1861 puts us in the young nation that was about to shed its skin and begin life as something new.' -Richard Ben Cramer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize 'No one could capture Whitman's 'hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year' more vividly than Adam Goodheart has done in this magnificent book. The result is that rarest of history books: a work of remarkable original scholarship crafted into an irresistible read.' -Harold Holzer, chairman of The Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation and author of Lincoln President-Elect 'Adam Goodheart brings to this book a rare combination of talent: passion and precision as a historian, grace and generosity as a writer.

Major and minor characters, political movements, and whole towns and villages come alive under Goodheart's expert scrutiny.

Penetrating, eloquent, and deeply moving, this is a classic introduction to the nation's greatest conflict.' -Tony Horwitz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of Confederates in the Attic 'Combining a master historian's sure command of original sources and a novelist's deft touch with character and narrative, Adam Goodheart has produced the young century's liveliest book about how a generation of remarkable and ordinary Americans alike variously provoked, resisted, and endured the dissolution of their country and the tragic march toward civil war. Sumter, secession, and Lincoln appear in a wonderfully fresh and illuminating light, supported by a cast of extraordinary players that few Americans know about. Adam Goodheart takes us from the corridors of the White House to the slums of Manhattan, from the mouth of the Chesapeake to the deserts of Nevada, from Boston Common to Alcatraz Island, vividly evoking the Union at this moment of ultimate crisis and decision.Īdvance praise for Adam Goodheart's 1861 ' 1861 is the best book I have ever read on the start of the Civil War. The book introduces us to a heretofore little-known cast of Civil War heroes-among them an acrobatic militia colonel, an explorer's wife, an idealistic band of German immigrants, a regiment of New York City firemen, a community of Virginia slaves, and a young college professor who would one day become president. It set Abraham Lincoln on the path to greatness and millions of slaves on the road to freedom. Early in that fateful year, a second American revolution unfolded, inspiring a new generation to reject their parents' faith in compromise and appeasement, to do the unthinkable in the name of an ideal. 1861 is an epic of courage and heroism beyond the battlefields. As the United States marks the 150th anniversary of our defining national drama, 1861 presents a gripping and original account of how the Civil War began.

1861 by adam goodheart