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A brilliant, authoritative, and riveting account of the most critical six months in Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, when he penned the Emancipation Proclamation and changed the course of the Civil War.On July 12, 1862, Abraham Lincoln spoke for the first time of his intention to free the slaves. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, doing precisely that. In between, however, was perhaps the most tumultuous six months of his presidency, an episode during which the sixteenth president fought bitterly with his generals, disappointed his cabinet, and sank into painful bouts of clinical depression. Most surprising, the man who would be remembered as “The Great Emancipator” did not hold firm to his belief in emancipation.



About the Author

Todd Brewster

Todd Brewster is an American author, journalist, and film producer.Brewster served as Senior Editorial Producer for ABC News and co-authored three books with the late Peter Jennings: The Century, The Century for Young People, and In Search of America. The Century, a 600-page book on the history of the twentieth century, was originally designed as a companion book for ABC's 1999 documentary series of the same name, but months before the series debuted, the book had already topped the New York Times Best Seller List. It remained near the top of the list for nearly a year and is believed to have sold more than 1.5 million copies, more than any "companion book" in publishing history.From 2004-2005, Brewster served as a Knight Fellow at Yale Law School and from 2005 to 2006 as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government at Wesleyan University. He has written extensively on constitutional issues and is the Director of the National Constitution Center's The Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution. Brewster has written for Vanity Fair, Time, The New York Times and Life, where he was a senior editor from 1988 to 1992. A native of Indianapolis Indiana, he was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 2000. From 2008 to 2013, Brewster was the Don E. Ackerman Director of Oral History at West Point. He was also director of United States Military Academy's West Point Center for Oral History. He was Executive Producer of Into Harm's Way, a 2013 documentary film about the West Point Class of 1967.



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