Born on February 12th, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky but grew up in Indiana and Illinois at a time when those states formed the American frontier. Lincoln became an avid reader and mostly educated himself, becoming an entirely self-taught lawyer in Illinois. By 1834, he was elected to the Illinois state legislature as the Whig party candidate. Throughout his political career, Lincoln held views critical of enslavement—although, as McPherson explains, Lincoln’s opinions on how to address enslavement changed over time—and backed state support of banks, canals, and railroads.

After the collapse of the Whig Party, Lincoln joined the new Republican Party in 1854. In the 1858 election for the US Senate, Lincoln ran against the Democrat Stephen Douglas. His debates with Douglas won him national fame even though he lost that election. Two years later, the Republicans nominated Lincoln as the Republican candidate for president, an election he won. Due to Lincoln’s anti-enslavement views, this event provoked many Southern states into seceding from the United States, something they had long threatened to do.

Lincoln’s presidency was dominated by the Civil War, especially because Lincoln took an active role in overseeing the war effort. Lincoln’s administration did, as McPherson points out, enact reforms that were originally meant to help the government fund or gain support for the war, but which affected long-lasting changes, like a national paper currency, the first federal income tax, a national system of state colleges, the first transcontinental railroad, and large land sales and grants that opened up the West to settlement.

Not long after his reelection in 1864 and the end of the Civil War, Lincoln was assassinated on April 14th, 1865 by the actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth while watching the play Our American Cousin with his wife Mary Todd.

Jefferson Davis was the first and only president of the Confederacy. He was born on June 3rd, 1808, into the enslaver planter class that dominated Southern politics and society, with his family owning a cotton plantation in Mississippi. After fighting in the Mexican-American War, Davis was elected to the US Senate in 1847 and became one of the leading advocates for congressional action to prevent any of the new US territories from banning enslavement.

After the South seceded, on February 9th, 1861 Davis was chosen by a constitutional convention to be the provisional president of the Confederate States of America or the Confederacy. As McPherson recounts, like Lincoln, Davis’s administration was consumed with the Civil War. Davis took a number of actions criticized by his own people as authoritarian, such as the first military draft in United States history, supporting a national land tax, and enacting a law that allowed the military to take supplies and enslaved laborers from civilians.

When the Civil War ended, Jefferson Davis was imprisoned in Fort Monroe, Virginia and accused of being complicit in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, although an investigation found no evidence that Davis was involved. After he was paroled, Davis went to Quebec to be with his family. There were plans to put him on trial for treason, but, under President Andrew Johnson, Davis was one of many former Confederate leaders who were granted an amnesty.

Struggling to find employment that paid enough and that he thought was suitable, Davis relocated to Tennessee and later back to Mississippi, where he inherited an estate from a wealthy admirer. He died on December 6th, 1889 from malaria.

Besides Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee is probably the most well-known Confederate general. He was born on January 19th, 1807. His family, the Lees, were a prominent family that had been deeply involved in the politics of Virginia since the 17th century. Despite their prestigious reputation, Lee grew up in relative poverty due to his father’s massive debts. In 1829, he joined the US Army Corps of Engineers. Lee inherited a plantation in Arlington, Virginia from his father-in-law. The enslaved people on the estate had been promised their freedom, but Lee refused to honor the promise.

Lee opposed secession initially, but when secession did unfold regardless, Lee joined the Confederate army. Like Grant, McPherson sees Lee as successful because he used modern tactics that caused large casualties but more decisively broke enemy forces. He was also aware that the Civil War would be determined in part by public opinion, which is why Lee attempted to strike the Union through Pennsylvania at a time when Confederate defenses were at an ebb. It was Lee who surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, ending the Confederacy and the Civil War.

Lee was never arrested for treason, but he did lose the right to vote. His Arlington estate had been confiscated by the Union and eventually turned into Arlington National Cemetery, for which he and his family were never compensated. He supported reconciliation between the North and the South and publicly stated that he felt the abolition of enslavement was the best outcome for the South, but he also continued to hold racist views and opposed Black suffrage.

In his post-war life, Lee became president of Washington College (now Washington & Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia, a position he held until his death from a stroke on October 12th, 1870.