Evil Onset

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The Darkest Dawn: 

Lincoln, Booth, and the Great American Tragedy

 

by Thomas Goodrich

 

The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln is chronicled in Thomas Goodrich's book The Darkest Dawn: Lincoln, Booth, and the Great American Tragedy. The book's intricate and captivating story is praised by many; it stands out for fusing the "care of the historian and the flair of the fiction writer.

From the moments inside Ford's Theatre to the ensuing manhunt and national mourning, the book's narrative immediacy allows the reader to be immersed in the events leading up to the assassination. An account as detailed and up-to-date as today's news is given by the writing. It discusses the tragedy, the hunt for the culprits, and the response of the country.
I respect its historical significance, and this is a remarkable book among the Civil War novels I have read.

One of the most tragic incidents in American history, its effects on the country, and the eventual prosecution of the conspirators are all covered in the book. It is important to note that Thomas Goodrich is a writer who has authored other books about the Civil War and related subjects. I found this book to be one I would recommend due to its detailed and vivid account of the Lincoln assassination.

Leader and Wise Man

And There Was Light: 

Abraham Lincoln 

and the American Struggle 

by Jon Meacham

“Once, when a Republican congressman from Massachusetts accused Lincoln of having changed his mind, Lincoln replied, “Yes, I have; and I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."  ― Jon Meacham, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle





The focus of the book is Lincoln's political and personal development, from a practical politician who at first supported union over abolition to a leader who issued the Emancipation Proclamation and struggled with slavery, America's original sin. Meacham frames Lincoln as a flawed yet profoundly moral figure, shaped by his faith, reason, and the turbulent times. Meacham uses Lincoln's own words—from letters, speeches, and lesser-known works—to weave together a larger story about democracy and human dignity while highlighting significant events like the Gettysburg Address and the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858.

The book impressed me with its depth and readability. Meacham's elegant and approachable prose gives difficult historical and moral issues a sense of urgency and relatability. He connects Lincoln’s struggles to modern debates about race, justice, and leadership, a hallmark of his style that some find insightful and others occasionally heavy-handed. The book doesn’t shy away from Lincoln’s contradictions—his early ambivalence about immediate abolition and his support for colonizing freed Black Americans abroad—offering a nuanced view that avoids hagiography.

A Lost Child

Lincoln in the Bardo 

by George Saunders

“When a child is lost there is no end to the self-torment a parent may inflict. When we love, and the object of our love is small, weak, and vulnerable, and has looked to us and us alone for protection; and when such protection, for whatever reason, has failed, what consolation (what justification, what defense) may there possibly be?”   
― George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo



A couple of decades ago I read CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, a book that I still remember as being an strikingly funny collection of short stories linked by the titular worn out amusement park. George Saunders wrote that book, but I had not read any of his not unsubstantial writing since then until his latest book and first novel won the Man Booker Prize.

This book, his first true novel, is memorable as well. It depicts a Lincoln trapped in the Bardo (a Tibetan Buddhist concept of the afterlife), namely Willie, the dear 11-year-old son of the great civil war president. As his parents host a lavish state reception, their boy is upstairs in the throes of typhoid fever. Saunders quotes contemporary observers on the magnificence of the feast, trailing the terrible family tragedy that is unfolding. Willie dies and is taken to Oak Hill cemetery, where he is interred in a marble crypt. On at least two occasions – and this is the germ of historical fact from which Saunders has spun his extraordinary story – the president visits the crypt at night, where he sits over the body and mourns.

Saunders tells his tale through use of a polyphonic narrative of the spirits who are trapped in the cemetery that is interleaved with constellations of artfully arranged quotations from primary and secondary sources about Lincoln’s life, which are used to show that observers can be unreliable about the motivations and mental state of the president, and that even such questions as whether the moon shone or not on a particular night can be distorted by memory.

The torrent of quotation, set against the torrent of spirit voices, gives Lincoln in the Bardo the feel of the parts of the Book of the Dead where the soul is beset by wrathful demonic hordes. This cacophony, and the grotesquerie of the deformed spirits, lends the novel a texture that is superficially unlike the work that has made Saunders popular, stories that often play off the tension between a casual vernacular voice and a surreal situation. Lincoln in the Bardo in some ways seemed to have lot in common with the theme park and office space I remember from the author of CivilWarLand in Bad Decline.

In The Tibetan Book of the Dead waking life, dreams, meditation and in particular the period between death and rebirth are all “bardos”, states of consciousness sandwiched between other states of consciousness. We are always in transition, from dreams to wakefulness, from life to death. When someone dies, Tibetan Buddhists believe that they enter the bardo of the time of death, in which they will either ascend towards nirvana, and be able to escape the cycle of action and suffering that characterizes human life on earth, or gradually fall back, through increasingly wild and scary hallucinations, until they are born again into a new body. The Book of the Dead is intended to be read to them during this journey, an instruction manual to assist them on their way.

Some of the characters stand out more than others and there are memorable moments; however the presentation sometimes seems contrived and at times becomes a bit tedious. These moments aside, the brevity of the book and the interesting historical aspects of the story carried this reader forward through a text that was briefer than expected due to the prevalence of white space. The interchange among the "residents" in the cemetery took on the feel of a play, perhaps one like Our Town, although entertaining more for its oddities than its plain wholesomeness.

The combination of a unique authorial style along with a multitude of historical details made this a historical novel that I would recommend to all interested in the history of this era. It is certainly a presentation of a moment from Abraham Lincoln's life that is different than any I have ever previously encountered.

Lincoln's Competition

Team of Rivals
by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Abraham Lincoln seems to me the grandest figure yet, on all the crowded canvas of the Nineteenth Century.

- Walt Whitman

. . . his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and the greatness of his character.

- Leo Tolstoy

Doris Kearns Goodwin has written a history of Abraham Lincoln that is unique in its approach to the subject. With a focus on Lincoln's "political genius" in her book Team of Rivals she tells the story not only of his ascendancy to the Presidency and various trials of office, but also the story of his rivals for the Presidency and the strategy he used for dealing with them once he was elected President. After his surprising nomination as a "dark horse" candidate and somewhat less surprising election he shocked the political establishment by naming his former rivals to his cabinet. It is this story and the background stories of each of these politicians that make Team of Rivals an essential addition to the massive library of books about Abraham Lincoln.

I found the narratives about the lives of William Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates fascinating and a rewarding read. While the story of Lincoln held my interest more due to the beautiful prose style of the author Goodwin than to any revelations about his well-documented life (for anyone who has not read a biography of Lincoln I would recommend that written by David Herbert Donald). With additional information about Edwin M. Stanton the quartet of major politicos was complete. Both the quotidian details of political life and the intrigue, including the nuance of the various shades of abolitionist behavior, were fascinating. If I have any criticism it would be that, after more than 700 pages most of which is about Lincoln, the narrative borders on hagiography. This is disappointing for after almost a century and a half of scholarship the Lincoln story itself must be more nuanced than it comes across in Goodwin's telling. However, the story of how these politicians complemented each other, often helped along by Lincoln's astute decisions, combined with the background of secession and civil war turmoil makes this a great work of history.


Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Simon & Schuster, New York. 2005.