Your Friend, As Ever, A. Lincoln: How the Unlikely Friendship of Gustav Koerner and Abraham Lincoln Changed America

by Donald Allendorf

Overview

This work reveals the monumentally influential friendship between America's sixteenth president and Gustav Koerner, a German revolutionary who settled on the Illinois frontier. With research based in unique correspondence previously ignored by Lincoln and Civil War scholars, this innovative volume sheds light on an unexamined aspect of Abraham Lincoln's life.

Exiled from Germany as a revolutionary in 1833, Koerner met Lincoln in frontier Illinois when they were both young lawyers. Radical and determined to offer America a new view of exalted rights and liberty, Koerner become a state Supreme Court judge and lieutenant governor of Illinois. He interceded at a crucial moment at the 1860 Republican National Convention that opened the door to Lincoln's nomination. In addition to serving as a catalyst for Lincoln's ascension to the executive branch, author Donald Allendorf explains how Koerner and other German revolutionaries of the time came to irreparably impact the United States's politics and legal system. Using Koerner's personal letters and memoirs, this book tells the story of two very different lives that merged against a backdrop of slavery, nativism, and the road to the nomination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455618842
Publisher:	Pelican Publishing Company, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/10/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	13 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Donald Allendorf, a Civil War author and retired US Navy officer, spent thirty-seven years as a consumer marketing and advertising account executive and partner. After serving as the marketing director at Mountain States Bankcard Association, Allendorf became the creative director at the Gates Rubber Company. For fifteen years, he was the director of communications and marketing research for the Gates Corporation in Denver, Colorado. During his extensive career, Allendorf won several advertising awards. Although retired from his professional career, Allendorf remains active in his membership with the State Historical Society of Missouri and the Library Society of the University of Missouri. Allendorf graduated from the University of Missouri with a BA in journalism. He enjoys singing tenor and performing with the University of Missouri Choral Union. He lives with his wife, June, in Columbia, Missouri.

Table of Contents

Preface 11

I Beginnings 23

II The Detestable Institution 83

III Mr. Lincoln 107

IV A Sudden Tremor 135

V The Proper Time 187

VI Thunderbolts 229

VII "Don't Come Here" 269

VIII Farewell 307

Notes 339

Bibliography 367

Index 381