The Lincoln Mailbag: America Writes to the President, 1861-1865

Front Cover
Harold Holzer
SIU Press, Aug 14, 1998 - History - 288 pages

As president, Abraham Lincoln received between two hundred and five hundred letters a day—correspondence from public officials, political allies, and military leaders, as well as letters from ordinary Americans of all races who wanted to share their views with him. Here, and in his critically acclaimed volume Dear Mr. Lincoln, editor Harold Holzer has rescued these voices—sometimes eloquent, occasionally angry, at times poetic—from the obscurity of the archives of the Civil War. The Lincoln Mailbag includes letters written by African Americans, which Lincoln never saw, revealing to readers a more accurate representation of the nation’s mood than even the president knew. This first paperback edition of The Lincoln Mailbag includes a new index and fourteen illustrations, and Holzer’s introduction and annotations provide historical context for the events described and the people who wrote so passionately to their president in Lincoln's America.

 

Contents

Illustrations
xi
Preface
xiii
Acknowledgments
xxiii
Introduction
xxvii
A Note on Editorial Methods
xxxvii
Photo Gallery
xli
1861
1
1862
35
1863
81
1864
119
1865
197
Index
237
Author Bio
245
Back Cover
246
Copyright

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About the author (1998)

Harold Holzer is the senior vice president for external affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among the country’s leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War era, Holzer is the author, coauthor, or editor of twenty-three books—including The Lincoln Image, The Lincoln Family Album, and Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech that Made Abraham Lincoln President—for which he has received numerous awards. He is the cochair of the U.S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

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