Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington

By Ted Widmer

Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, History

Historian Ted Widmer's 2020 book follows Abraham Lincoln's thirteen-day train journey from Springfield, Illinois, to Washington in February 1861, as the president-elect traveled to his inauguration while Southern states were leaving the Union. At stop after stop he addressed crowds, testing his words before a nervous public. Widmer also traces the plot to assassinate him in Baltimore, which forced a secret nighttime passage through the city, and the anxious capital awaiting him.

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