The Great Comeback: How Abraham Lincoln Beat the Odds to Win the 1860 Republican Nomination

During Lincoln's one term as a Whig in the House of Representatives (1847-49), he alienated colleagues by opposing the popular president James Polk and the equally popular Mexican War. Lincoln's law partner ,William Herndon, said that when he returned to Illinois, Lincoln was ""a politically dead and buried man."" Not long after, joining the new Republican Party, Lincoln twice lost bids for a Senate seat and failed an 1856 reach for the Republican vice presidential nomination. Independent scholar Ecelbarger (Three Days in the Shenandoah) artfully shows how, from a career in cinders, Lincoln rose in a mere two years to seize the presidential nomination in May 1860. Ecelbarger describes diligent work and ground-laying by Lincoln and various allies. Ecelbarger also reveals a ravenously ambitious Lincoln whistle-stopping across America, railing against the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and making a national reputation. More to the point, we see Lincoln as smooth backroom political operator, wooing reluctant eastern Republicans wary of the man they'd considered a political loser and ill-kempt backwoods attorney. Ecelbarger's scholarship is sound, his prose enthralling and his topic one that has not previously received due diligence in the Lincoln literature.