Lincoln's Men Book Report

The book Lincoln 's Men by Daniel Mark Epstein tells the story of President Abraham Lincoln and his secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay. However, it also tells the story of William Stoddard, the lesser known secretary of the three for the President. This book show how important these three men were to Lincoln, as well as how close the President was to each of them personally. Hay and Nicolay were so closed to Lincoln, that they lived inside the White House. But, what’s memorable of this story is how Nicolay and Hay have followed Lincoln from the very beginning, starting from Illinois all the way to Washington DC. These three men were so personally close to Lincoln, as well as his wife Mary. Stoddard was better in handling the “difficult” and “moody” Mary Lincoln. While Hay and Nicolay would called her such nicknames, Stoddard was usually the one to calm down Mary. Throught the presidency of Lincoln, each man would write to various newspapers; however, Nicolay and Hay wrote a book about Lincoln. One thing shown throughout the whole book that the author tried to convey was that Lincoln trusted them completely and they were aware of all confidential information. The author tells us that a large portion of John Hay 's diary, that he kept with him, was ripped out. At the end, after Lincoln’s assassination, Nicolay become marshal of the US Supreme Court, Hay remained secretary of state under

Daniel Marks Epstein published Lincoln’s Men in 2009. Epstein is a biographer who has actually written books about Lincoln before, Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington and The Lincolns Portrait of a Marriage, are the other two books that actually pushed him to write this book. His research for this story was due to the other research he had done for the other two Lincoln books, as well him going to the Library for more information. Epstein is qualified to write on this topic because he is a biographer, and he has done extensive research on President