In Their Letters, in Their Words

In Their Letters, in Their Words

Author: Mark Flotow

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press

Published: 2019-10-14

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0809337630

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WINNER, Russell P. Strange Memorial Book of the Year Award from the Illinois State Historical Society, 2020! A vital lifeline to home during the Civil War, the letters of soldiers to their families and friends remain a treasure for those seeking to connect with and understand the most turbulent period of American history. Rather than focus on the experiences of a few witnesses, this impressively researched book documents 165 Illinois Civil War soldiers’ and sailors’ lives through the lens of their personal letters. Editor Mark Flotow chose a variety of letter writers who hailed from counties throughout the state, served in different branches of the military at different ranks, and represented the gamut of social experiences and war outcomes. Flotow provides extensive quotations from the letters. By allowing the soldiers to speak for themselves, he captures what mattered most to them. Illinois soldiers wrote about their reasons for enlisting; the nature of training and duties; necessities like eating, sleeping, marching, and making the best of often harsh and chaotic circumstances; Southern culture; slavery; their opinions of commanding officers and the president; disease, medicine, and hospitals; their prisoner-of-war experiences; and the ways they left the army. Through letters from afar, many soldiers sought to manage their homes and farms, while some single men attempted to woo their sweethearts. Flotow includes brief biographies for each soldier quoted in the book, weaves historical context and analysis with the letters, and organizes them by topic. Thus, intimate details cited in individual letters reveal their significance for those who lived and shaped this tumultuous era. The result is not only insightful history but also compelling reading.


LIFE LINCOLN

LIFE LINCOLN

Author: The Editors of LIFE

Publisher: Time Inc. Books

Published: 2016-03-15

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 1618932306

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On the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, the editors of LIFE bring readers everything that has been left to us from the life of one of history's most iconic figures. His pictures, actions, words in his speeches and his private letters are analyzed and pointed inward toward the person, to help us understand the man: the heart and soul of the man. This book is about the artifacts that are left us all these years later (letters, speeches and particularly pictures) — things that LIFE can show that allow us to know this man more intimately. And so we, with help from experts and several famous commentators, will show them in our pages, and lead the reader to the clues about Lincoln's essence. Includes chapters such as: "Lincoln Pictured," an introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. A narrative by Allen C. Guelzo, explaining the man and his image — how the image reflects the true man "Who Was Mathew Brady?" — the famous photographer, his life and times, his truths and deceptions (before and after shots from the Gettysburg battlefield, detailing how he moved things around — even bodies — for dramatic impact) The words of Lincoln, in an artifact presentation with removable letters and speeches on archival paper that bring the reader back to the times "The Camera and the White House" — A fascinating chapter on American Presidents and their visual image — Thomas McAvoy's secret snaps of FDR, FDR hiding his legs, JFK's manipulation of photography taken of him, etc. The "book within a book" — the likes of David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Richard Norton Smith, Walter Isaacson, Jon Meachem, Macklemore, Brad Pitt, Maya Angelou, Zadie Smith, Gay Talese, Tom Wolf and more in answer to the question "When you see Lincoln's face, what do you see?"


Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas

Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas

Author: Allen C. Guelzo

Publisher: SIU Press

Published: 2009-01-26

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9780809328611

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Despite the most meager of formal educations, Lincoln had a tremendous intellectual curiosity that drove him into the circle of Enlightenment philosophy and democratic political ideology. And from these, Lincoln developed a set of political convictions that guided him throughout his life and his presidency. This compilation of ten essays from Lincoln scholar Allen C. Guelzo uncovers the hidden sources of Lincoln’s ideas and examines the beliefs that directed his career and brought an end to slavery and the Civil War.


Lincoln and the Jews

Lincoln and the Jews

Author: Jonathan D. Sarna

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2015-03-17

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1250059534

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One hundred and fifty years after Abraham Lincoln's death, the full story of his extraordinary relationship with Jews is told here for the first time. Lincoln and the Jews: A History provides readers both with a captivating narrative of his interactions with Jews, and with the opportunity to immerse themselves in rare manuscripts and images, many from the Shapell Lincoln Collection, that show Lincoln in a way he has never been seen before. Lincoln's lifetime coincided with the emergence of Jews on the national scene in the United States. When he was born, in 1809, scarcely 3,000 Jews lived in the entire country. By the time of his assassination in 1865, large-scale immigration, principally from central Europe, had brought that number up to more than 150,000. Many Americans, including members of Lincoln's cabinet and many of his top generals during the Civil War, were alarmed by this development and treated Jews as second-class citizens and religious outsiders. Lincoln, this book shows, exhibited precisely the opposite tendency. He also expressed a uniquely deep knowledge of the Old Testament, employing its language and concepts in some of his most important writings. He befriended Jews from a young age, promoted Jewish equality, appointed numerous Jews to public office, had Jewish advisors and supporters starting already from the early 1850s, as well as later during his two presidential campaigns, and in response to Jewish sensitivities, even changed the way he thought and spoke about America. Through his actions and his rhetoric—replacing "Christian nation," for example, with "this nation under God"—he embraced Jews as insiders. In this groundbreaking work, the product of meticulous research, historian Jonathan D. Sarna and collector Benjamin Shapell reveal how Lincoln's remarkable relationship with American Jews impacted both his path to the presidency and his policy decisions as president. The volume uncovers a new and previously unknown feature of Abraham Lincoln's life, one that broadened him, and, as a result, broadened America.


The Rhetoric of Lincoln's Letters

The Rhetoric of Lincoln's Letters

Author: Marshall Myers

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2018-07-26

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1476631158

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Lincoln's letters have been cited in countless biographical and critical works yet have received little scholarly attention as a whole. This comprehensive study reveals his letters to be fundamental to understanding his development as a writer. Early on, he employed Hugh Blair's popular idea of developing "taste" in written documents, and carefully studied the letters of his contemporaries. He wrote more than 5000 of his own. As he became more proficient, he employed more sophisticated rhetorical strategies to deal with political opponents, imperious generals and critics of his policies.


Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait

Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait

Author: Herbert Mitgang

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2015-11-24

Total Pages: 824

ISBN-13: 1504028783

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“To say he is ugly is nothing. To add that his figure is grotesque is to convey no adequate impression.” “He is destined to occupy in history…a quaintness, originality, courage, honesty, magnanimity and popular force of character such as have never heretofore…” These starkly different 19th century newspaper depictions describe one and the same man: Abraham Lincoln. Nearly 150 years after his death, Lincoln is universally considered our most beloved U.S. president. Yet in his own time, the reception he received at the hands of journalists was far more mixed. In this essential volume, noted Lincoln scholar Herbert Mitgang has painstakingly gathered the most thorough, wide-ranging collection of actual newspaper accounts that show how Lincoln was portrayed by northern, southern, and foreign newspapers. It reveals a far more beleaguered, less godlike, and finally a richer Lincoln than has come through many other biographies. While often revered in print, for example, he was just as often crucified, even by some newspapers in his home state of Illinois that portrayed him throughout his career as a joker instead of a thinker. Most shockingly, perhaps, one Houston paper wrote after his assassination: “From now until God’s judgment day, the minds of men will not cease to thrill at the killing of Abraham Lincoln.” For those only familiar with the “retouched” versions of Lincoln’s life, Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait offers an often surprising and wholly unsanitized account of how his contemporaries actually saw him before, during, and after the Civil War. It is must read for the serious scholar and Lincoln buff alike.


Making Photography Matter

Making Photography Matter

Author: Cara A. Finnegan

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2015-05-30

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0252097319

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Photography became a dominant medium in cultural life starting in the late nineteenth century. As it happened, viewers increasingly used their reactions to photographs to comment on and debate public issues as vital as war, national identity, and citizenship. Cara A. Finnegan analyzes a wealth of newspaper and magazine articles, letters to the editor, trial testimony, books, and speeches produced by viewers in response to specific photos they encountered in public. From the portrait of a young Lincoln to images of child laborers and Depression-era hardship, Finnegan treats the photograph as a locus for viewer engagement and constructs a history of photography's viewers that shows how Americans used words about images to participate in the politics of their day. As she shows, encounters with photography helped viewers negotiate the emergent anxieties and crises of U.S. public life through not only persuasion but action, as well.


The Eloquent President

The Eloquent President

Author: Ronald C. White

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 0307432173

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The fact that Abraham Lincoln is now universally recognized as America’s greatest political orator would have surprised many of the citizens who voted him into office. Ungainly in stature and awkward in manner, the newly elected Lincoln was considered a Western stump speaker and debater devoid of rhetorical polish. Then, after the outbreak of the Civil War, he stood before the nation to deliver his Message to Congress in Special Session on July 4, 1861, and, as a contemporary editor put it, “some of us who doubted were wrong.” In The Eloquent President, historian Ronald White examines Lincoln’s astonishing oratory and explores his growth as a leader, a communicator, and a man of deepening spiritual conviction. Examining a different speech, address, or public letter in each chapter, White tracks the evolution of Lincoln’s rhetoric from the measured, lawyerly tones of the First Inaugural, to the imaginative daring of the 1862 Annual Message to Congress, to the haunting, immortal poetry of the Gettysburg Address. As a speaker who appealed not to intellect alone, but also to the hearts and souls of citizens, Lincoln persuaded the nation to follow him during the darkest years of the Civil War. Through the speeches and what surrounded them–the great battles and political crises, the president’s private anguish and despair, the impact of his words on the public, the press, and the nation at war–we see the full sweep and meaning of the Lincoln presidency. As he weighs the biblical cadences and vigorous parallel structures that make Lincoln’s rhetoric soar, White identifies a passionate religious strain that most historians have overlooked. It is White’s contention that as president Lincoln not only grew into an inspiring leader and determined commander in chief, but also embarked on a spiritual odyssey that led to a profound understanding of the relationship between human action and divine will. Brilliantly written, boldly original in conception, The Eloquent President blends history, biography, and a deep intuitive appreciation for the quality of Lincoln’s extraordinary mind. With grace and insight, White captures the essence of the four most critical years of Lincoln’s life and makes the great words live for our time in all their power and beauty. From the Hardcover edition.


Letter to Abraham Lincoln (Classic Reprint)

Letter to Abraham Lincoln (Classic Reprint)

Author: Manton Marble

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2018-02-14

Total Pages: 30

ISBN-13: 9780656503629

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Excerpt from Letter to Abraham Lincoln This reprint of Mr. Manton marble's letter to the late President of the United States is made entirely Without the author's knowledge, being undertaken at the instance and expense of gentlemen, two-thirds of whom do not belong to the political party with which Mr. Marble is connected, and who do not even enjoy the pleasure of his acquaintance. As a frank, fearless and manly protest against a gross act of tyranny, it deserves to be read by the descendants of those men who forced a king of England to respect the rights and liberties of his people; as a calm, forcible and logical argument against oppression, it is worthy to be placed side by side with Mr. John Stuart Mill's essay on liberty; as a model of English composition, it is fit to be studied by all those who wish to use their native language courteously, but yet with the vigor which a righteous cause is so well calculated to give. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.