Mr Bristow’s family was among the fonders of KY and helped form the Republican Party in KY. He served as a Union officer in the Cival War, was elected to the KY house, appointed KY US District-ATTY and prosecuted Federal crimes during reconstruction. He was appointed the first Solicitor-G of the US and served as Treasury Secretary under President Grant during which time he was responsible for the refinancing of the Civil War debt and successfully prosecuted the “Whiskey Ring”. In eighteen seventy six he was nominated by the Republican Party for president, thereafter he relocated to NYC and organized the American Bar Association. Cases he litigated established legal principles that ignorance of the law no excuse”, the life of a patent and preferential debts under a receivership. Upon his death, Mr. Bristow was counsel to three Presidents and a respected defender of US Corporate law. Tributes to him graced the pages of newspapers throughout the US and Europe acknowledging him a as a leader of his generation not to be easily replaced.

Lydia Hamilton Smith (1813–1884) was a prominent African American businesswoman in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the longtime housekeeper, life companion, and collaborator of the state’s abolitionist congressman Thaddeus Stevens. In his biography of this remarkable woman, Mark Kelley reveals how Smith served the cause of abolition, managed Stevens’s household, acquired property, and crossed racialized social boundaries. Born a free woman near Gettysburg, Smith began working for Stevens in 1844. Her relationship with Stevens fascinated and infuriated many, and it made Smith a highly recognizable figure both locally and nationally. The two walked side by side in Lancaster and in Washington, DC, as they worked to secure the rights of African Americans, sheltered people on the Underground Railroad, managed two households, raised her sons and his nephews, and built a real-estate business. In the last years of Stevens’s life, as his declining health threatened to short-circuit his work, Smith risked her own well-being to keep him alive while he led the drive to end slavery, impeach Andrew Johnson, and push for the ratification of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. An Uncommon Woman is a vital history that accords Lydia Hamilton Smith the recognition that she deserves. Every American should know Smith’s inspiring story.

"James P. Jones ... uses newspaper accounts, private letters, and the records of Congress to examine Major General John A. Logan's return to his political and legislative career after the Civil War. Logan emerged from the national conflict a military hero and uncommitted to any political party ... By 1884 his personality and fiercely defended principles had earned him the vice-presidential nomination on the ill-fated Republican ticket. Many writers on this period have portrayed Logan as a corrupt politician, but Jones successfully clears the Illinoisan's record"--Description of previous edition.

"Combines scholarly exactness with evocative passages....Biography at its best."—Marcus Cunliffe, The New York Times Book Review; Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. The seminal biography of one of America's towering, enigmatic figures. From his boyhood in Ohio to the battlefields of the Civil War and his presidency during the crucial years of Reconstruction, this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography traces the entire arc of Grant's life (1822-1885). "A moving and convincing portrait....profound understanding of the man as well as his period and his country."—C. Vann Woodward, New York Review of Books "Clearsightedness, along with McFeely's unfailing intelligence and his existential sympathy...informs his entire biography."—Justin Kaplan, The New Republic

Born in Shawneetown, Illinois in time to be newly graduated from West Point when the Civil War started, James H. Wilson became a brigadier general by the age of twenty-six. Fueled by boundless ambition and the desire to serve his country, he reorganized the Union cavalry in time to gain the upper hand over the Confederate army. But the story of this brash, young man did not end with the capture of Jefferson Davis, for which Wilson was ultimately responsible. His life after the Civil War was also representative of American tenacity in the midst of explosive growth and change during the late-nineteenth century. He became a military governor in Georgia during Reconstruction, a railroad baron from the start of the Industrial Revolution, and a military advisor during World War I. The story of Wilson’s life remains a compelling example for us in these rapidly changing times, and resonates as an excellent account of one man’s lasting impression on his century.

This biographical dictionary documents the Union army colonels who commanded regiments from Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. Entries are arranged first by state and then by regiment, and provide a biographical sketch of each colonel focusing on his Civil War service. Many of the colonels covered herein never rose above that rank, failing to win promotion to brigadier general or brevet brigadier general, and have therefore received very little scholarly attention prior to this work.