Lincoln's Informer

Charles A. Dana and the Inside Story of the Union War

Carl J. Guarneri

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780700635177, 9780700628469
• eBook ISBN: 9780700628476
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Journalist Biographies
• Index: History

Winner: Albert Castel Book Award

In a recent poll of leading historians, Charles A. Dana was named among the “Twenty-Five Most Influential Civil War Figures You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.” If you have heard of Dana, it was probably from his classic Recollections of the Civil War (1898), which was ghostwritten by muckraker Ida Tarbell and riddled with errors cited by unsuspecting historians ever since. Lincoln’s Informer at long last sets the record straight, giving Charles A. Dana his due in a story that rivals the best historical fiction.

Dana didn’t just record history, Carl J. Guarneri notes: he made it. Starting out as managing editor of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, he led the newspaper’s charge against proslavery forces in Congress and the Kansas territory. When his criticism of the Union’s prosecution of the war became too much for Greeley, Dana was drafted by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to be a special agent—and it was in this capacity that he truly made his mark. Drawing on Dana’s reports, letters, and telegrams—“the most remarkable, interesting, and instructive collection of official documents relating to the Rebellion,” according to the custodian of the Union war records—Guarneri reconstructs the Civil War as Dana experienced and observed it: as a journalist, a confidential informant to Stanton and Lincoln, and, most controversially, an administration insider with surprising influence. While reporting most of the war’s major events, Dana also had a hand in military investigations, the cotton trade, Lincoln’s reelection, passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, and, most notably, the making of Ulysses S. Grant and the breaking of other generals.

Dana’s reporting and Guarneri’s lively narrative provide fresh impressions of Lincoln, Stanton, Grant, and other Union war leaders. Lincoln’s Informer shows us the unlikely role of a little-known confidant and informant in the Lincoln administration’s military and political successes. A remarkable inside look at history unfolding, this book draws the first complete picture of a fascinating character writing his chapter in the story of the Civil War.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Maps and Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: “The Eyes of the Government at the Front”
• 1 “The Responsible Editor of the Tribune”
• 2 “A Party against the Slave Power”
• 3 “Forward to Richmond!”
• 4 “A Printing House Divided”
• 5 “Several Propositions”
• 6 “Mr. Stanton’s Spy”
• 7 “At the Side of the Conqueror”
• 8 Interlude: “Some Duty Not Yet Explained”
• 9 “As Fatal a Name as Bull Run”
• 10 “Glory to God! The Day Is Decisively Ours”
• 11 “Organizing Victory”
• 12 “A Hand on Lee’s Throat”
• 13 “The Deepest Shame That Has Yet Befallen Us”
• 14 “All the Power of the War Department”
• 15 “Side Politics,” Spies, and Swindlers
• 16 “The Rebellion Finished”
• 17 “Grantism” and Retreat
• Epilogue: Remembering (and Forgetting) the War
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover