Starred Review. Critically acclaimed historian Flood (Grant and Sherman:
The Friendship that Won the Civil War) provides a brilliant, compelling account of
Lincoln's dramatic final full year of life-a year in which the war finally turned
in the Union's favor and Lincoln faced a tough battle for re-election. After Union
defeats at the Battle of Cold Harbor and the siege of Petersburg, Confederate
General Jubal Early came within five miles of Washington, D.C., before he was
beaten back; General Sherman's September victory at Atlanta followed, with his
bloody march to the sea. At the same time, Lincoln found himself running against
his own secretary of the treasury, Salmon Chase, for the Republican nomination,
and then against the Democrat (and general) George B. McClellan for the presidency.
Lincoln won by a narrow popular majority, but a significant electoral majority.
At the close of 1864, as Lincoln celebrated both his re-election and the coming end
of the war, John Wilkes Booth laid down an ambitious plan for kidnapping that soon
evolved into a map for murder. Combining a novelist's flair with the authority and
deep knowledge of a scholar, Flood artfully integrates this complex web of storylines.
16 pages of b&w photos, maps.

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