During the Civil War, the United States was “a nation that was still younger than its oldest citizens,” writes University of Michigan professor Scott Ellsworth in his new book, Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America. This young country was figuring out what it was just as much as it was figuring out what it wasn’t. This dilemma, as history shows, was divisive.

Midnight on the Potomac supplies a plot-driven, nonfiction account of the people involved in the Civil War, both famous and not, and how their actions influenced the trajectory of the war. Ellsworth examines the leadership during the war, as well as the conspiracies, attacks, weapons, and battles.

Most centrally, the book focuses on the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln through profiles of both John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln. Ellsworth juxtaposes Booth’s acting career with his support of the Confederacy. Ellsworth also discusses Lincoln’s habits and moods. For example, a description of Lincoln notes his features:

Others spoke about how mercurial his facial expressions were and how, like a sudden spring storm, you could read his emotions from one moment to the next. But it was Abraham Lincoln’s eyes that transfixed those who saw them up close. Dark grey at times, a tender blue at others, they were often quixotic and remote, captivating yet secretive, a set of halfway-opened doors to his soul. Walt Whitman, who would often exchange nods with the President on the streets of Washington, thought that they were marked “with a deep latent sadness in the expression.”

Ellsworth’s chapters show where Lincoln’s sadness originates, from losses of troops during combat to, more personally, the losses of his sons.

Near the time of Lincoln’s assassination, Booth garnered attention as a prominent and skilled actor. Ellsworth writes, “To the public, there was little to suggest that John Wilkes Booth was anything other than a loyal citizen of the United States.” Yet, “Booth told his sister Asia … [t]hat he, in his own small ways and using his own means, had aided the Confederacy. But come the bloody and calamitous summer of 1864, his involvement with the Rebel cause would take a dramatic and precipitous new turn.” These details are unlike the story that textbooks have long conveyed.

Midnight on the Potomac addresses not only the involvement of African Americans who were enslaved in the Civil War but also the long-desired end to slavery. The significant contributions of the Black troops influenced the war. Then, as Ellsworth states, “The collapse of American slavery was nothing short of an earthquake.” Still, the reverberations of slavery have continued over time through discrimination and racism, making freedom a promise “the nation still struggles to redeem.”

Ellsworth, an author of several books on history, will speak about Midnight on the Potomac at Literati Bookstore on Tuesday, July 22, at 6:30 pm.

Ellsworth and I talked about Midnight on the Potomac by email before his event.

Q: You were interested in the Civil War from a young age, as you write in your acknowledgements. What keeps you interested in the topic?
A: In many ways, the Civil War is still, to this day, the central event in American history. Even more than the American Revolution, it was during the Civil War that questions of who we are as Americans, what are our beliefs and principles, and who did the words of the Declaration of Independence actually apply to, were in their sharpest relief. One in every 50 Americans died as a result of the war, while at the end of the conflict, one out of every seven Americans was no longer enslaved. From the Civil Rights Movement to our current political woes, there’s a direct line back to the events of the Civil War.

Q: One passage in the book says, “What would be later portrayed as a John Wilkes Booth-led effort to kidnap or kill Abraham Lincoln was, in fact, covered with the handprints of the Confederate Secret Service and other agents of the Confederacy. Just who was leading whom would be a question well worth asking.”
A: Probably the biggest surprise in researching this book was discovering that the real John Wilkes Booth was not at all like the version we’d been taught—that of a second-rate actor, living in the shadow of his more famous father and brother, and who thought up and organized the assassination of Lincoln on his own. In other words, we’ve been taught that Booth was sort of a prototype for the likes of John Hinckley or Lee Harvey Oswald. In truth, Booth was a theatrical superstar, a much-adored giant of the American stage who regularly sold out theaters across the country and was hailed as a genius by newspapers in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and other cities. And far from being a lone wolf killer, he was well connected with agents of the Confederate Secret Service.

Q: This book is billed as revealing aspects of the war that are different from what was once thought. Tell us how you built this narrative and sorted out how the actions and events happened, despite how your account has not been the mainstream narrative about the Civil War and assassination of Lincoln.
A: Civil War books come in all sorts of varieties. There are books about battles, and books about generals, books about President Lincoln and other politicians, and books about the assassination. But they rarely overlap. What I discovered, at least for myself and hopefully for my readers, is that these things all connect. When the Confederate high command knew that they could no longer win their independence on the battlefield, they launched a terror war against the loyal citizens of the North, including a nearly successful attempt to burn down much of New York City. Doing away with Lincoln was part of these larger efforts.

Q: Midnight on the Potomac focuses on all of those aspects, but more so on the people than the battles of the Civil War that receive so much attention. Chapters provide insights on Lincoln, Booth, African Americans who had been enslaved, generals on both sides, spies, nurses, journalists, and more. How does following the people change how you tell the story?
A: As has long been noted, the American Civil War was the first truly modern war in the history of the world. It started out as a Napoleonic conflict, with neat lines of infantry facing off against each other at Bull Run, and ended up, in the muddy trenches of Petersburg, like a scene out of World War I. But more importantly, it was the first war where entire societies were engaged in the fight. And to show that, truthfully and honestly, it was imperative to show the crucial contributions of women, African Americans, and others. The war wasn’t just won on the battlefields. It was also won on the homefront.

Q: This book is not an academic monograph on your research. Midnight on the Potomac, while nonfiction, is plot-driven. Its title and cover sound and look like a thriller or mystery. How do you approach writing about historical events in this style?
A: Though I was trained as a historian, I’ve never written for scholars, but have always written for general audiences. And while my books have always been built upon scholarly research, in order to reach a broad range of readers, it’s important to create a story, or stories, that can draw them in and sustain their interest. In other words, like other writers of narrative nonfiction, I look to some of the techniques used by novelists to create books that readers want to keep reading.

Q: The afterword describes the long tail of the effects of slavery and states, “Freedom wasn’t quite so free after all.” After the Civil War, an alternative narrative was developed around the Lost Cause of the Confederacy that portrayed the Confederacy in a different light. How did you go about grappling with this history as you were writing this book? What do you hope readers learn from it?
A: The Lost Cause—that is, the effort to recast the leaders of the Confederacy as no longer being traitors, but as American heroes—has had a monumental impact on how the Civil War was understood in this country for nearly a century. Indeed, in my own case, I attended Robert E. Lee Elementary School in Tulsa, which had been dedicated in 1918 by an ex-Confederate officer. It’s only been in recent decades that we’ve started to escape this mythology, though the fight is far from over.

Q: What is next on your stack to read?
A: I just finished reading Robert K. Massie’s Nicholas and Alexandra, a groundbreaking 1967 account of the fall of the Romanovs, the last Tsarist rulers of Russia. Up next are two books that I’ve been meaning to read for years, Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Having just written those two sentences, it strikes me that if one were to create some sort of Venn diagram of those three books, my work would aim for where they all overlap!

Q: What is next for your research and writing?
A: That’s the $64,000 question! If your readers have any suggestions, please send them to me at scottell@umich.edu.

Martha Stuit is a former reporter and current librarian. 

Scott Ellsworth will speak about "Midnight on the Potomac" at Literati Bookstore on Tuesday, July 22, at 6:30 pm.