Description:
This book describes how Abraham Lincoln worked with the press throughout his political career, beginning with his service in Congress in the late 1840s, and detailing how his ties to newspapers in Illinois, New York, and Washington played a central role in the success of his presidency.
Brief description:
David B. Sachsman holds the George R. West, Jr. Chair of Excellence in Communication and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he also serves as director of the annual Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression.
Review Quotes:
-Offers(s) new insights on the presidency of Abraham Lincoln through the lens of contemporaneous media. . . . Useful to schloars of war reporting, the partisan press, political campaigning, and photography as it is to those interested in Lincoln. . . . The clear and compelling writing style makes the work accessible to a public audience.-
--Erika K. Pribanic-Smith, Journalism History
-The book . . . deserves accolades for reviewing commentary on Lincoln in niche publications of the era, like African American newspapers, religious newspapers, and foreign language newspapers, and in the foreign press, chiefly Canadian and British newspapers. There are several excellent historians today who focus their research on Lincoln and the Civil War era . . . But none likely bring more expertise to this area than Borchard and Bulla, who have written three other books and a half-dozen articles on this subject. Their latest book is rich with primary sources in addition to the usual newspaper accounts from the era. Any scholar who focuses on 19th-century history would do well to read this book.-
--Joe Mirando, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly
-Prolifically resourced, using newspapers and magazines. . . . A concise treatment of the subject and well cited, making it a workable supplemental text for graduates and undergraduates.-
--Stephen Banning, American Journalism
-We have never heard the voice of Abraham Lincoln but we can hear his voice, as did journalists of his era at the memorial service after Gettysburg, and we can feel Lincoln's deep concern as he sought a successful general, before he picked U.S. Grant, to take on Robert E. Lee. We know Lincoln intimately as a member of our first families of history because journalists relayed his deceptively--complex story to us directly at the time, and since then, via historians. This book is about those important journalistic witnesses. Lincoln's story is also their story . . . and ours.-
--Donald L. Shaw, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill