Review by Choice Review
There have been a number of excellent books on Abraham Lincoln's presidency in recent years, but Winkle (Univ. of Nebraska) offers a new view of the drama, intrigue, and politics that swirled around the president during the crucial years of the Civil War. The author explores the role the nation's capital and its residents played in the course of the war, providing a variety of perspectives on a conflict that touched and changed all who lived there. Washington was ground zero for the abolitionist movement, front row for the war in Virginia, and a hotbed of debate and history-making decisions. But it was also a place where real people lived their lives in tumultuous times, and Winkle's examination of the various groups inhabiting the city demonstrates how the war changed the US in both momentous and subtle ways. Famous names (such as Fredrick Douglass, Walt Whitman, and Clara Barton) take their place in the cast of wartime Washingtonians, but Winkler also brings to light the triumphs and tragedies of unknown Americans. The author's prose is both informative and entertaining, making the book one of the best recent Civil War histories. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. S. J. Ramold Eastern Michigan University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
During the Civil War, Washington, D.C., was a boomtown. Against the distant sound of cannon fire, the city multiplied in size as various groups of people flowed in. Office seekers, military casualties, and escaping slaves lent the city a turbulent wartime sociology that Winkle probes. First, however, he depicts antebellum Washington during Abraham Lincoln's 1847-49 term in Congress. Recounting Lincoln's and fellow antislavery politicians' encounters with the peculiar institution, Winkle underscores the complicated legal conditions imposed on blacks, free and enslaved. He carries the legal scaffolding of D.C. slavery into the war years, when Congress abolished it by gradations, and details each step's ramifications on Washington's blacks and whites. Lincoln's personal and political part in these proceedings does not dominate but rather supplements Winkle's narratives of people drawn into the city as battle casualties or fugitives from slavery. His anecdotes of individual cases usefully illustrate his deployment of statistics about hospitals and refugee camps. Reminiscent of Margaret Leech's classic Reveille in Washington (1941), Winkle's history modernizes a story ever attractive to Civil War readers.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Though one might assume the man atop the eponymous citadel would get the most attention, the newest from Lincoln biographer Winkle (The Young Eagle) is really about the nation's capital-how it weathered and changed during the Civil War-and the citizens, slaves, and soldiers who lived in and moved through it. He describes his account as an "interior history" of Washington, D.C.-a phrase borrowed from Walt Whitman, from when the poet was in the city to find his brother George, who had been wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg-and that description is right on the money. Beginning with a portrait of the city before the war, Winkle examines the capital's conflicted relationship with slavery, as well as the political implications of its unique geographical location-it's not quite the North, and it's not quite the South. When the Civil War finally starts, Winkle hits his stride, describing a community far more divided and dangerous than most people today can appreciate. Far from being a unified bastion of antislavery pols, the capital was plagued with interior troubles and threatened by encroaching Rebel forces. Well-researched and thoroughly engaging, Winkle's history is a welcome addition to a body of Civil War literature that too often privileges men and massacres. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Winkle (history, Univ. of Nebraska; The Young Eagle), a noted Lincoln biographer, keeps Lincoln and his administration center stage here. This is not a brick-and-mortar study of Civil War Washington, DC, as experienced by its average citizens but rather a description of political and military life in the U.S. capital from Lincoln's term in the House of Representatives (1847-49) to the end of the Civil War. Winkle's discussion of the future president's life in Washington during the 1840s makes for an engaging introduction. Moving forward, he offers plenty of details and statistics-on everything from the size of herds of horses in the capital to wages for contraband slaves-demonstrating his impressive research; the results may be overwhelming for anyone with only a passing interest in the Civil War. Still, with his absorbing narrative style, Winkle makes an extraordinary amount of information reasonably accessible, and Lincoln and the city's political context prove the backbone of this book. The extensive notes section will aid serious readers. (Index not seen.) VERDICT This well-written volume, with its distinctive perspective on America's Civil War president, will appeal to anyone with a background in Civil War history.-Sara Miller, Atlanta (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A skillful portrait of the nation's capital as microcosm of a nation divided. When newly elected President Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington, D.C., writes Winkle (History/Univ. of Nebraska; Abraham and Mary Lincoln, 2011, etc.), he came to a city that had a strong reputation as what one British abolitionist called "the chief seat of the American slave-trade." Indeed, slavery persisted there even when Lincoln took office, and when, in December 1861, a Massachusetts congressman proposed its abolition, the debate dragged on for months as "opponents raised a sweep of objections." The Confederacy, well aware that slave owners and sympathizers were abundant in the capital, longed to seize Washington; by the end of the war, under Lincoln's orders, it was probably the most heavily fortified city in the world, ringed by dozens of forts and artillery emplacements--and even so, the target of Rebel forays. Lincoln's experiment in siege craft did not have to be applied to other cities, but he tested other innovations there, including the suspension of habeas corpus and the use of federal troops to maintain order. Moreover, Winkle notes in a particularly timely passage, concerns for Lincoln's safety were so pressing that federal officials embarked on a secret, not strictly legal program of spying on presumed opponents, potential assassins and other conspirators. Lincoln's years in the city coincided, necessarily, with the establishment of the great national cemetery at Arlington and other hallowed sites in the capital, while he himself established certain protocols, such as visiting wounded soldiers in hospitals, in which he might have laid eyes on Louisa May Alcott and Walt Whitman. By the end of the war, Lincoln and his lieutenants had converted Washington from a sleepy Southern town into one that was "increasingly northern in outlook and character." A deep-reaching study of a city in wartime, which Washingtonians and visitors, to say nothing of students of the Civil War, will find to be of great interest.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
