William E. Gienapp – författare

During the 1850s, the Jacksonian party system broke down in the North and a new sectional party, the Republicans, succeeded the Whigs in the nation's two party system. Using demographic, voting, and other statistical analysis,as well as the more traditional methods and sources of political history, William Gienapp powerfully demonstrates that the organization of the Republican party was a difficult, complex, and lengthy process, and explains why, even after an inauspicious beginning, it ultimately became a potent political force.

During the 1850s, the Jacksonian party system broke down in the North and a new sectional party, the Republicans, succeeded the Whigs in the nation's two party system. Using demographic, voting, and other statistical analysis,as well as the more traditional methods and sources of political history, William Gienapp powerfully demonstrates that the organization of the Republican party was a difficult, complex, and lengthy process, and explains why, even after an inauspicious beginning, it ultimately became a potent political force.

While the heart of the book focuses on the Civil War, Gienapp begins with a finely etched portrait of Lincoln's early life, from pioneer farm boy, to politician and lawyer in Springfield, to his stunning election as sixteenth president of the United States. We see how Lincoln grew during his years in office, how he developed a keen aptitude for military strategy and displayed enormous skill in dealing with his generals, and also how his strategy evolved from a desire to preserve the Union into one of emancipation and total war.A former backwoodsman and country lawyer, Abraham Lincoln rose to become one of America's greatest presidents. The biography offers a vivid account of Lincoln's dramatic ascension to the pinnacle of American history.

Gideon Welles's 1861 appointment as secretary of the navy placed him at the hub of Union planning for the Civil War and in the midst of the powerful personalities vying for influence in Abraham Lincoln's cabinet. Although Welles initially knew little of naval matters, he rebuilt a service depleted by Confederate defections, planned actions that gave the Union badly needed victories in the war's early days, and oversaw a blockade that weakened the South's economy. Perhaps the hardest-working member of the cabinet, Welles still found time to keep a detailed diary that has become one of the key documents for understanding the inner workings of the Lincoln administration. In this new edition, William E. and Erica L. Gienapp have restored Welles's original observations, gleaned from the manuscript diaries at the Library of Congress and freed from his many later revisions, so that the reader can experience what he wrote in the moment. With his vitriolic pen, Welles captures the bitter disputes over strategy and war aims, lacerates colleagues from Secretary of State William H. Seward to General-in-Chief Henry Halleck, and condemns the actions of the self-serving southern elite he sees as responsible for the war. He just as easily waxes eloquent about the Navy's wartime achievements, extols the virtues of Lincoln, and drops in a tidbit of Washington gossip.Carefully edited and extensively annotated, this edition contains a wealth of supplementary material. The appendixes include short biographies of the members of Lincoln's cabinet, the retrospective Welles wrote after leaving office covering the period missing from the diary proper, and important letters regarding naval matters and international law.