Midnight on the Potomac
The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
From the author of The Ground Breaking, longlisted for the National Book Award, comes a riveting saga of the last year of the Civil War—and a revealing new account of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Told with a page-turning pace, New York Times bestselling author and historian Scott Ellsworth has written the most compelling new book about the Civil War in years. Focusing on the last, desperate months of the war, when the outcome was far from certain, Midnight on the Potomac is a story of titanic battles, political upheaval, and the long-forgotten Confederate terror war against the loyal citizens of the North. Taking us behind the scenes in the White House, along the battlefronts in Virginia, and into the conspiracies of spies and secret agents, Lincoln walks these pages, as do Grant and Sherman. But so do common soldiers, runaway slaves, and an unknown but intrepid female war correspondent named Lois Adams. Rarely, if ever, has a book about the Civil War featured such a rich and diverse cast of characters.
Midnight on the Potomac will also shatter some long-held myths. For more than a century and a half, the Lincoln assassination has been portrayed as the sole brainchild of a disgruntled, pro-South actor. But based on both obscure contemporary accounts and decades of long-ignored scholarship, Ellsworth reveals that for nearly one year before the tragic events at Ford’s Theatre, John Wilkes Booth had been working closely with agents of the Confederate Secret Service. And the real Booth is far from the one we’ve long been presented with.
Deeply researched yet captivatingly written, Midnight on the Potomac is a new kind of book about the Civil War. In it you will read about the Confederate attempt to burn down New York City, how Lincoln almost lost the presidency, about the Rebel general who nearly captured Washington, and how thousands of enslaved African Americans freed themselves—and helped secure their nation’s survival. In an age of deep political division such as our own, Scott Ellsworth’s book is an eloquent and gripping testament to the courage, grit, and greatness of the American people.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Horrific battles, murderous intrigues, and dramatic reversals of fortune animate this rousing panorama of the Civil War's climax. Historian Ellsworth (The Ground Breaking) recaps the concluding year of the conflict, from the spring of 1864, when war-weariness gripped the North and President Lincoln was expected to lose the November election, to the April 1865 surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's army and the inauguration of Lincoln for a second term—followed by his murder. Ellsworth's episodic narrative includes gripping combat scenes from Union general Ulysses S. Grant's victorious campaign, but the focus is more on Confederate intrigues in Washington, D.C., especially on John Wilkes Booth's conspiracy to first kidnap, and then assassinate, Lincoln. Ellsworth's fascinating portrait of Booth paints him as a charismatic figure—he was a star actor whose good looks, intensity, and stage swashbuckling captivated audiences—but also a rabid racist seething with a prickly sense of entitlement. The Booth-Lincoln showdown embodies a rich view of the Civil War as a contest between irreconcilable societies: a South shackled to a dying slave system, and a dynamic North moving, slowly but surely, toward racial equality—prodded along by the freedmen, Black soldiers, and activists demanding justice whom Ellsworth spotlights. It's a passionate and elegant chronicle of one of the most dramatic years in American history, torn agonizingly between triumph and tragedy.
