Author Premiere, Jonathan Earle, Phd: He Has the People: Abraham Lincoln and the Election of 1860

Join us for a book premiere with LSU professor Jonathan Earle.  

A new historical analysis —HE HAS THE PEOPLE—offers a bold new reading of the most pivotal election in American history.

When John Brown's men stormed Harpers Ferry in the fall of 1859, the compromises that had held the country together for decades came undone. The 1860 election was no longer about who would be president — it was about how soon war would follow the inauguration.

Drawing on long-neglected documents, Earle captures the full drama of the race: how Lincoln outmaneuvered Democrat Stephen Douglas and presumptive Republican favorite William Henry Seward. Lincoln and his circle ran a brilliant campaign, harnessing Northern anger, rising antislavery sentiment, and deep fractures within both the Democratic Party and the country itself. His platform lived in his speeches—a vision of how the nation might endure the coming crisis—but behind the commanding rhetoric ran a sophisticated, strikingly modern political machine.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jonathan Earle is the Donald Cecil Delaune Professor and Dean of the Roger Hadfield Ogden Honors College at Louisiana State University, where he is also a professor of History and African & African American Studies. He is the author of Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, winner of the James Broussard First Book Prize from the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic; John Brown’s Raid: A Brief History; and editor (with Diane Mutti Burke) of Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri: The Long Civil War on the Border. He lives in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. 

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR HE HAS THE PEOPLE

“From the Republican convention in the Wigwam to the general election in Wisconsin, Jonathan Earle has written the best campaign account since Teddy White’s book on the 1960 election. “

—James Carville

“Jonathan Earle has made good his intention to portray the contest of 1860 as "the most consequential election in American history—then and to this day."  He shows the reader a pivotal moment between Union and Disunion, between a past of slavery and a future of freedom, and between a corrupt peace and a transformative war that ushered in modern America.”

James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

“This account of the players, passion, rituals, and (at times) barely control bedlam of the "most transformative election in American history" explains how, against all odds, a minor Illinois politician prevailed within a five-person contest. Based on first-hand accounts and highlighting the role of contingency in the election of 1860, Jonathan Earle’ book is a thrilling and illuminating read.”

--Amy S. Greenberg, George Winfree Professor of American History, Penn State University, author of A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico

“Jonathan Earle’s He Has the People offers a fresh, fast-paced account of the transformative year leading to Lincoln’s election. The book is a brief but powerful thrill ride, filled with chaos and contingencies, and taking us into the heart of a presidential election that would change the moral and political landscape of America forever.”

--Michael Vorenberg, author of Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War