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Title: Abraham Lincoln and the Union
A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The
Chronicles Of America Series

Author: Nathaniel W. Stephenson

Editor: Allen Johnson

Posting Date: December 6, 2008 [EBook #2836]
Release Date: September, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE UNION ***

Produced by The James J. Kelly Library Of St. Gregory's
University, Alev Akman, Dianne Bean, and Alison Henry

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE UNION,

A CHRONICLE OF THE EMBATTLED NORTH

Volume 29 In The Chronicles Of America Series

By Nathaniel W. Stephenson

Allen Johnson, Editor

New Haven: Yale University Press Toronto: Glasgow

Brook & Co. London: Humphrey Milford

Oxford University Press

1918

PREFACE

In spite of a lapse of sixty years, the historian who attempts to
portray the era of Lincoln is still faced with almost impossible demands
and still confronted with arbitrary points of view. It is out of the
question, in a book so brief as this must necessarily be, to meet all
these demands or to alter these points of view. Interests that are
purely local, events that did not with certainty contribute to the final
outcome, gossip, as well as the mere caprice of the scholar--these must
obviously be set aside.

The task imposed upon the volume resolves itself, at bottom, into just
two questions: Why was there a war? Why was the Lincoln Government
successful? With these two questions always in mind I have endeavored,
on the one hand, to select and consolidate the pertinent facts; on the
other, to make clear, even at the cost of explanatory comment, their
relations in the historical sequence of cause and effect. This purpose
has particularly governed the use of biographical matter, in which the
main illustration, of course, is the career of Lincoln. Prominent as it
is here made, the Lincoln matter all bears in the last analysis on one
point--his control of his support. On that the history of the North
hinges. The personal and private Lincoln it is impossible to pr