A Great and Good Man: Rare, First-Hand Accounts of Abraham Lincoln - by Jonathan White & William Griffing (Paperback)

About the Book

One hundred sixty years after Abraham Lincoln's death it can be difficult to find sources that shed new light on his life, but that is exactly what Jonathan W. White and William J. Griffing have done. A Great and Good Man provides excerpts from more than 200 previously unpublished accounts written by men and women who lived during the Civil War. Some saw Lincoln deliver speeches, review the troops, or light up cigars with soldiers. Others offer pointed commentary on his policies and decisions. Through these selections, readers get an in-depth and at times startling view of the Civil War era, from the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 to the assassination in 1865. Many of the writers loved Lincoln while others reviled him. Some thought he was a good-looking man while others called him ugly. Along the way, other important figures emerge, including Lincoln's Cabinet members William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edwin M. Stanton, generals like Ulysses S. Grant and George B. McClellan, politicians like Stephen A. Douglas, Andrew Johnson, and Horace Greeley, and Lincoln's wife, Mary Lincoln. An extraordinary portrait of the Civil War drawn from unlikely sources, A Great and Good Man should be in the library of every Lincoln and Civil War enthusiast.

About the Author

Jonathan W. White is professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is the prize-winning author or editor of 18 books, including his first children's book, My Day with Abe Lincoln. He serves as vice chair of The Lincoln Forum, on the boards of directors of the Abraham Lincoln Association and the Abraham Lincoln Institute, and on the Ford's Theatre Advisory Council. In 2023 he won the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize for A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House. William J. Griffing enjoyed a successful thirty-year career in the Environment, Safety & Health field, holding positions at the Department of Labor and the Department of Energy before serving as the ES&H Director at both the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Since retiring, he has dedicated a significant amount of his time to preserving American history, with a particular focus on the Civil War era.