After Lincoln, A. J. Langguth
After Lincoln, A. J. Langguth
5 Rating(s)
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After Lincoln
How the North Won the Civil War and Lost the Peace

Author: A. J. Langguth

Narrator: Tom Perkins

Unabridged: 13 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/16/2014

Synopsis

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.

About A. J. Langguth

A. J. Langguth is the author of almost a dozen books, including Union 1812; Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution; and Our Vietnam: The War, 1954-1975. 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 an emeritus professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Charlie on August 10, 2023

I really liked this book and thought it to be an easily understandable and accessible history of reconstruction. The way it’s formatted, being divided into chapters of biographies and historical vignettes, is effective and helps the flow of the book. I can see how some readers might struggle to put......more

Goodreads review by Scott on November 13, 2014

I received this book as part of Goodreads' Giveaways. Overall, this book served as an excellent primer to the Reconstruction era. Mr. Langguth writes in a clear, easy to understand way. After Lincoln added much to my understanding of the political complexities facing this country post-civil war. My o......more

Goodreads review by Chris on December 26, 2018

I enjoyed this book. Langguth tells the story of Reconstruction by highlighting biographies of people/events during the time. Each chapter is a new short bio, but the overall thread stays connected and characters appear in each other's bios. It is an interesting was of approaching history. Worth the......more

Goodreads review by NET7 on July 07, 2018

In Iraq, we won the war clearly, but failed to win in the peacetime to secure and ensure a free and democratic Iraq for its people, particularly its minorities. In the Civil War, the Union had won the war, but Southern traitors, and in fighting in the capitol among those who should have held a unite......more

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