Chorus of the Union: How Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas Set Aside their Rivalry to Save the Nation by Edward Robert McClelland
Maybe it’s because anticipation for a new civil war is in the air? Books on the American Civil War have been rolling off the presses faster than reviewers can read them. One of the latest, Chorus of the Union, focuses on a pair of politicians prominent in the lead up to war, Abraham Lincoln, winner of the 1860 presidential election, and his rival, Stephen Douglas.
The two men disliked each other, and their rancor was loud in their much-publicized political debates. Both claimed opposition to slavery (albeit Douglas profited from his stake in a slave-labor plantation) and neither advocated abolition. Lincoln hoped to confine the institution to the South and prevent its spread; Douglas authored a series of compromises that satisfied no one and only fed the fire that exploded into war. But when talk of treason grew louder in the South, Douglas put aside his differences with Lincoln and campaigned on his behalf in the Southern states. It may have been that Douglas was a man of few solid beliefs, but he believed in the Union.
Get Chorus of the Union at Amazon here.
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