San Antonio College Library

"Father Abraham challenges recent portraits of Lincoln as an essentially passive politician and reluctant abolitionist. Exhaustively researched and crisply argued, this superb book gives us a new appreciation of Lincoln as moral leader."--Jacket.

Part memoir and part history, the book is an account of John E. Washington's childhood among African Americans in Washington, DC, and of the black people who knew or encountered Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. Washington recounted stories told by his grandmother's elderly friends--stories of escaping from slavery, meeting Lincoln in the capitol, learning of the president's assassination, and hearing ghosts at Ford's Theatre. He also mined the US government...

Lincoln s reelection in 1864 was a pivotal moment in the history of the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation had officially gone into effect on January 1, 1863, and the proposed Thirteenth Amendment had become a campaign issue. Lincoln and Freedom: Slavery, Emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment captures these historic times, profiling the individuals, events, and enactments that led to slavery s abolition. Fifteen leading Lincoln scholars...