In his new book Every Drop of Blood Edward Achorn describes the 24 hours of Lincoln’s Second Inauguration. We all remember Lincoln address that day, “With Malice Towards None,” but Achorn found rich circumstances surround the day. You can read the complete interview here. This is an excerpt:
In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to write?
It might sound weird, but the more I researched it — it was more illuminating than I expected. As I started doing the research, I learned that these characters had all interacted with each other, and these moments reflected their personalities and their views of the war. I was amazed at what a quilt this became.
The other thing I discovered that I didn’t expect was when I looked at diaries of white women in the South on this day, and their intense bitterness really comes through. This was while Sherman was brutalizing South Carolina. It was the first state that seceded, and he wanted them to especially feel the “hard hand of war,” as he put it. These women did not want all their suffering and loss to go for nothing, and they were urging men to fight on.
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