October brought two new releases to SIU Press’s Fall 2024 season.
Beginning with the assassination itself and chronicling Lincoln’s three-week-long national funeral, historian Leonne M. Hudson captures the profound sadness of Black Americans as they mourned the crafter of the Emancipation Proclamation and the man they thought of as their earthly Moses, father, friend, and benefactor. Hudson continues the narrative by detailing the postwar efforts of African Americans to gain citizenship and voting rights.
“Leonne M. Hudson has accomplished a tour de force of research and analysis in the account of the response of Black Americans to Lincoln’s assassination. He describes how many viewed the slain martyr as a Moses who led them from bondage to the promised land of freedom but was struck down at the end of the journey, and others likened him to Christ who was crucified on Good Friday 1865 to save them from the sin of slavery. A fine addition to Lincoln scholarship.”
—James M. McPherson, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
New in Paperback!
On the night of his reelection on November 8, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln called on the nation to “re-unite in a common effort, to save our common country.” By April 9 of the following year, the Union had achieved this goal with the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. In this lively volume, John C. Waugh chronicles in detail Lincoln’s role in the final five months of the war, revealing how Lincoln and Grant worked together to bring the war to an end.
“Lincoln and the War’s End is a must read for all, not just historians.”—Wallace Dean Draper, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society