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Thursday, December 12, 2024

Major modern biographies of Lincoln's cabinet secretaries

Yesterday's post about the new Bates study got me thinking about remaining gaps in the modern biography of Lincoln's cabinet. I know "major" and "modern" are subjective labels, but I tried to keep the selected list below to conventionally published works from the past fifty years or so.

State
William H. Seward (1861–1865):
Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man (2012) by Walter Stahr.
William Henry Seward: Lincoln's Right Hand (1991) by John Taylor.

Attorney General
Edward Bates (1861–1864):
Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates (2024) by Mark Neels.
James Speed (1864–1865):
None

Navy
Gideon Welles (1861–1865):
Gideon Welles: Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy (1973) by John Niven.

War
Simon Cameron (1861–1862):
Amiable Scoundrel: Simon Cameron, Lincoln's Scandalous Secretary of War (2016) by Paul Kahan [site review].
Edwin M. Stanton (1862–1865):
Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary (2017) by Walter Stahr.
Lincoln's Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton (2015) by William Marvel.

Postmaster General
Montgomery Blair (1861–1864):
None
William Dennison (1864–1865):
None

Treasury
Salmon P. Chase (1861–1864):
Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival (2022) by Walter Stahr.
Salmon P. Chase: A Biography (1995) by John Niven.
Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics (1987) by Frederick Blue.
William P. Fessenden (1864–1865):
Civil War Senator: William Pitt Fessenden and the Fight to Save the American Republic (2011) by Robert Cook.
Hugh McCulloch (1865)
Hugh McCulloch: Father of Modern Banking (2004) by Susan Lee Guckenberg.

Interior
Caleb B. Smith (1861–1863):
None
John P. Usher (1863–1865):
A short biography was published in 1960, but none since then
James Harlan (1865): - Appointed by Johnson after Lincoln's assassination
None

It's expected that the cabinet biggies would have multiple treatments, and it still surprises me that it's been half a century since the last Welles biography. Blair is another notable omission.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the post. Drew, a question. When it comes to historical figures (major/secondary) do you think there should be new biographies every twenty-thirty years on the subject? Can one book do a subject for good like the biography say on Bushrod Johnson? Should reinterpretations be attempted only when a new cache of material is found? I really like reading on Lincoln for example just not all ten thousand or whatever it is now.

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