Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln had a record of political failure. In 1858, he had lost a celebrated Senate bid against incumbent Stephen Douglas, his second failed Senate run, and had not held public office since one term in Congress a decade earlier.
Such was the political landscape as Edward Achorn’s The Lincoln Miracle opens – on the eve of the fateful 1860 Republican National Convention. Chronicling the tense political drama as it unfolded over the next six days, Achorn explores the genius of Lincoln’s quiet strategy, the vicious partisanship tearing apart America, the fierce battles raging over racism and slavery, and booming Chicago as a symbol of the modernization transforming the nation.
Edward Achorn is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and the author of the Every Drop of Blood, as well as two acclaimed books about nineteenth-century baseball and American culture, Fifty-nine in ’84 and The Summer of Beer and Whiskey.
