Booknotes: Lincoln's Wartime Tours from Washington, D.C.

New Arrival:
• Lincoln's Wartime Tours from Washington, D.C. by John W. Schildt (Arcadia Pub and The Hist Press, 2020).

My initial glance at the title of this book made me think it was yet another tour guide to Lincoln-related sites around the nation's capital, but it is actually something fresher and more interesting than that. From the description: "Abraham Lincoln spent much of his presidency traveling. His visits to Antietam to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and to Pennsylvania for the famed Gettysburg Address are well remembered. During the course of the war, Lincoln also traveled to West Point and Harpers Ferry. As hostilities drew to a close, he spent time on the Virginia battlefields, from Petersburg to Richmond and beyond. In this new edition of Lincoln's Wartime Travels, John W. Schildt details visits to wounded soldiers both Union and Confederate, conferences with generals and the logistics of getting a wartime president from place to place."

In the book, author John Schildt covers a number of these trips, organizing them into chapters divided by year (1862-1865). The final chapter is a day-by-day account of Lincoln's late March through early April 1865 visit to the Virginia front.