Lincoln

by Gore Vidal Book 2 in the Narratives of Empire series.

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4.0(45)

The novel opens as Abraham Lincoln arrives in Washington in 1861 to assume a presidency already threatened by secession. Vidal follows the new administration through the competing perspectives of Mary Todd Lincoln, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edwin M. Stanton, John Hay and other figures around the White House. Cabinet rivalry, patronage and social life continue while armies are raised, defeats are absorbed and the conflict expands from a struggle to preserve the Union into a war that will also destroy slavery.

Rather than presenting Lincoln only as a distant national monument, the novel depicts a calculating and adaptable politician who must manage ambitious colleagues, public hostility and crushing personal loss. The narrative covers the Civil War, emancipation, Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Lincoln’s re-election before moving towards the Confederate collapse and John Wilkes Booth’s assassination plot. Political strategy and domestic strain remain inseparable, making the book both a portrait of Lincoln and an account of how presidential power changed under the pressure of civil war.

Historical Periods

Battle of Gettysburg1863 CE Siege of Vicksburg1863 CE Emancipation and Reconstruction1863–1877 CE Abolitionism & American Slaveryc. 1830–1865 CE

Genres

Biographical Fiction Court & Political Fiction War Fiction

Historical people

Abraham Lincoln1809–1865 Ulysses S. Grant1822–1885 Mary Todd Lincoln1818–1882 William H. Seward1801–1872 Salmon P. Chase1808–1873 Edwin M. Stanton1814–1869 John Hay1838–1905 John Wilkes Booth1838–1865