|
|
|
Review Notices
Dear Mr. Lincoln
Letters to the President
Edited by Harold Holzer
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993, reprint 2006. Pp. xvii, 381. Illustrations, notes, index. $24.95.)
The Lincoln Mailbag
America Writes to the President, 1861–1865
Edited by Harold Holzer
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998, reprint 2006. Pp. xxxv, 245. Illustrations, index. $22.95.)
An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln
John G. Nicolay's Interviews and Essays
Edited by Michael Burlingame
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1996, reprint 2006. Pp. xix, 168. Notes, index. $19.95.)
With Lincoln in the White House Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay, 1860–1865
Edited by Michael Burlingame
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000, reprint 2006. Pp. xxi, 274. Notes, index. $22.95.)
|
| The approach of the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth seems to have induced Southern Illinois University Press to produce paperback editions of four interesting books that highlight Lincoln's relation to Americans via his private secretaries. The Lincoln White House received somewhere between 250 and 500 pieces of mail each day, out of which his secretaries selected 10 to 20 for his personal attention. Dear Mr. Lincoln presents the text of letters seen by Lincoln between 1860 and 1865, organizing them into ten topical categories—advice, requests, compliments, complaints, inventions, gifts, business, invitations, family matters, and threats. Harold Holzer prefaces each chapter with an introduction and makes note of the nature or existence of the president's replies. Holzer's second volume, The Lincoln Mailbag, grew out of interest in the first. It presents additional letters seen by Lincoln as well as many that were simply forwarded to others for reply. Like the first volume, this also contains annotation regarding his replies, though these letters are presented in chronological order without prefatory commentary. |
|
Michael Burlingame focused his analysis on one of Lincoln's secretaries, the Bavarian-born immigrant John G. Nicolay who lived in Indiana (among other places) before settling in Illinois where he met the future president. With Lincoln in the White House presents the secretary's letters and writings organized chronologically for the years of the presidency. After Lincoln's death, Nicolay set out to write a history of the presidency and interviewed a variety of people in Springfield, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. in the 1870s and 1880s. Feeling that the information gleaned was too personal, Nicolay eventually decided against using the material in Abraham Lincoln: A History (1890), written with another White House secretary, John Hay. In An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln, Burlingame edits the interviews and presents them largely in the chronological order in which the interviews were conducted. For his collective work on Nicolay, Burlingame received the Lincoln Prize Honorable Mention in 2001.
|
|
| NOTE: Only An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln was reviewed in the IMH (March 1997). |
|
|
|
Fighting for Liberty and Right
The Civil War Diary of William Bluffton Miller, 1st Sergeant, Company K, 75th Indiana Volunteer Infantry
Edited by Jeffrey L. Patrick and Robert J. Willey
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005. Pp. xi, 422. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $42.00.)
|
| The editors of this book have chronologically organized the wartime diary entries of Sergeant William Bluffton Miller of the 75th Indiana Volunteer Infantry, added historical and military context to each set of entries, and provided a brief biographical sketch of Miller as a soldier. The diary chronicles Miller's involvement in some of the most important campaigns in the Western theater, and it also uncovers the private journey of one man through the Civil War. In his writing, Miller grapples with his assumptions about race, within the context of the nation's past and of his own vision of the future. |
|
|
|
Indiana Civil War Veterans
Transcription of the Death Rolls of the Department of Indiana, Grand Army of the Republic, 1882–1948
By Dennis Northcott
(St. Louis, Mo.: Dennis Northcott, 2005. Pp. ix, 400. Appendices. Paperbound, $29.99. Order from www.ngpublications.com)
. . . |
There are about 1840 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
