New from The History Press:
WICKED SPRINGFIELD: CRIME, CORRUPTION AND SCANDAL DURING THE LINCOLN ERA
by Erika Holst
Pull the sheets off the political hotbed that was Lincoln’s Springfield.
In the twenty-four years that Abraham Lincoln lived in Springfield, the city saw its share of crime, corruption, and scandal, much of it at the hands of Lincoln’s law clients and acquaintances. Holst sheds light on these shady characters, from the man being sued for divorce who claimed he caught his venereal disease from an outhouse to Governor William Bissell, whose near-duel with Jefferson Davis almost made him ineligible to hold office. Learn what prompted a congressional candidate -- in an election clerked by Lincoln -- to shout down his accuser as “some spindle-shanked, toad-eating, man-granny, who feeds the depraved appetites of his patrons with gossip and slander.” Read the true stories that fed those depraved appetites, drawn from the newspapers Lincoln read and the docket where he practiced law. Discover the wicked side of Lincoln’s Springfield.
In the twenty-four years that Abraham Lincoln lived in Springfield, the city saw its share of crime, corruption, and scandal, much of it at the hands of Lincoln’s law clients and acquaintances. Holst sheds light on these shady characters, from the man being sued for divorce who claimed he caught his venereal disease from an outhouse to Governor William Bissell, whose near-duel with Jefferson Davis almost made him ineligible to hold office. Learn what prompted a congressional candidate -- in an election clerked by Lincoln -- to shout down his accuser as “some spindle-shanked, toad-eating, man-granny, who feeds the depraved appetites of his patrons with gossip and slander.” Read the true stories that fed those depraved appetites, drawn from the newspapers Lincoln read and the docket where he practiced law. Discover the wicked side of Lincoln’s Springfield.
