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Abraham Lincoln And The Great Secession Winter 1860-1861
Simon & Schuster
November 2008
On Sale: October 21, 2008
Featuring: Abraham Lincoln
320 pages
ISBN: 0743289471
EAN: 9780743289474
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
One of our most eminent Lincoln scholars, winner of a
Lincoln Prize for his Lincoln at Cooper Union,
examines the four months between Lincoln's election and
inauguration, when the president-elect made the most
important decision of his coming presidency -- there would
be no compromise on slavery or secession of the slaveholding
states, even at the cost of civil war. Abraham Lincoln
first demonstrated his determination and leadership in the
Great Secession Winter -- the four months between his
election in November 1860 and his inauguration in March 1861
-- when he rejected compromises urged on him by Republicans
and Democrats, Northerners and Southerners, that might have
preserved the Union a little longer but would have enshrined
slavery for generations. Though Lincoln has been criticized
by many historians for failing to appreciate the severity of
the secession crisis that greeted his victory, Harold Holzer
shows that the presidentelect waged a shrewd and complex
campaign to prevent the expansion of slavery while vainly
trying to limit secession to a few Deep South
states. During this most dangerous White House transition
in American history, the country had two presidents: one
powerless (the president-elect, possessing no constitutional
authority), the other paralyzed (the incumbent who refused
to act). Through limited, brilliantly timed and crafted
public statements, determined private letters, tough
political pressure, and personal persuasion, Lincoln
guaranteed the integrity of the American political process
of majority rule, sounded the death knell of slavery, and
transformed not only his own image but that of the
presidency, even while making inevitable the war that would
be necessary to make these achievements
permanent. Lincoln President-Elect is the first
book to concentrate on Lincoln's public stance and private
agony during these months and on the momentous consequences
when he first demonstrated his determination and leadership.
Holzer recasts Lincoln from an isolated prairie politician
yet to establish his greatness, to a skillful shaper of men
and opinion and an immovable friend of freedom at a decisive
moment when allegiance to the founding credo "all men are
created equal" might well have been sacrificed.
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