In 1849, when Abraham Lincoln returned to Springfield, Illinois,
after two seemingly uninspiring years in the U.S. House of
Representatives, his political career appeared all but finished.
His sense of failure was so great that friends worried about his
sanity. Yet within a decade, Lincoln would reenter politics,
become a leader of the Republican Party, win the 1860
presidential election, and keep America together during its most
perilous period. What accounted for the turnaround.
As Michael J. Gerhardt reveals, Lincoln?s reemergence followed
the same path he had taken before, in which he read voraciously
and learned from the successes, failures, oratory, and political
maneuvering of a surprisingly diverse handful of men, some of
whom he had never met but others of whom he knew intimately?Henry
Clay, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, John Todd Stuart, and
Orville Browning.