Bruce, Robert V., Lincoln and the Tools of War (1956). Fuller, Claud, The Rifled Musket (1958). ____, and Stewart, R. D., Firearms of the Confederacy (1944). Gluckman, Arcadi, United States Muskets, Rifles and Carbines (1948). Lewis, Berkeley R., Small Arms and Ammunition in the United States Service (1956). Mauncy, Albert, Artillery through the Ages (1949). Naisawald, L. Van Loan, Grape and Canister (1960). Peterson, Harold L., Notes on Ordnance of the American Civil War, 1861-1865 (1959). Wainwright, Charles S., A Diary of Battle, ed. Allan Nevins (1962). Wise, Jennings C., The Long Arm of Lee (1915, 1959).
This damaged wetplate, made in June, 1863, shows the 17th New York Battery drawn up in line near Washington, D. C.
IX. LEADERS
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) were born in Kentucky only a few miles apart. Lincoln educated himself, eventually settled in Illinois, and became a highly successful frontier attorney.
Davis graduated from West Point, became a wealthy Mississippi planter, and served successively as Secretary of War and U. S. senator. Both men were tall and of striking appearance; both married strong-willed women.
The destiny of Civil War America lay largely in the hands of four men: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Ulysses Simpson Grant, and Robert Edward Lee. Since an abundance of printed works exists on the lives and careers of these leaders, given here are but a few generalities concerning each.
In many respects, Lincoln long seemed mysteriously complex. But those who knew the man quickly dropped any impression that Lincoln was crude or provincial. “He is the best of us all,” his Secretary of State, William H. Seward, once stated. The solemn-looking Lincoln was a deeply earnest chief executive who devoted his last four years to reuniting a shattered nation that he loved dearly and to raising the nation to a higher moral and spiritual level. He was kind, genial, compassionate, and religious (though he attended church without joining any denomination).