Author(s): Chris DeRose

Biography

The first fully realized portrait of Abraham Lincoln's ambitious and controversial early political career written by the "gifted young historian" (Richard Norton Smith) and author of "Founding Rivals. " In 1847, Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington in near anonymity. After years of outmaneuvering political adversaries and leveraging friendships, he emerged the surprising victor of the Whig Party nomination, winning a seat in the House of Representatives. Yet following a divisive single term, he would return to Illinois with a damaged reputation, and no path forward in politics. Defeated, unpopular, and out of office, Lincoln now seemed worse off than when his journey began. But what actually transpired between 1847 and 1849 revealed a man married to his political, moral, and ethical ideals. These were the defining years of a future president and the prelude to his singular role as the center of a gathering political storm. With keen insight into a side of Lincoln never so thoroughly researched, Chris DeRose explores this extraordinary, unpredictable, and oftentimes conflicted turning point in his career. Drawing from the unpublished "Papers of Abraham Lincoln," including 20,000 pre-presidential articles and a wealth of correspondence, and the secret diaries and private correspondence of Lincoln's colleagues--many cited here for the first time--DeRose shows us a master strategist, a politician torn between principle and viability, and a man saddled with a tormented private life. Most vitally, he greatly expands our understanding of America's greatest president in a biography as surprising, ambitious, and transcendent as its subject.