The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln's Thirty-Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America - Tapa blanda

"The Long Pursuit takes its reader to an original place in history-not merely to the famous 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates or the familiar 1960 presidential election but into the lives, the failures and successes, and the chases and confrontations of the two greatest men of their age."-Jason Emerson, The Historian -- Jason Emerson * The Historian * "Offers insights into both the political and human sides of the struggle between these two key players. It's academic but accessible to the general reader."-Reference & Research Book News * Reference & Research Book News * "Morris offers a juicy look at Lincoln the brawling, calculating politician. It is an immensely personal, profoundly readable insight of how even our most august Presidents assume and inflict ample bruises on their way to Pennsylvania Avenue."-Justin Bachman, Business Week -- Justin Bachman * Business Week *

From the time they first set foot in Illinois in the early 1830s, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas were fated to become political competitors. The Long Pursuit tells the dramatic story of how these two radically different individuals rose to the pinnacle of American politics, and how their personal rivalry shaped and altered the future of the nation during its most convulsive era. Indeed, had it not been for Douglas, who served as Lincoln's personal goad, pace horse, and measuring stick, there would have been no Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, no Lincoln presidency in 1860, and perhaps no Civil War six months later. The Long Pursuit is not only a detailed political study but also a compelling look at the personal side of politics on the rough-and-tumble western frontier. It shows us a more human Lincoln, a bare-knuckles politician who was not above trading on his wildly inaccurate image as a humble "rail-splitter" when he was, in fact, one of the nation's most successful railroad attorneys. And as the first extensive biographical study of Stephen Douglas in more than three decades, the book presents a long-overdue reassessment of one of the nineteenth century's more compelling and ultimately tragic figures, the one-time "Little Giant" of American politics. Roy Morris Jr. is the editor of Military Heritage magazine and the author of five books on the Civil War and post-Civil War eras, including Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain and The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War.