Book Review! Lincoln's Lie by Elizabeth Mitchell
Hey welcome to the first book review on Doug’s History Blog! I don’t have a “rating system” but let me just start by saying yes - I recommend Lincoln’s Lie: A True Civil War Caper Through FAKE NEWS, WALL STREET, and the WHITE HOUSE by Elizabeth Mitchell from Counterpoint Press!
A little background on how this book got into my hands. My daughter Lacey was still working on her M.F.A. in creative writing from Long Island U in Brooklyn when she met Elizabeth at an event for Guernica - a non-profit magazine dedicated to global art and politics, published online since 2004. Elizabeth is the former executive editor of the magazine George (which I was a fan of) and has authored several other books. So when we were in Moab, UT on our epic western roadtrip this year Lacey and my son Tony bought the book together for me for a Father’s Day gift at Back Of Beyond Books - a very cool little independent book store there. I would encourage you to do the same - find a local bookstore and purchase a copy!
LINCOLN’S LIE : A True Civil Caper Through FAKE NEWS, WALL STREET, and the WHITE HOUSE
As for the book it’s exactly what the title says - a caper - one that picks up pace as the story goes along and the ripple effects that turn into seismic stakes reaching the White House and even potentially pitting the President vs. the Governor of New York in an ironic northern battle of states rights vs. federal authority that you find yourself struggling to sort out as you read this. I hope they make a film out of it! The best history books (which are most of what I read) are sometimes better than any fiction - this true story has all the makings of a great drama with the Civil War as a backdrop, with colorful characters and notorious locales.
The man at the center of it is Joseph Howard Jr. - an American Journalist and a fascinating character who was involved in a hoax of epic proportions involving a fake announcement in two New York newspapers in May 1864. A story appeared with an announcement that President Lincoln would be calling for 400,000 more troops during a time when there were supposed to be successes coming in Grant’s Wilderness Campaign with the Union Army of the Potomac against Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The war was supposed to be coming to a close soon and this announcement was shocking. Except the announcement was a lie……..
Joseph Howard Jr.
The chaos that ensues, the reaction from the White House, the impact on the stock market and the price of gold in particular is……nuts. This is the focus of the book, so while Lincoln himself is on the cover and in the title don’t expect this to be a story about Abe Lincoln. We don’t spend a ton of time with Lincoln here but he’s clearly present and his cabinet’s involvement in doing damage control and their reactions as events unfold are fascinating. I was particularly pleased to become a little more acquainted with Edwin Stanton who is a fascinating character. Stanton took over as Lincoln’s Secretary of War in early 1862 and was NOT messing around. Of all the portraits in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery I saw in my recent trip there (before I read this book) Stanton’s was one of a small handful I included in my blog post about it. I’ll share it again here along with the blurb about his life next to the portrait - read it and you’ll see why I’m fascinated with him. There’s a cool page about him at the Steubenville, OH website which was where he was from including a photo of a statue of him and a mural in town depicting him and Lincoln at the Civil War Telegraph office referenced frequently in this book.
Lincoln’s Secretary of War Edwin Stanton
Everyone should know this man - an important American indeed!
To be clear I’m a pretty big fan of Abe Lincoln (bold statement huh Doug?). But it’s not like he wasn’t a little complicated just like any U.S. President. He wasn’t loved by everybody in his time (and not just in the Southern states), and he certainly played fast and loose with constitutional rights at times when extreme times called for extreme measures like the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and in particular here his relationship with and handling of the press. Indeed, in doing a Google search I found this article by James A. Dueholm authored in 2008 in the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association that contains a great line with regard to this that sums up how this is typically handled: “The crisis Lincoln faced and the stature he has achieved make it easy for historians to justify his actions without examining them.” Elizabeth Mitchell to her credit certainly examines them here - not with an agenda to tarnish Lincoln, but as critical context for the story she weaves with a fantastic combination of historical grasp, meticulous research, and spellbinding storytelling.
Without spoiling too much I’ll just say not everything about this caper gets “neatly answered” here which adds to the intrigue where the many figures involved and impacted here are concerned, such as Mary Todd Lincoln and her anxieties that drive her actions, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase and his challenges with the economy, the value of gold on the market and the impact of the hoax, General John Dix and his commitment to his duty, the two newspaper editors whose papers ran the hoax story not realizing they had been duped… and so on.
Another angle that I loved is how this is also very much a New York story. If you’re a New Yorker or you’ve spent time there you’ll be able to picture how things unfold - even the scenes at the notorious prison Fort Lafayette which no longer exists, because with a little Googling I learned that when the prison was demolished in 1960 they used the foundation to build the Brooklyn tower of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge which I can see from the roof of my daughter’s apartment building. I love reading about the Civil War era hustle and bustle of Manhattan and Brooklyn, the movers and shakers, the lingering anxieties of the draft riots that took place less than a year earlier than the hoax - all of it.
A great read about a story I suspect isn’t on the radar of even many of the most well read Civil War enthusiasts and historians - it wasn’t on mine. I wasn’t aware of it at all, but it was a great change of pace from reading about battles and soldiers - a perfect diversion from my typical quest for knowledge about the era to learn about a fascinating chapter I would have otherwise missed. Recommended!
M10 Social is owned by Doug Cohen in West Bloomfield, MI and provides social media training and digital marketing services from the Frameable Faces Photography studio Doug owns with his wife Ally. He can be reached there at tel:248-790-7317, by mobile at tel:248-346-4121 or via email at mailto:doug@frameablefaces.com. You can follow Doug’s band Vintage Playboy at their Facebook page here.
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