The Lincoln Mailbag

Harold Holzer, the editor of Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President, dips once again into Lincoln's bulging mailbag to assemble and annotate a volume of letters, many of them never before published, that the American people wrote to their president during the Civil War - correspondence that offered praise, criticism, advice, threats, abuse, and appeals for help and for special favors from men and women throughout the country.

Significantly, this collection may be more representative of the mood of the country at the time than Lincoln might have known; it includes letters from black Americans, originally routed to the War Department's Colored Troops Bureau, that Lincoln never saw. The letters, of course, speak for themselves, but Holzer's introduction and annotations provide historical context for events and people described as well as for those who wrote so passionately to their president in Lincoln's America.