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The North Star
- Canada and the Civil War Plots Against Lincoln
- Narrated by: Julian Sher
- Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
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Publisher's summary
FINALIST FOR THE 2023 MAVIS GALLANT PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 J. W. DAFOE BOOK PRIZE
A riveting account of the years, months and days leading up to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and the unexpected ways Canadians were involved in every aspect of the American Civil War.
Canadians take pride in being on the “good side” of the American Civil War, serving as a haven for 30,000 escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad. But dwelling in history's shadow is the much darker role Canada played in supporting the slave South and in fomenting the many plots against Lincoln.
The North Star weaves together the different strands of several Canadians and a handful of Confederate agents in Canada as they all made their separate, fateful journeys into history.
The book shines a spotlight on the stories of such intrepid figures as Anderson Abbott, Canada’s first Black doctor, who joined the Union Army; Emma Edmonds, the New Brunswick woman who disguised herself as a man to enlist as a Union nurse; and Edward P. Doherty, the Quebec man who led the hunt to track down Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
At the same time, the Canadian political and business elite were aiding the slave states. Toronto aristocrat George Taylor Denison III bankrolled Confederate operations and opened his mansion to their agents. The Catholic Church helped one of Booth’s accused accomplices hide out for months in the Quebec countryside. A leading financier in Montreal let Confederates launder money through his bank.
Sher creates vivid portraits of places we thought we knew. Montreal was a sort of nineteenth-century Casablanca of the North: a hub for assassins, money-men, mercenaries and soldiers on the run. Toronto was a headquarters for Confederate plotters and gun-runners. The two largest hotels in the country became nests of Confederate spies.
Meticulously researched and richly illustrated, The North Star is a sweeping tale that makes long-ago events leap out of the book with a relevance to the present day.
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Critic reviews
"A thrill. . . . In Sher’s telling, we get memorable details . . . and rich characterization. . . . [The North Star] is an important corrective to the history Canadians have clung to for far too long.” —Montreal Review of Books
“Fascinating. . . . A riveting . . . read that makes one think about how the Civil War affected the nation and its lingering role in the South’s development . . . . [The North Star] will remind readers why knowing and remembering our past is essential.” —Seattle Book Review
“A fascinating read. . . . [The North Star] shines a light on Canada’s little known and troublesome role in the American Civil War. . . . Sher's timely exploration of this unpalatable slice of Canadian history not only inches us closer to what really happened in those far-off days but teaches us the need to know, however unpalatable.” —Oakville News
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Story
The New York Times best-selling author of George Washington's Secret Six and Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates turns to two other heroes of the nation: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. In The President and the Freedom Fighter, Brian Kilmeade tells the little-known story of how two American heroes moved from strong disagreement to friendship, and in the process changed the entire course of history.
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Great Story and Research
- By Marla O'Halloran on 11-06-21
By: Brian Kilmeade
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The Agitators
- Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women's Rights
- By: Dorothy Wickenden
- Narrated by: Heather Alicia Simms, Anne Twomey, Gabra Zackman, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1850s, Harriet Tubman, strategically brilliant and uncannily prescient, rescued some seventy enslaved people from Maryland’s Eastern Shore and shepherded them north along the underground railroad. One of her regular stops was Auburn, New York, where she entrusted passengers to Martha Coffin Wright, a Quaker mother of seven, and Frances A. Seward, the wife of William H. Seward. Through exhaustive research, Wickenden traces the second American revolution these women fought to bring about, the toll it took on their families, and its lasting effects on the country.
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Excellent!
- By Nikki on 12-22-21
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Reveille in Washington
- By: Margaret Leech
- Narrated by: Grace Conlin
- Length: 21 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Margaret Leech’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history paints a wonderfully vivid and lively picture of Washington, DC, during the Civil War. In addition to the major events and figures such as Lincoln, Leech uses telling anecdotes and draws upon cameo players such as Louisa May Alcott, Walt Whitman, Andrew Carnegie, and a Confederate lady spy to create a living portrait of a sleepy, unfinished city as it struggles to become the strong capital of a united nation.
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Good book, poor read
- By JC on 08-10-20
By: Margaret Leech
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American Midnight
- The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis
- By: Adam Hochschild
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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From legendary historian Adam Hochschild, a groundbreaking reassessment of the overlooked but startlingly resonant period between World War I and the Roaring Twenties, when the foundations of American democracy were threated by war, pandemic, and violence fueled by battles over race, immigration, and the rights of labor
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Disturbing yet Reassuring
- By Sams95 on 11-18-22
By: Adam Hochschild
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38 Nooses
- Lincoln, Little Crow, and the Beginning of the Frontier's End
- By: Scott W. Berg
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In August 1862, after decades of broken treaties, increasing hardship, and relentless encroachment on their lands, a group of Dakota warriors convened a council at the tepee of their leader, Little Crow. Knowing the strength and resilience of the young American nation, Little Crow counseled caution, but anger won the day. Forced to either lead his warriors in a war he knew they could not win or leave them to their fates, he declared, "[Little Crow] is not a coward: he will die with you."
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Powerful condemnation of Manifest Destiny
- By Buretto on 09-26-19
By: Scott W. Berg
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Big Wonderful Thing
- By: Stephen Harrigan
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 28 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and of the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world.
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Guidall is in top form with very good material
- By Elizabeth on 12-22-19
By: Stephen Harrigan
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City of Sedition
- The History of New York City During the Civil War
- By: John Strausbaugh
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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No city was more of a help to Abraham Lincoln and the Union war effort - or more of a hindrance. No city raised more men, money, and matériel for the war, and no city raised more hell against it. It was a city of patriots, war heroes, and abolitionists but simultaneously a city of antiwar protest, draft resistance, and sedition. Without his New York supporters, it's highly unlikely Lincoln would have made it to the White House.
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Read twice...post election antidote
- By Pianoman on 12-02-16
By: John Strausbaugh
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The Lincoln Conspiracy
- The Secret Plot to Kill America's 16th President - and Why It Failed
- By: Brad Meltzer, Josh Mensch
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Everyone knows the story of Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865, but few are aware of the original conspiracy to kill him four years earlier in 1861, literally on his way to Washington, DC, for his first inauguration. The conspirators were part of a pro-Southern secret society that didn't want an antislavery President in the White House. They planned an elaborate scheme to assassinate the brand new President in Baltimore as Lincoln's inauguration train passed through en route to the Capitol.
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A Trip Through History
- By Bridget Preece on 05-05-20
By: Brad Meltzer, and others
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Life of a Klansman
- A Family History in White Supremacy
- By: Edward Ball
- Narrated by: Edward Ball
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Life of a Klansman tells the story of a warrior in the Ku Klux Klan, a carpenter in Louisiana who took up the cause of fanatical racism during the years after the Civil War. Edward Ball, a descendant of the Klansman, paints a portrait of his family’s anti-Black militant that is part history, part memoir rich in personal detail.
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Thought Provoking, But . . .
- By William G. Stuart on 09-01-20
By: Edward Ball
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The Patriots
- Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the Making of America
- By: Winston Groom
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In this masterful narrative, Winston Groom brings his signature storytelling panache to the tale of our nation's most fascinating founding fathers - Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams - painting a vivid picture of the improbable events, bold ideas, and extraordinary characters who created the United States of America.
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For newbies or history buffs
- By SBR72 on 06-06-21
By: Winston Groom
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Midnight Rising
- John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War
- By: Tony Horwitz
- Narrated by: Dan Oreskes
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Plotted in secret, launched in the dark, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was a pivotal moment in U.S. history. But few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Now, Midnight Rising portrays Brown's uprising in vivid color, revealing a country on the brink of explosive conflict. Brown, the descendant of New England Puritans, saw slavery as a sin against America's founding principles. Unlike most abolitionists, he was willing to take up arms, and in 1859 he prepared for battle at a hideout in Maryland....
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Up from Obscurity
- By Lynn on 06-18-12
By: Tony Horwitz
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Three Roads to the Alamo
- The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis
- By: William C. Davis
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 27 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Three Roads to the Alamo is the definitive work about the lives of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis - the legendary frontiersmen and fighters who met their destiny at the Alamo in one of the most famous and tragic battles in American history - and about what really happened in that battle.
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Grandfather Dr. Death eats Applesauce on Christmas
- By McKinley L. Donnor on 07-15-20
By: William C. Davis
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The Great Shame
- And the Triumph of the Irish in the English-Speaking World
- By: Thomas Keneally
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 35 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Keneally, the Booker Prize-winning author of Schindler’s List, is universally praised for crafting smooth narratives from authentic historical events. With The Great Shame, he turns his insightful eye toward the Irish struggle through the 19h century. In sharp contrast to much of Europe, Ireland was a terrible place to be during the 1800s. Many of the nation’s finest people set sail for America and Canada.
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First read
- By WGrubb on 04-08-16
By: Thomas Keneally