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As a brilliant historian with a keen sense of the passions and problems of our own time, Harold Holzer has given us a powerful and illuminating study of Abraham Lincoln and immigration—an issue of perennial significance. Like Lincoln himself, Holzer’s new book is at once timely and timeless.
— Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and author of the New York Times bestseller And There Was Light
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Harold Holzer, our most prolific chronicler of the life of Abraham Lincoln, here gives us a Lincoln with whom we are not familiar. Lincoln's political career began in the Whig and Republican parties, both of which harbored strong nativist elements. Yet just as Lincoln's views on emancipation and Black citizenship evolved, so too did his understanding of immigrants' contributions not only to the Union war effort, but to American society more broadly. There is a lesson here for our own fraught times.
— Eric Foner, author of The Fiery Trial, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Lincoln Prize
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As a brilliant historian with a keen sense of the passions and problems of our own time, Harold Holzer has given us a powerful and illuminating study of Abraham Lincoln and immigration—an issue of perennial significance. Like Lincoln himself, Holzer’s new book is at once timely and timeless.
— Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and author of the New York Times bestseller And There Was Light
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In the 1850s, the issue of immigration proved as divisive in American politics as the issue of slavery. Many historians have written about Lincoln's role in the latter controversy, but Harold Holzer is one of the few who has wielded his golden pen in treatment of the former, in this splendid book that also analyzes the Union president's vital role in mobilizing the foreign-born population to help win the Civil War.
— James M. McPherson, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era and winner of the Lincoln Prize
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Of considerable interest to students of 19th-century American history as well as of the Civil War.
— Kirkus
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Harold Holzer, our most prolific chronicler of the life of Abraham Lincoln, here gives us a Lincoln with whom we are not familiar. Lincoln's political career began in the Whig and Republican parties, both of which harbored strong nativist elements. Yet just as Lincoln's views on emancipation and Black citizenship evolved, so too did his understanding of immigrants' contributions not only to the Union war effort, but to American society more broadly. There is a lesson here for our own fraught times.
— Eric Foner, author of The Fiery Trial, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Lincoln Prize
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Readable history... Of considerable interest to students of 19th-century American history as well as of the Civil War.
— Kirkus
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Harold Holzer, our most prolific chronicler of the life of Abraham Lincoln, here gives us a Lincoln with whom we are not familiar. Lincoln's political career began in the Whig and Republican parties, both of which harbored strong nativist elements. Yet just as Lincoln's views on emancipation and Black citizenship evolved, so too did his understanding of immigrants' contributions not only to the Union war effort, but to American society more broadly. There is a lesson here for our own fraught times.
— Eric Foner, author of The Fiery Trial, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Lincoln Prize
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An outstanding and important book on Lincoln and immigration. A must for readers of American history and immigration studies.
— Library Journal
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Readable history... Of considerable interest to students of 19th-century American history as well as of the Civil War.
— Kirkus
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Lincoln scholar Holzer’s latest book again demonstrates his deftness in blending a detailed focus on part of Lincoln’s career, an explanation of how it fits into Lincoln’s life, and a political and historical backdrop… Holzer brings part of America’s past alive and shows that while modern immigrants come from different places, controversies about them are the same as generations ago.
— Booklist, starred review