Lincoln S Pathfinder

The election of 1856 was the most violent peacetime election in American history. Amid all the violence, the campaign of the new Republican Party, headed by famed explorer John C. Frémont, offered a ray of hope that had never before been seen in the politics of the nation—a major party dedicated to limiting the spread of slavery. For the first time, women and African Americans became actively engaged in a presidential contest, and the candidate's wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, played a central role in both planning and executing strategy while being a public face of the campaign. The 1856 campaign was also run against the backdrop of a country on the move, with settlers continuing to spread westward facing unimagined horrors, a terrible natural disaster that took hundreds of lives in the South, and one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in history, which set the stage for the Civil War. Frémont lost, but his strong showing in the North proved that a sectional party could win a national election, blazing the trail for Abraham Lincoln's victory four years later.

The election of 1856 was the most violent peacetime election in American history. Amid all the violence, the campaign of the new Republican Party, headed by famed explorer John C. Fremont, offered a ray of hope that had never before been seen in the politics of the nation a major party dedicated to limiting the spread of slavery. For the first time, women and African Americans became actively engaged in a presidential contest, and the candidate s wife, Jessie Benton Fremont, played a central role in both planning and executing strategy while being a public face of the campaign. Even enslaved black people in the South took hope from Fremont s crusade. The 1856 campaign was also run against the backdrop of a country on the move, with settlers continuing to spread westward facing unimagined horrors, a terrible natural disaster that took hundreds of lives in the South, and one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in history, which set the stage for the Civil War to come. Fremont lost, but his strong showing in the North proved that a sectional party could win a national election, blazing the trail for Abraham Lincoln s victory four years later."

The Pathfinder is a novel in which West Point graduate Lincoln Davis comes to realize that Vietnamese orphaned girls were not being captured by enemy forces as assumed; rather, they were being forced into an international human trafficking scheme. With the assistance of a friend and fellow West Pointer, Lincoln Davis arranges for two Vietnamese sisters to testify against those who took the girls into captivity under the cover of war. In The Pathfinder, Lincoln Davis becomes a soldier at war with the known enemy in the jungles of Vietnam. The battles of an infantry unit in Vietnam present a variety of life-threatening challenges. However, the battle of the unknown enemy in a human trafficking scheme reveals that war comes in a variety of settings. Bringing the bad guys into court and providing a loving family for young displaced heroes doesn't guarantee that the battle is over in the end.

Burlingame interprets Lincoln’s private life, discussing his marriage to Mary Todd, the untimely death of his son Willie to disease in 1862, and his recurrent anguish over the enormous human costs of the war.

“If you read one book about Lincoln, make it A. Lincoln.”—USA Today NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The Philadelphia Inquirer • The Christian Science Monitor • St. Louis Post-Dispatch. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER AWARD Everyone wants to define the man who signed his name “A. Lincoln.” In his lifetime and ever since, friend and foe have taken it upon themselves to characterize Lincoln according to their own label or libel. In this magnificent book, Ronald C. White, Jr., offers a fresh and compelling definition of Lincoln as a man of integrity–what today’s commentators would call “authenticity”–whose moral compass holds the key to understanding his life. Through meticulous research of the newly completed Lincoln Legal Papers, as well as of recently discovered letters and photographs, White provides a portrait of Lincoln’s personal, political, and moral evolution. White shows us Lincoln as a man who would leave a trail of thoughts in his wake, jotting ideas on scraps of paper and filing them in his top hat or the bottom drawer of his desk; a country lawyer who asked questions in order to figure out his own thinking on an issue, as much as to argue the case; a hands-on commander in chief who, as soldiers and sailors watched in amazement, commandeered a boat and ordered an attack on Confederate shore batteries at the tip of the Virginia peninsula; a man who struggled with the immorality of slavery and as president acted publicly and privately to outlaw it forever; and finally, a president involved in a religious odyssey who wrote, for his own eyes only, a profound meditation on “the will of God” in the Civil War that would become the basis of his finest address. Most enlightening, the Abraham Lincoln who comes into focus in this stellar narrative is a person of intellectual curiosity, comfortable with ambiguity, unafraid to “think anew and act anew.” A transcendent, sweeping, passionately written biography that greatly expands our knowledge and understanding of its subject, A. Lincoln will engage a whole new generation of Americans. It is poised to shed a profound light on our greatest president just as America commemorates the bicentennial of his birth.

Robert W. Johannsen, professor emeritus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is one of the leading Jacksonian- and Civil War-era historians of his generation. Works such as his Stephen A. Douglas and To the Halls of the Montezumas have cemented his place in period scholarship. He also has mentored literally dozens of professional historians. In his honor, eleven of his students have gathered to contribute new essays on the period's history. On display here are cutting-edge examinations of thought and culture in the late Jacksonian era, new considerations of Manifest Destiny, and fascinating interpretations of the lives of the two political giants of the period, Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. Democratic Party politics and Civil War-era religion also come into play.

In this book, Marszalek traces the sixteenth president's evolution from a nonmilitary politician into the commander in chief who won the Civil War, demonstrating why Lincoln remains America's greatest military president. Based primarily on Lincoln's own words, this succinct volume offers an easily-accessible window into a critical period in the life of Abraham Lincoln and the history of the nation.