Lincoln

Set between February 1861 and January 1867, the novel follows Abraham Lincoln's presidency through multiple shifting perspectives, including those of his political rivals, his secretaries, his wife, and a young Confederate sympathizer in Washington.

On February 23, 1861, Congressman Elihu B. Washburne of Illinois meets President-elect Lincoln at the Washington train depot before dawn. Lincoln has traveled overnight in disguise after reports of an assassination plot in Baltimore. At Willard's Hotel, Lincoln breakfasts with Senator William H. Seward of New York, his chief rival for the Republican nomination, who envisions himself as "premier" to a largely ceremonial president. Lincoln proves shrewder than Seward expects: When Seward's allies threaten that he will not serve alongside rival Salmon P. Chase in the Cabinet, Lincoln produces a second Cabinet slate and offers to send Seward to London as minister instead. Lincoln's 22-year-old secretary, John Hay, observes his employer with growing awe. Hay and fellow secretary John George Nicolay develop a private code of nicknames: Lincoln is "the Tycoon," and Mary Todd Lincoln is "the Hellcat."

Meanwhile, David Herold, a 19-year-old prescription clerk at a drugstore near the White House, represents Washington's Southern-sympathizing population. His world revolves around the Surratt family, particularly his friend Annie and her brother John Jr. The Surratts view Lincoln's arrival as an invasion and speak openly of secession. David nurses grandiose dreams of heroism, fueled by his obsession with the theater.

Lincoln assembles what Hay calls a "Compound Cabinet" of rivals: Seward as Secretary of State, Chase as Secretary of the Treasury, and representatives of other factions. Chase, a dedicated abolitionist and former Ohio governor, believes himself the better man for the presidency; his 20-year-old daughter Kate manages his career with fierce ambition. When Seward sends Lincoln a memorandum proposing to direct Administration policy himself, Lincoln firmly rebuffs him, making clear he will not surrender executive authority. The inaugural address on March 4 presents a legal case that the Union is perpetual and indivisible. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, whose Dred Scott decision ruled that Black Americans had no claim to citizenship and helped precipitate the sectional crisis, administers the oath under extraordinary military security. David watches from the crowd, disappointed that no assassination attempt materializes.

The Fort Sumter crisis forces Lincoln to navigate a delicate dilemma. He orders a provisioning expedition while notifying South Carolina that no additional troops will be sent, ensuring the Confederates fire the first shot. After the bombardment on April 12, Lincoln calls for 75,000 militia. With Congress in recess, he acts with unprecedented authority: withdrawing two million dollars from the Treasury without approval, suspending habeas corpus (the constitutional protection against unlawful detention), and ordering the seizure of all telegraph records.

Mary Lincoln hires Elizabeth Keckley, a free Black dressmaker who previously worked for Jefferson Davis's wife, as her personal seamstress and closest confidante. Mary reveals childhood memories of slavery in Lexington, Kentucky, establishing herself as the true abolitionist in the family. When Mary's half-sister Emilie Todd Helm and her husband Ben visit, Lincoln offers Ben a Union commission, but Ben chooses the Confederacy, devastating Mary.

The first major battle at Manassas in July 1861 ends in Union rout. Lincoln summons General George B. McClellan from the West to take command. McClellan brilliantly organizes the Army of the Potomac but refuses to fight, treating Lincoln with open contempt. The seizure of two Confederate commissioners from a British ship nearly provokes war with England, but Lincoln agrees to release them, recognizing that the country can handle only one war at a time. A scandal erupts when sections of Lincoln's annual message to Congress appear in the New York Herald before delivery, exposing Mary's financial desperation: She has exceeded Congress's budget for White House renovations and is deep in personal debt. Lincoln burns incriminating letters unread, telling Seward his wife's behavior stems from "partial insanity."

In February 1862, 10-year-old Willie Lincoln, the family's brightest child, dies of fever. Mary's grief is catastrophic; she turns to spiritualism, communicating with Willie through mediums. Lincoln does not discourage her.

McClellan moves the army to the Virginia peninsula but fails to take Richmond. On July 22, 1862, Lincoln reads to the Cabinet a draft Emancipation Proclamation freeing enslaved people in rebel states as a military necessity. Seward advises waiting for a military victory so the proclamation will not seem desperate. After the Battle of Antietam in September, Lincoln issues the preliminary proclamation.

General Burnside, who replaced McClellan, leads the army to catastrophe at Fredericksburg. Republican senators demand Seward's removal and Cabinet reorganization under Chase. Lincoln springs a trap: He summons both the senators and the Cabinet, forcing Chase to contradict in public what he has said in private. Both Seward and Chase offer resignations; Lincoln keeps both, declaring neither may desert.

"Fighting Joe" Hooker replaces Burnside but loses at Chancellorsville. Lincoln replaces him with General George Meade on the eve of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania. The three-day Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 turns back the invasion, but Meade fails to pursue Lee's retreating army. Simultaneously, Union General Ulysses S. Grant captures Vicksburg, splitting the Confederacy. At the Gettysburg cemetery dedication in November, Lincoln delivers a three-minute address met with near silence; he tells Seward it "fell on them like a wet blanket."

Chase openly campaigns for the 1864 Republican nomination, with his daughter Kate's marriage to Governor William Sprague of Rhode Island providing financial backing. Lincoln outmaneuvers Chase at every turn. Sprague secretly finances illegal cotton-trading with the Confederacy, an act of treason that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton helps suppress. Lincoln makes Grant lieutenant-general in command of all Union armies. Grant's campaign against Lee produces staggering casualties, but Lincoln refuses to waver. After Union General William Tecumseh Sherman takes Atlanta in September, Lincoln's reelection becomes certain, and he defeats McClellan with a popular majority of half a million votes.

After Chief Justice Taney dies, Lincoln appoints Chase to replace him, simultaneously rewarding a rival and removing him from presidential competition. Lincoln's second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, offers moral reflection rather than legal argument, concluding "with malice toward none, with charity for all." In the crowd, John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, stands with a pistol in his pocket, prepared to shoot but unable to release the safety catch.

David has joined Booth's conspiracy, along with John Surratt and Lewis Payne, a former Confederate raider. The plot evolves from a plan to kidnap Lincoln into an assassination scheme. Lincoln travels to City Point, Virginia, to confer with Grant and Sherman. After Richmond falls, he enters the Confederate capital and sits in Jefferson Davis's chair, telling a general to "Let 'em up easy." Lee surrenders at Appomattox on April 9.

On Good Friday, April 14, Lincoln holds a Cabinet meeting and describes his recurring dream of drifting on a singular vessel toward an indefinite shore, a dream that has preceded every major event of the war. That evening, Booth enters the presidential box at Ford's Theater and fires a single shot into the back of Lincoln's head. Lincoln is carried to a boardinghouse across the street, where he dies the next morning. Stanton takes charge, declaring that Lincoln "will belong to the ages, while we are obliged to live on in the wreckage."

David catches up with Booth on the Maryland roads for the heroic escape he has always dreamed of. In an epilogue set at the Tuileries palace in Paris on January 1, 1867, Hay discusses Lincoln with American historian Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler and Schuyler's daughter, the Princesse d'Agrigente. Hay places Lincoln above all other presidents, arguing that Lincoln created "an entirely new country, and all of it in his own image." Hay privately suspects that Lincoln "willed his own murder as a form of atonement for the great and terrible thing that he had done by giving so bloody and absolute a rebirth to his nation."