Synopses & Reviews
During the Civil War, few outside Abraham Lincoln's immediate circle of family, friends, and advisors had as much access to the president as young California journalist Noah Brooks. New England born, Brooks had lived in Illinois -- where he first met Lincoln -- before migrating to California. The Sacramento Daily Union posted him to Washington, D.C., in 1862. From the Union capital, Brooks filed dispatches that were unusually candid, not only because he and the president were so close, but also because of the delay between the time Brooks filed his stories and their publication in Washington. Meeting with Lincoln nearly daily during the last two and a half years of the war, Brooks witnessed firsthand the president's actions and was privy to his thoughts and feelings about political enemies and the evolving purpose of the war. The relationship was such that Brooks was slated to be the President's personal secretary during the second term.
Brooks's famous 1895 memoir, Washington in Lincoln's Time included none of the raw material -- wartime dispatches, selected letters, and personal reminiscences -- which Michael Burlingame collects for the first time in Lincoln Observed. This new volume provides a singular perspective on Lincoln's last years and a solid appraisal of the president's personality and politics. It also reveals much about Washington politics during those anxious times and reflects public in the North about the conduct of the war. Lincoln Observed offers an intimate portrait of Abraham Lincoln and a riveting insider's account of Washington during the Civil War.
Synopsis
During the Civil War, few outside Abraham Lincoln's immediate circle of family, friends, and advisors had as much access to the president as young California journalist Noah Brooks, who first met Lincoln in Illinois. As the Washington correspondent for the Sacramento Daily Union during the Civil War, Brooks met with Lincoln nearly daily between 1862 and 1865 and was privy to many of the president's decisions and thoughts. Brooks's dispatches, letters, and personal reminiscences -- collected here for the first time by noted Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame -- offer an intimate portrait of Abraham Lincoln himself as well as an engrossing account of life and politics in wartime Washington.