Case of Abraham Lincoln: A Story of Adultery, Murder and the Making of a Great President

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More About This Book

Overview

The year 1856 was a pivotal one for this country, witnessing the birth of the Republican Party as we know it. But it was also a critical year in the troubled political life of Abraham Lincoln. As a lawyer, he tried his most scandalous murder case. At the same time, he made a decision which unleashed his soaring abilities for the first time, a decision which reverberates to this day: whether or not to join the new Republican Party. The Case of Abraham Lincoln offers the first-ever account of the suspenseful Anderson Murder Case, and Lincoln's role in it. Bestselling historian Fenster not only examines the case that changed Lincoln's fate, but portrays his day-to-day life as a circuit lawyer and how it shaped him as a politician. In a book that draws a picture of Lincoln in court and at home during that memorable season of 1856, Fenster also offers a close-up look at Lincoln's political work, much of it masterful, some of it adventurous, in building the party that would change his fate - and that of the nation.

Editorial Reviews

Booklist
Fenster's absorbing chronicle follows two tracks: Lincoln's reentry into the tumultuous political wars in Illinois, as Democrats, Know-Nothings, and the newly formed Republican Party vied for power; and how the death of a Springfield blacksmith evolved into a sensational murder trial. When the two tracks merge, Fenster illustrates Lincoln's emergence as a cagey politician and eloquent antislavery voice with an enhanced national reputation. This is a worthy addition to our ever-expanding knowledge concerning America's secular saint.
Library Journal

Fenster uses the new complete edition of Lincoln's legal papers, as well as newspapers, letters, and memoirs, to weave a spellbinding tale of alleged adultery, murder, legal practices, personal rivalries, and political ambitions in the mid-1850s-and of Lincoln's emergence as a national political figure. In doing so, she brings us as close to the social and political culture of the day as possible. Although she relies too much on memoirs to depict a Lincoln much admired as a lawyer of ready wit, unimpeachable integrity, and astute judgment, she also mines the sources deeply to discover a small-town America unsure about male-female relationships, strangers in town, and "truth." As in Brian Dirck's Lincoln the Lawyer, among other recent works, she shows how Lincoln's studying of human nature, reading, and time on the legal circuit prepared him for public life. More important, she makes the most persuasive case yet that Lincoln's argument on the need to face down Southern threats of disunion was essential to holding together the disparate elements of the rickety new Republican Party and gave Lincoln national prominence before the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Her analysis of Lincoln's "lost speech" of 1856 is simply brilliant. The verdict: a captivating and compelling book that's highly recommended for public and academic libraries.
—Randall M. Miller

More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
Through the lens of a sensational 1856 Springfield, Ill., murder case, a historian focuses on Abraham Lincoln the lawyer and politician, four years before his election to the presidency. Was blacksmith George Anderson slowly poisoned by his adulterous wife before her lover, Anderson's own impatient nephew, finally finished him off with a bloody hammer? The local citizenry certainly thought so. After declining an offer to aid the beleaguered state's attorney, Lincoln joined the defense and devised the crucial strategy that kept questions about possible adultery out of the trial, destroying the prosecution's theory about motive and ultimately freeing the defendants. This lurid case was one of many in the prairie lawyer's crowded practice, and Fenster (Race of the Century: The Heroic True Story of the 1908 New York to Paris Automobile Race, 2005, etc.) follows Lincoln and other colorful members of the Illinois Bar as they trail after the traveling Circuit Court. Simultaneously, the author charts a second, more fateful, track: the speech-making tour that resuscitated Lincoln's political career. Following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act-which nullified the Missouri Compromise and destroyed the Whig Party-and beginning with his stirring "Lost Speech" at the state's Anti-Nebraska Bloomington Convention, Lincoln traveled throughout Illinois on behalf of John C. Fremont, candidate of the nascent Republican Party, attempting to thread the needle among outright abolitionists, pro-slavery Buchanan Democrats and the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party headed by former President Millard Fillmore. He couldn't persuade the critical swing state to go for his candidate, but this tourturned him into the Party's premier Western spokesman, put him first in line to challenge popular Senator Stephen A. Douglas and ultimately led to his nomination for president. Already a successful, mature attorney whose talent and insight tipped the balance in People v. Anderson and Anderson, Lincoln began in 1856 his transformation into a master politician whose deep understanding of our founding documents and whose genius at translating their meaning for his fellow countrymen would make an even greater difference for the nation. An unexpected, odd-angle approach to Lincoln that proves marvelously insightful. First printing of 75,000

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781403976352
  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
  • Publication date: 10/30/2007
  • Pages: 256
  • Product dimensions: 6.30 (w) x 9.50 (h) x 0.87 (d)

Meet the Author

Julie Fenster
Julie Fenster

Julie M. Fenster is the co-author (with Douglas Brinkley) of The New York Times bestseller Parish Priest. Her books include the award-winning Ether Day and Race of the Century. A regular contributor to American Heritage, Fenster has also written for The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. She lives in Syracuse, New York.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 9

Maps of Illinois and Springfield 13

Foreword: Lincoln in His Element Dr. Douglas Brinkley 15

Chapter 1 March, 1856: Like a Cathedral 19

Chapter 2 April: At the Anvil 27

Chapter 3 The Beginning of May: Stranger in the Yard 39

Chapter 4 Early May: Something About Strychnine 49

Chapter 5 May 15: The Old Man Went Out 67

Chapter 6 Mid-May: Excitement in the City 79

Chapter 7 Late May: An Old Battered Stovepipe Hat 97

Chapter 8 May 29: Major's Hall 113

Chapter 9 June: Summer Days 135

Chapter 10 July and August: The March of the What-Y'a-Call-Ems 147

Chapter 11 September: Boarding Men 169

Chapter 12 October and November: A Motive Equal to Murder 193

Chapter 13 November and Early December: The Best Hope of the Nation 213

Afterword 227

Notes 229

Selected Bibliography 247

Index 251

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Sort by: Showing all of 3 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted December 27, 2011

    I agree with th first peraon that it it weak on focus.

    Still though if you are looking for things related to Abraham Lincoln this is a book for you. If you are looking for a book about Lincoln himself I suggest 101 facts about Lincoln.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 19, 2008

    Using Lincoln to Sell a Book

    Having just finished this book, I am filled with disappointment. While it purports to be a steamy tale of intrigue and murder closely involved with the life of Lincoln, the book is instead 90% boring political diatribe and 10% inadequately-reported murder mystery. The author switches subjects and locations from one paragraph to another in a dizzying display of poor writing. As for the case itself, Lincoln was only tangentially involved in the trial, and it is not until the last 40 pages or so that we get any good reading. The book is also filled with typographical errors which spellcheck could have fixed if anyone had cared enough to employ it. All in all a pathetic book.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 4, 2008

    Fascinating

    The Case of Abraham Lincoln is a fascinating glimpse into the political world and the criminal justice system of 1850s Illinois. In 1856 George Anderson is found murdered in his own back yard the prime suspects are Anderson's wife and nephew at the same time Abraham Lincoln is at the center of the forming of the Republican party and the rebirth of his political career. Julie M. Fenster sheds light on the two careers of Lincoln: lawyer and politican and the difficulties that Lincoln faced being both on the same time. Great details on how trails were conducted in the mid-nineteenth century and how political campigns were run.

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