Description
Book SynopsisBetween Abraham Lincoln's election in November 1860 and his departure for Washington three months later, journalist Henry Villard sent scores of dispatches from Springfield, Illinois, to various newspapers describing the president-elect's doings. With Sixteenth President-in-Waiting Michael Burlingame has collected all of these dispatches in one insightful and informative volume.
Trade Review“Michael Burlingame keeps collecting and editing important Lincoln materials. This time, Burlingame has found, compiled, and edited, in chronological order and with informed annotations, the almost daily reports of brilliant young journalist Henry Villard on Lincoln’s three months as president-elect. Villard’s dispatches to the
New York Herald and two other newspapers provide revealing information on Lincoln’s daily routine as president-elect—his personality, physical appearance, reception of visitors—and on life in Springfield. The dispatches are filled with humorous anecdotes. Villard’s well-written newspaper reports from Springfield are the best source that we have on Lincoln during the critical months after his election, when he was waiting to become president, and as secession was unfolding in the lower South. General readers as well as historians owe Burlingame a debt of gratitude for this valuable edition of Villard’s dispatches.”—William C. Harris, author of
Lincoln and Congress“Nobody knows better than Michael Burlingame that rarely consulted files of old newspapers contain ‘high-grade ore for the historian’s smelter.’ His magisterial biography of Abraham Lincoln, published a decade ago, made ample use of such material. In this volume, Burlingame ably excavates the writings of journalist Henry Villard, the most astute correspondent posted to Springfield, Illinois, during the fateful months following the 1860 election. Day after day, Villard described Lincoln’s emerging response to the dreadful and unexpected reality of Southern disunion. When secessionists spurned Lincoln’s assurances that he had ‘no right to meddle with slavery’ in the states where it already existed and no wish to impose ‘Negro equality,’ Villard realized that the incoming president might ultimately have to use force to maintain the Union. The taut drama captured in these long-ago dispatches will command the attention of scholars and the wider reading public.” —Daniel W. Crofts, author of
Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Union
