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Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War

Amazon.com Price:  $6.75 (as of 06/05/2019 06:46 PST- Details)

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Description

In early 1860, pundits across The usa with a bit of luck predicted the election of Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas in the coming presidential race. Douglas, in any case, led the one party that bridged North and South. But the Democrats would split over the problem ofslavery, leading Southerners in the party to run their own presidential slate. This opened the door for the upstart Republicans, exclusively Northern, to steal the Oval Place of job. Dark horse Abraham Lincoln, not the first choice even of his own party, won the presidency with a record-low 39.8 percent of the preferred vote.

Acclaimed scholar Douglas R. Egerton chronicles the contest with a historian’s keen insight and a veteran political reporter’s eye for detail. Vividly, Egerton re-creates the cascade of unforeseen events that confounded political bosses, set North and South at the road to disunion, and put not Stephen Douglas, but his greatest rival, in the White House.

We see Lincoln and his team outmaneuvering more prominent Republicans, like New York’s grandiose William Seward, even as Democratic conventions collapse in confusion. And we see the gifted, incorrect Douglas marking his finest hour in defeat, as he strives, and fails, to save the Union. Year of Meteors delivers a teeming cast of characters, minor and major, and a breakneck narrative of this most momentous year in American history.

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