“Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln,” by Matthew Pinsker; W.W. Norton, $39.99
When the nascent Republican Party gathered for its second national convention in Chicago in May 1860, a relatively unknown Illinois lawyer surprised nearly everyone in securing the presidential nomination — or so the story goes. Having served only one term in Congress and given a series of notable speeches in a failed Senate campaign against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas in 1858, Abraham Lincoln was supposedly the Republicans’ compromise candidate — chosen because he was no radical on the question of abolition yet firmly committed to preventing the extension of slavery into the western territories.
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