lincoln, his cabinet, and most of the hierarchy in the Union army, while crediting himself with every success Admirers hailed him as a young Napoleon (65) Lincoln went through a succession of generals, including Ambrose E Burnside (68) and Joseph Hooker (69), before he found a winning team in Ulysses S Grant (66) and William T Sherman (67) Antislavery leader Frederick Douglass (70) and Senator Charles Sumner (71) urged Lincoln to bring blacks into the Union army Ultimately, almost two hundred thousand black men served, including this young soldier (72) Lincoln took more than a dozen trips to the front, both to consult with his generals and to inspire the troops (73) Scenes of the dead littered on the battlefield (74) tore at his heart Lincoln and his son Tad walked through the Confederate capital of Richmond on April 4, 1865 Freed slaves crowded the streets, shouting, “Glory! Hallelujah!” when Lincoln came into view As Lincoln lay dying in the Petersen boardinghouse, he was surrounded by family, members of his cabinet, congressmen, senators, and military officials When Lincoln died at 7:22 A.M on April 15, 1865, Stanton proclaimed: “Now he belongs to the ages.” ... horse bid, Lincoln knew well the ardor of his staunch circle of friends already at work on his behalf on the floor of the Wigwam The hands of the town clock on the steeple of the Baptist church... Edward Bates Taken together, the lives of these four men give us a picture of the path taken by ambitious young men in the North who came of age in the early decades of the nineteenth century All... evenings gathered together around a blazing fire The economics of the legal profession in sparsely populated Illinois were such that lawyers had to move about the state in the company of the circuit