Abraham Lincoln

Philip B. Kunhardt Jr. | April 1965

Had there been a Warren Commission exactly a century ago, when Abraham Lincoln was shot, its report might have read like the somber, moving, and impressively researched book from which the following narrative is taken.

Journey’s End: 1865

Walter Havighurst | February 1962

Two humble memories—a brakeman‘s and a carpenter’s—bring back the human moments of a nation’s tragedy

In the fall of 1864 William S. Porter, a young man from the sleepy southern Illinois town of Jerseyville, was mustered out of service with the 145th Illinois Infantry. He was just sixteen, but the war had left a man’s lines in his face.

Faces From The Past—IV

Richard M. Ketchum | October 1961

Lincoln Takes Charge

Allan Nevins | October 1960

His shrewd handling of the Radical Republican bid for power at the end of 1862 established him as the unquestioned leader of the Union

New York’s Bloodiest Week

Lawrence Lader | June 1959

The draft riots of 1863 turned a great city into a living hell.

He Did Hold Lincoln’s Hat

Allan Nevins | February 1959

Senator Douglas’ act is verified, at last, by first-hand testimony

Our Two Greatest Presidents

Clinton Rossiter | February 1959

Without doubt they were Washington, who walked carefully within the Constitution, and Lincoln, who stretched it as far as he dared

Lincoln’s Second Inauguration

Philip Van Doren Stern | February 1958

“The President came forward and the sun burst through the clouds.”

Ghosts In The White House

Claude M. Fuess | December 1958

Discreet helpers have worked on the speeches and papers of many Presidents, but a nation in a time of trial will respond best “to the Great Man himself, standing alone”

The Unknown Conspirator

Philip Van Doren Stern | February 1957

Did the mysterious Portuguese sea captain help plot Lincoln’s assassination, or was he an informer?

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Featured Authors

Atkinson, Rick

Rick Atkinson is the author of dozens of best-selling books on American military history, including The Long Gray Line, a narrative saga about the West Point class of 1966; Crusade, a narrative history of the Persian Gulf War, and In the Company of Soldiers, an account of his time with General David H. Petraeus and the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He has also written a three-part narrative history of the U.S.

Bird, Kai

Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.

Brinkley, Douglas

Douglas Brinkley, a distinguished professor of history at Rice University and Contributing Editor of American Heritage, has written more than 20 books, most recently The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (Harper 2009) and The Reagan Diaries (HarperCollins 2007). Brinkley earned his B.A from Ohio State University University in 1982, and his Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1989.

Catton, Bruce

Bruce Catton (1899 – 1978) was the Founding Editor of American Heritage and arguably the most prolific and popular of all Civil War historians. He wrote an astonishing 167 articles for American Heritage, and won a Pulitzer Prize for history in 1954 for A Stillness at Appomattox, his study of the final campaign of the war in Virginia. Catton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, from President Gerald Ford, in 1977, the year before his death.