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Congress at War
- How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
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Publisher's Summary
The story of how Congress helped win the Civil War - a new perspective that puts the House and Senate, rather than Lincoln, at the center of the conflict.
This brilliantly argued new perspective on the Civil War overturns the popular conception that Abraham Lincoln single-handedly led the Union to victory and gives us a vivid account of the essential role Congress played in winning the war
Building a riveting narrative around four influential members of Congress - Thaddeus Stevens, Pitt Fessenden, Ben Wade, and the pro-slavery Clement Vallandigham - Fergus Bordewich shows us how a newly empowered Republican party shaped one of the most dynamic and consequential periods in American history. From reinventing the nation's financial system to pushing President Lincoln to emancipate the slaves to the planning for Reconstruction, Congress undertook drastic measures to defeat the Confederacy, in the process laying the foundation for a strong central government that came fully into being in the 20th century. Brimming with drama and outsized characters, Congress at War is also one of the most original books about the Civil War to appear in years and will change the way we understand the conflict.
Critic Reviews
"Bordewich contributes an entertaining, fresh perspective to our ever-evolving understanding and discussion of the Civil War. An important addition for both general readers of American history and scholars of the growing interpretations of Civil War studies." (Library Journal)
"Carefully documented.... Bordewich offers a unique and colorful perspective on the Civil War, and regularly manages to make congressional minutiae entertaining. Readers seeking fresh insight into the era will be satisfied." (Publisher's Weekly)
"[A] fascinating deep dive... Bordewich’s narrative transforms quotidian politics into nation-shaking legislation... There’s nothing arcane about this book - it will keep readers absorbed and entertained." (Graham Russell Gad Hodges, Zócalo Square Press)
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What listeners say about Congress at War
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Lisa Balestrini
- 09-12-20
Fascinating read!
This was an incredible in- depth look into the players and politics of the 37th and 38th Congress.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- David M. Richardson
- 01-08-22
Great Story and Narration
A great story of an important Congress during a pivotal point in America's history!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 05-25-21
The Ultimate Behind The Scenes for Civil War fans!
This book was featured on History Unplugged a favorite podcast of mine. Based on the interview and discussion alone, I knew I was in for a treat; but that was an understatement! This book is FANTASTIC! I'll be looking for more from this author for sure.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- R. Duce
- 08-19-20
Educational
Learned the amazing details on how effective and productive Congress was during the civil war.
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-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 22
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 19
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 18
A close look at the contest of 1880 reveals that Garfield's victory could have been the start of a period of greater civil rights legislation, a continuation of Lincoln's vision. This was the choice made by the American people - and, as The Last Lincoln Republican makes poignantly clear, the great opportunity forever lost when Garfield was assassinated just a few months into his term.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A focused look at a changing political landscape
- By EastCountyBooks on 05-17-23
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America's Great Debate
- Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise that Preserved the Union
- By: Fergus M. Bordewich
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 17 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
The Mexican War introduced vast new territories into the United States, among them California and the present-day Southwest. When gold was discovered in California in the great Gold Rush of 1849, the population swelled, and settlers petitioned for admission to the Union. But the U.S. Senate was precariously balanced with 15 free states and 15 slave states. Up to this point, states had been admitted in pairs, one free and one slave, to preserve that tenuous balance in the Senate.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Excellent. Very detailed. Entertaining.
- By Douglas on 03-03-18
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Washington
- The Making of the American Capital
- By: Fergus M. Bordewich
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 19
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 21
In Washington, award-winning author Fergus M. Bordewich turns his eye to the backroom deal making and shifting alliances among our Founding Fathers and in so doing pulls back the curtain on the lives of the slaves who actually built the city.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A thoroughly enjoyable book!
- By Richard on 05-11-19
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A Brutal Reckoning
- Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South
- By: Peter Cozzens
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 4
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1
The Creek War is one of the most tragic episodes in American history, leading to the greatest loss of Native American life on what is now U.S. soil. A conflict involving not only white Americans and Native Americans, but also the British and the Spanish, the Creek War opened the Deep South to the Cotton Kingdom, setting the stage for the American Civil War yet to come. No other single Indian conflict had such significant impact on the fate of America—and A Brutal Reckoning is the definitive book on this forgotten chapter in our history.
By: Peter Cozzens
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The Field of Blood
- Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War
- By: Joanne B. Freeman
- Narrated by: Joanne B. Freeman
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 498
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 440
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 437
In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the US Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery.
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5 out of 5 stars
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fascinating look at an untold aspect of US.history
- By P. Cardella on 09-27-18
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When the Center Held
- By: Donald Rumsfeld
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell, Donald Rumsfeld
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 53
A revealing political memoir of the presidency of Gerald Ford as seen through the eyes of Donald Rumsfeld - the New York Times best-selling author, and Ford’s former Secretary of Defense and Chief of Staff, and longtime personal confidant. In the wake of Watergate, it seemed the United States was coming apart. Into that divided atmosphere stepped an unexpected, unelected, and largely unknown American - Gerald R. Ford.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A forgotten president
- By Jean on 08-28-18
By: Donald Rumsfeld
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Salmon P. Chase
- Lincoln's Vital Rival
- By: Walter Stahr
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 27 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
Salmon P. Chase is best remembered as a rival of Lincoln’s for the Republican nomination in 1860—but there would not have been a national Republican Party, and Lincoln could not have won the presidency, were it not for the groundwork Chase laid over the previous two decades. Starting in the early 1840s, long before Lincoln was speaking out against slavery, Chase was forming and leading antislavery parties. He represented fugitive slaves so often in his law practice that he was known as the attorney general for runaway negroes.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This man was a big deal in our history
- By Scott B. Palmer on 09-18-22
By: Walter Stahr
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The Fiery Trial
- Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
- By: Eric Foner
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 18 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 503
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 412
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 413
Eric Foner gives us the definitive history of Abraham Lincoln and the end of slavery in America. Foner's Lincoln emerges as a leader, one whose greatness lies in his capacity for moral and political growth through real engagement with allies and critics alike. This powerful work will transform our understanding of the nation's greatest president and the issue that mattered most.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Book about a Monstrous Injustice
- By Cynthia on 07-29-13
By: Eric Foner
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The Half Has Never Been Told
- Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
- By: Edward E Baptist
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 19 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 108
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 98
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Story5 out of 5 stars 95
Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution - the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A must read for everyone.
- By S. P. Cooper on 03-18-22
By: Edward E Baptist
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An Ordinary Man
- The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford
- By: Richard Norton Smith
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 36 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 14
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 13
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Story5 out of 5 stars 13
For many Americans, President Gerald Ford was the genial accident of history who controversially pardoned his Watergate-tarnished predecessor, presided over the fall of Saigon, and became a punching bag on Saturday Night Live. Yet as Richard Norton Smith reveals in a book full of surprises, Ford was an underrated leader whose tough decisions and personal decency look better with the passage of time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A wonderful insightful look at underrated POTUS
- By Jake hicks on 04-21-23
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The Second Founding
- How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
- By: Eric Foner
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 316
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 268
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Story5 out of 5 stars 263
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar, a timely history of the constitutional changes that built equality into the nation's foundation and how those guarantees have been shaken over time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent book - problematic narrator
- By Jennifer on 10-01-19
By: Eric Foner
Related to this topic
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Battle Cry of Freedom
- The Civil War Era
- By: James M. McPherson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 39 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 685
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 586
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Story5 out of 5 stars 585
Battle Cry of Freedom vividly traces how a new nation was forged when a war both sides were sure would amount to little dragged for four years and cost more American lives than all other wars combined. Narrator Jonathan Davis powerful reading brings to life the many voices of the Civil War.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Book
- By J. Weston on 12-11-20
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Break It Up
- Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union
- By: Richard Kreitner
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 63
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
The novel and fiery thesis of Break It Up is simple: the United States has never lived up to its name - and never will. The disunionist impulse may have found its greatest expression in the Civil War, but as Break It Up shows, the seduction of secession wasn't limited to the South or the 19th century. With a scholar's command and a journalist's curiosity, Kreitner takes readers on a revolutionary journey through American history, revealing the power and persistence of disunion movements in every era and region.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Crystallized many thoughts I had over decades
- By International Traveler on 10-11-20
By: Richard Kreitner
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Franklin & Washington
- The Founding Partnership
- By: Edward J. Larson
- Narrated by: Andrew Tell
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 83
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 82
Today the United States is the world’s great superpower, and yet we also wrestle with the government Franklin and Washington created more than two centuries ago - the power of the executive branch, the principle of checks and balances, the electoral college - as well as the wounds of their compromise over slavery. Now, as the founding institutions appear under new stress, it is time to understand their origins through the fresh lens of Larson’s Franklin & Washington, a major addition to the literature of the founding era.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Two together, written about at same time
- By fair & balanced on 03-28-21
By: Edward J. Larson
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Armies of Deliverance
- A New History of the Civil War
- By: Elizabeth R. Varon
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 17 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story5 out of 5 stars 25
Loyal Americans marched off to war in 1861 not to conquer the South but to liberate it. So argues Elizabeth R. Varon in Armies of Deliverance, a sweeping narrative of the Civil War and a bold new interpretation of Union and Confederate war aims. Northerners imagined the war as a crusade to deliver the Southern masses from slaveholder domination and to bring democracy, prosperity, and education to the region. As the war escalated, Lincoln and his allies built the case that emancipation would secure military victory and benefit the North and South alike.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A clear, comprehensive narrative unlike any other
- By Alice Conley on 04-10-23
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Fateful Lightning
- A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction
- By: Allen C. Guelzo
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 26 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall