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After Lincoln: How the North Won the Civil War and Lost the Peace Audiobook
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With Abraham Lincoln's assassination, his "team of rivals" was left adrift. President Andrew Johnson, a former slave owner from Tennessee, was challenged by Northern Congressmen, Radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stephens and Charles Sumner, who wanted to punish the defeated South. When Johnson's policies placated the rebels at the expense of the freed black men, radicals in the House impeached him for trying to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Johnson was saved from removal by one vote in the Senate trial, presided over by Salmon Chase. Even William Seward, Lincoln's closest ally in his cabinet, seemed to waver.
By the 1868 election, united Republicans nominated Ulysses Grant, Lincoln's winning Union general. His attempts to reconcile Southerners with the Union and to quash the rising Ku Klux Klan were undercut by postwar greed and corruption during his two terms. Reconstruction died unofficially in 1887 when Republican Rutherford Hayes joined with the Democrats in a deal that removed the last federal troops from South Carolina and Louisiana. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill with protections first proposed in 1872 by Charles Sumner, the Radical senator from Massachusetts.
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“Tom Perkins narrates thiscomprehensive account of the post-Civil War Reconstruction era (1865-1877). Hisbalanced journalistic tone lays equal culpability on Northern hard-liners, whowanted the South to pay dearly for splitting from the Union, and Southernapologists, who found ways to systematically strip freed blacks of their newConstitutional rights. From Charles Sumner to Nathan Bedford Forrest to UlyssesS. Grant, nobody comes out smelling like a rose, but Perkins’s voice has aninherently American optimism. Overall, the work suggests that if the nationmade it through Reconstruction, we can make it through anything.”
— AudioFile
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Langguth takes a warts-and-all approach in profiling the major figures of the Reconstruction.
— Publishers Weekly -
“A. J. Langguth brings Reconstruction and its attendant issues to vivid life through a cast of all-stars ranging from Charles Sumner to Andrew Johnson to Grant and Greeley—all conspiring toward the tragic rendezvous with Jim Crow. This history lesson is a stirring narrative, a pleasure throughout, leaving the reader nourished and enlightened.”
— Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Carry Me Home -
“A solid new look at this tumultuous period when the Civil War was won, but the winners could not agree on what to do with victory.”
— Buffalo News -
“A comprehensive account of the colossal failures of the aftermath of the Civil War and what turned out to be one big constitutional crisis also known as Reconstruction.”
— Fort Worth Star-Telegram -
“A brilliant evocation of the post-Civil War era…After Lincoln tells the story of the Reconstruction, which set back black Americans and isolated the South for a century.”
— Bookreporter.com -
“Langguth takes a warts-and-all approach in profiling the major figures of the Reconstruction…[His] well-placed and humanizing personal details about the strident men orchestrating Reconstruction and Johnson’s impeachment add depth and immediacy to the significant struggles of reuniting North and South, while clearly showing the harsh results of their actions in a post-Lincoln United States.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“He tells the story chiefly through a series of minibiographies of important figures of the Reconstruction era…Verdict: This book will appeal to both casual and scholarly readers of history as well as those who enjoyed Eric Foner’s Reconstruction and similar titles.”
— Library Journal -
“This is a cogent, well-researched, well-told history of that important period. Langguth shows rather than explains, and the result is a rich history of an understudied period of American history.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“Magnificent…Langguth skillfully illuminates the roles of key figures and offers enlightening commentary on events.”
— BookPage
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About A. J. Langguth
A. J. Langguth is the author of a number of books of nonfiction and several novels. He was Saigon bureau chief for the New York Times and covered the civil rights movement. He taught at the University of Southern California for twenty-seven years and retired in 2003 as emeritus professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. He lives in Los Angeles.
About Tom Perkins
Tom Perkins, an award-winning audio engineer for over forty years, has expanded his skills to narrating and has earned an AudioFile Earphones Award. He learned by working with the world’s best voice talent during his career, and he continues to engineer a variety of projects.