by Walter Stahr
Release Date: August 8, 2017
Walter Stahr, award-winning author of the New York Times
bestseller Seward, tells the story of Abraham Lincoln’s indispensable
Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, the man the president entrusted with raising
the army that preserved the Union.
Of the crucial men close to President Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton
(1814–1869) was the most powerful and controversial. Stanton raised, armed, and
supervised the army of a million men who won the Civil War. He organized the
war effort. He directed military movements from his telegraph office, where
Lincoln literally hung out with him. He arrested and imprisoned thousands for
“war crimes,” such as resisting the draft or calling for an armistice. Stanton
was so controversial that some accused him at that time of complicity in
Lincoln’s assassination. He was a stubborn genius who was both reviled and
revered in his time.
Stanton was a Democrat before the war and a prominent trial lawyer. He opposed
slavery, but only in private. He served briefly as President Buchanan’s
Attorney General and then as Lincoln’s aggressive Secretary of War. On the
night of April 14, 1865, Stanton rushed to Lincoln’s deathbed and took over the
government since Secretary of State William Seward had been critically wounded
the same evening. He informed the nation of the President’s death, summoned
General Grant to protect the Capitol, and started collecting the evidence from
those who had been with the Lincolns at the theater in order to prepare a
murder trial.
Now with this worthy complement to the enduring library of biographical
accounts of those who helped Lincoln preserve the Union, Stanton honors
the indispensable partner of the sixteenth president. Walter Stahr’s essential
book is the first major biography of Stanton in fifty years, restoring this
underexplored figure to his proper place in American history.
About the Author
Walter Stahr is
the author of John Jay: Founding Father, a biography of America’s first
Supreme Court Chief Justice. He lives in Exeter, New Hampshire, and Newport
Beach, California.
ISBN 978-1476739304, Simon & Schuster, © 2017,
Hardcover, 736 pages, Photographs & Illustrations, Cast of Characters, Chronology,
End Notes, Bibliography & Index. $32.50. To purchase this book click HERE.
No comments:
Post a Comment