President Lincoln vignettes in F.B. Carpenter's "Six Months at the White House"

[David Lockmiller]

(10-23-2023 01:13 PM)Gene C Wrote:  I haven't read the book "In Lincoln's War Cabinet"
For those of you who have, what is your opinion of the book?

Unfortunately, Gene, I have not done much reading of the book. I have limited myself to reading a few entries as result of surveying the index.

Burton Hendrick writes well. But the problem is the distinct possibility of other erroneous conclusions that the author has made, based on historical fact. The one example of this that I found and previously posted:

The problem is that Burton Hendrick in his book Lincoln's War Cabinet, at page 363, has a quite different interpretation of the same event after quoting extensively from Carpenter's book: "It seems a fair assumption, in view of Seward's evident hostility to emancipation, that he was seeking delay, hoping perhaps that time and events would cause the President to rescind his unhappy mistake."

Stanton was right about the advantage to the South of four million slaves. President Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward both understood this. Seward said in that critical conversation: "'Mr. President, I approve of the proclamation, but I question the expediency of its issue at this juncture." President Lincoln trusted his Secretary of State with good reason.