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Title details for Mourning Lincoln by Martha Hodes - Available

Mourning Lincoln

by Martha Hodes
Donna Postel
Audiobook
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The news of Abraham Lincoln's assassination on April 15, 1865, just days after Confederate surrender, astounded the war-weary nation. Massive crowds turned out for services and ceremonies. Countless expressions of grief and dismay were printed in newspapers and preached in sermons. Public responses to the assassination have been well chronicled, but this book is the first to delve into the personal and intimate responses of everyday people-northerners and southerners, soldiers and civilians, black people and white, men and women, rich and poor. Through deep and thoughtful exploration of diaries, letters, and other personal writings penned during the spring and summer of 1865, Martha Hodes, one of our finest historians, captures the full range of reactions to the president's death-far more diverse than public expressions would suggest. She tells a story of shock, glee, sorrow, anger, blame, and fear. "'Tis the saddest day in our history," wrote a mournful man. It was "an electric shock to my soul," wrote a woman who had escaped from slavery. "Glorious News!" a Lincoln enemy exulted. "Old Lincoln is dead, and I will kill the goddamned Negroes now," an angry white southerner ranted. For the black soldiers of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, it was all "too overwhelming, too lamentable, too distressing" to absorb. There are many surprises in the story Hodes tells, not least the way in which even those utterly devastated by Lincoln's demise easily interrupted their mourning rituals to attend to the most mundane aspects of everyday life. There is also the unexpected and unabated virulence of Lincoln's northern critics, and the way Confederates simultaneously celebrated Lincoln's death and instantly-on the very day he died-cast him as a fallen friend to the defeated white South. Hodes brings to life a key moment of national uncertainty and confusion, when competing visions of America's future proved irreconcilable and hopes for racial justice in the aftermath of the Civil War slipped from the nation's grasp. Hodes masterfully brings the tragedy of Lincoln's assassination alive in human terms-terms that continue to stagger and rivet us one hundred and fifty years after the event they so strikingly describe.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 22, 2015

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781681680736
      • File size: 358752 KB
      • Duration: 12:27:23

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      As the audiobook opens, narrator Donna Postel re-creates the dialogue from the stage of Ford's Theatre as President Lincoln sits in the audience. Soon, she immerses listeners in the charged atmosphere right after the infamous shooting of the president by John Wilkes Booth. The sense of shock and sadness in her voice helps listeners relate the tragedy to modern ones such as the World Trade Center attack and President Kennedy's assassination. The author concentrates on "a profusion of real-time sentiments," as written in 1865. She also considers aspects such as the slow flow of the news and the collection of relics associated with the death, gradually expanding those sentiments and observations into an audiobook portrait of a divided post-Civil War America. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      April 1, 2016

      Coming just days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on Good Friday, 1865, stunned the divided nation. In a thorough examination of contemporary diaries, letters, and other personal writings, historian Hodes (The Sea Captain's Wife) explores the varied reactions the event elicited in the spring and summer of that year. In the North, the relief and jubilation that came with victory was abruptly replaced with shock and mourning, while in the South, grief and despair over the loss of the war gave way in some quarters to smug satisfaction over what was viewed as an act of righteous vengeance; among newly liberated African Americans, grief was mixed with anxiety and dismay about the future. Along the way, Hodes lays bare the extraordinary level of personal and social devastation wrought by a war that touched nearly every American. The narration by voice actress Donna Postel is simply perfect at drawing out the pathos of the period. VERDICT Although occasionally repetitive, the depth of research and brilliant writing make this an important addition to studies of the Civil War and Lincoln. Highly recommended.--Forrest Link, Coll, of New Jersey Lib., Ewing

      Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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