He is also great at setting a scene through the use of small descriptive details. By doing this, he is able to build up a very interesting snapshort of Northern opinion on the eve of the war and in its early months. He writes about such people as Thomas Starr King, Jessie Fremont, Benjamin Butler, Elmer Elsworth, and James Garfield as a young man, and many others. The author does an excellent job in focusing on persons who are bit players in most popular Civil War books. Adam Goodheart takes us from the corridors of the White House to the slums of Manhattan, from the mouth of the Chesapeake to the deserts of Nevada, from Boston Common to Alcatraz Island, vividly evoking the Union at this moment of ultimate crisis and decision. The book introduces us to a heretofore little-known cast of Civil War heroes - among them an acrobatic militia colonel, an explorer's wife, an idealistic band of German immigrants, a regiment of New York City firemen, a community of Virginia slaves, and a young college professor who would one day become president.

It set Abraham Lincoln on the path to greatness and millions of slaves on the road to freedom.

Early in that fateful year, a second American revolution unfolded, inspiring a new generation to reject their parents' faith in compromise and appeasement, to do the unthinkable in the name of an ideal.

As the United States marks the 150th anniversary of our defining national drama, 1861 presents a gripping and original account of how the Civil War began.ġ861 is an epic of courage and heroism beyond the battlefields.

1861 goodheart