1858: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and the War They Failed to See

Highly recommendeda gripping narrative of the critical year of 1858 and the nation's slide toward disunion and war. Chadwick is especially adept at retelling the intense emotions of this critical time, particularly especially in recounting abolitionist opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act and Jefferson Davis's passionate defense of this institution. For readers seeking to understand how individuals are agents of historical change will find Chadwick's account of the failed leadership of President James Buchanan, especially compelling.

-G. Kurt Piehler, author of Remembering War the American Way and Associate Professor of History, The University of Tennessee

1858 explores the events and personalities of the year that would send the America's North and South on a collision course culminating in the slaughter of 630,000 of the nation's young men, a greater number than died in any other American conflict. The record of that year is told in seven separate stories, each participant, though unaware, is linked to the oncoming tragedy by the central, though ineffective, figure of that time, the man in the White House, President James Buchanan.

The seven figures who suddenly leap onto history's stage and shape the great moments to come are: Jefferson Davis, who lived a life out of a Romantic novel, and who almost died from herpes simplex of the eye; the disgruntled Col. Robert E. Lee, who had to decide whether he would stay in the military or return to Virginia to run his family's plantation; William Tecumseh Sherman, one of the great Union generals, who had been reduced to running a roadside food stand in Kansas; the uprising of eight abolitionists in Oberlin, Ohio, who freed aslave apprehended by slave catchers, and set off a fiery debate across America; a dramatic speech by New York Senator William Seward in Rochester, which foreshadowed the civil war and which seemed to solidify his hold on the 1860 Republican Presidential nomination; John Brown's raid on a plantation in Missouri, where he freed several slaves, and marched them eleven hundred miles to Canada, to be followed a year later by his catastrophic attack on Harper's Ferry; and finally, Illinois Senator Steven Douglas' seven historic debates with little-known Abraham Lincoln in the Illinois Senate race, that would help bring the ambitious and determined Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States.

As these stories unfold, the reader learns how the country reluctantly stumbled towards that moment in April 1861 when the Southern army opened fire on Fort Sumter.

"Former journalist Chadwick (The General and Mrs. Washington) deals with much more than the previously underappreciated year of 1858 in this engagingly written book. By focusing on the men who drove crucial historical events, Chadwick provides plenty of pre-1858 background to make his case that the events of that year 'changed the lives of dozens of important people' and 'within a few short years, the history of the nation.' Chadwick examines the lives of six who would become the biggest players in the Civil War: Lincoln, Davis, Sherman, Lee, Grant and William Seward, and two others — John Brown and Stephen Douglas — whose actions helped precipitate the conflict. He also offers an insightful look at the enigmatic, eccentric man who was in the White House in 1858, Democrat James Buchanan of Pennsylvania. Chadwick shows clearly how Buchanan dithered — on the slavery issue and in foolish foreign adventures in Paraguay, Mexico and Cuba, among other things — while Rome was about to burn. Buchanan, Chadwick correctly notes, 'was certainly not the sole cause of the Civil War,' just 'one of many, but his ineffectiveness as chief executive dealt a crippling blow to the nation.'" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Chadwick (Rutgers U. and New Jersey City U.) is one of the foremost contemporary experts on the American Civil War. In 1858, he chronicles the inevitability of the war, and how modern leaders ignored the signs that would soon lead to civil disunion. The author profiles Lincoln, Davis, Lee and Grant, and how each man contributed to the destruction that occurred three years later, causing the deaths of 630,000 men. This is an intelligent and cogent perspective that will entertain American History enthusiasts. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)