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Pivotal Moments in American History
He Has the People: Abraham Lincoln and the Election of 1860
A gripping and granular look at how Abraham Lincoln got elected the 16th president of the United States.
James McPherson calls the election of 1860 "undeniably the most important--and pivotal--in all of American history." The nation was not merely divided over the issue of slavery; the opposing camps were at each other's throats. The moment John Brown and his men attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in the fall of 1859 the compromises that had stitched the country together for decades unraveled. The presidential election was therefore about more than who the next president would be. It was about how soon war would follow his inauguration.
Using the writings and story of Murat Halstead, the nation's first campaign journalist, as well as previously unused documents from Lincoln's campaign manager, Jonathan Earle captures the full drama of the 1860 election. He shows how Lincoln, a one-time Congressman from Illinois, and a dark horse against the more established Stephen Douglas, the Democratic frontrunner, and William Henry Seward, the presumptive Republican nominee, got the people and votes he needed to win in a protracted yet furiously disputed election cycle.
Earle focuses on the chaotic campaigns themselves, as political bosses, candidates, and their self-appointed partisans took politicking in directions that at times resembled paramilitary exercises more than campaign events. In the end, Lincoln and his associates ran a brilliant campaign, leveraging Northern anger, growing antislavery sentiment, and divisions within both the Democratic Party and the nation as a whole. His platform was built on his speeches, which projected a vision for how the nation would persevere in the coming crisis. Behind the commanding rhetoric, however, was sophisticated and very modern political machinery. He Has the People provides an engaging historical narrative and a fresh appraisal of the most consequential of all presidential elections.
James McPherson calls the election of 1860 "undeniably the most important--and pivotal--in all of American history." The nation was not merely divided over the issue of slavery; the opposing camps were at each other's throats. The moment John Brown and his men attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in the fall of 1859 the compromises that had stitched the country together for decades unraveled. The presidential election was therefore about more than who the next president would be. It was about how soon war would follow his inauguration.
Using the writings and story of Murat Halstead, the nation's first campaign journalist, as well as previously unused documents from Lincoln's campaign manager, Jonathan Earle captures the full drama of the 1860 election. He shows how Lincoln, a one-time Congressman from Illinois, and a dark horse against the more established Stephen Douglas, the Democratic frontrunner, and William Henry Seward, the presumptive Republican nominee, got the people and votes he needed to win in a protracted yet furiously disputed election cycle.
Earle focuses on the chaotic campaigns themselves, as political bosses, candidates, and their self-appointed partisans took politicking in directions that at times resembled paramilitary exercises more than campaign events. In the end, Lincoln and his associates ran a brilliant campaign, leveraging Northern anger, growing antislavery sentiment, and divisions within both the Democratic Party and the nation as a whole. His platform was built on his speeches, which projected a vision for how the nation would persevere in the coming crisis. Behind the commanding rhetoric, however, was sophisticated and very modern political machinery. He Has the People provides an engaging historical narrative and a fresh appraisal of the most consequential of all presidential elections.
232 pages, Hardcover
First published August 3, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 6, 2026
There are few American presidents about whom more has been written than Abraham Lincoln, which raises an obvious question whenever another Lincoln book appears: what is there left to say? Jonathan Earle answers that question convincingly in He Has the People, an excellent account of the election of 1860 that focuses less on Lincoln the martyred president and more on Lincoln the extraordinarily capable politician who managed to become president in the first place.
That distinction is important. We tend to view Lincoln as the President who saved the Union. Knowing what Lincoln became makes his rise to the presidency appear almost inevitable. It was anything but. In 1859 Lincoln was a former one-term congressman from Illinois who had lost two races for the United States Senate. William Seward of New York was the nationally prominent Republican statesman and the presumptive favorite for the party’s presidential nomination. Lincoln had ambition, ability, and a growing reputation, but his path to the White House remained remarkably narrow.
Earle is particularly good at reconstructing how Lincoln traveled that path. The Making of the President, 1860 might have been a good substitute title. We would wait 100 years for the great Ted White book, and this one, while not as detailed, has a similar objective.
The election of 1860 occurred amid the accelerating collapse of the American political system. The slavery question had destroyed the old compromises, shattered the Whig Party, created the Republican Party, and increasingly divided the Democratic Party along sectional lines. John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in October 1859 intensified an already poisonous political atmosphere. By the time Americans chose a president a year later, the country was approaching a constitutional crisis from which there would be no peaceful escape.
Yet He Has the People is not primarily another book about the coming of the Civil War. It is a book about politics—about nominations, conventions, newspapers, speeches, organizations, personalities, geography, factions, and the difficult business of assembling enough supporters to win an election.
And this is where Lincoln comes alive.
The Lincoln presented by Earle is neither an accidental candidate nor a saint waiting for history to summon him. He is intensely ambitious, politically shrewd, patient, disciplined, and unusually perceptive about both people and political timing. Lincoln understood something that many politicians never learn: a candidate does not always need to be everyone’s first choice. Sometimes it is enough to be the candidate everyone can eventually live with.
That became crucial in confronting Seward.
Lincoln’s supporters understood that defeating the Republican frontrunner required more than enthusiasm. They needed organization, favorable geography, careful management of delegates, and an ability to attract supporters from candidates who could not win themselves. The Republican convention in Chicago becomes one of the most fascinating portions of Earle’s narrative. Lincoln’s victory was not political magic. It was the product of an exceptionally well-run political operation combined with a candidate whose opponents consistently underestimated him.
Lincoln himself carefully maintained the convention-era fiction that candidates stood above the scramble for delegates. He did not. He knew what his supporters were doing, understood the political calculations involved, and wanted very badly to win.
That makes him more interesting, not less admirable.
One of the strengths of the book is Earle’s use of Murat Halstead, the pioneering journalist who followed the campaign and reported extensively on the political conventions. Through Halstead’s observations, the reader gets something close to a ringside seat at a nineteenth-century presidential campaign. These conventions were not the carefully scripted television productions of the modern era. They were loud, uncertain, sometimes chaotic affairs in which delegates actually mattered and nominations could genuinely turn on events inside the hall.
The title itself captures the central argument. Seward possessed many of the advantages normally associated with a winning candidate: national stature, powerful political allies, money, and an impressive organization. Lincoln possessed something ultimately more valuable. He had developed a connection with the Republican electorate, particularly across the rapidly growing West, and his debates with Stephen Douglas and his Cooper Union address had established him as a credible national spokesman for opposition to the expansion of slavery.
Once nominated, Lincoln benefited enormously from the disintegration of his opposition. The Democratic Party split, with Stephen Douglas and John C. Breckinridge representing competing wings, while John Bell carried the banner of the Constitutional Union Party. Lincoln did not need to win the South—indeed, in much of it his name did not even appear on the ballot. His political task was to hold together a sufficiently broad Northern coalition, and he did so decisively.
Earle also avoids the temptation to pretend that everyone participating in the election understood precisely where events were headed. They did not. Lincoln’s election would trigger secession and ultimately civil war, but the participants were operating without knowledge of what came next. Restoring that uncertainty is one of the book’s great virtues. The election feels consequential because the outcome is uncertain rather than because the author is simply marching the reader toward Fort Sumter.
For students of politics, there is another reason to enjoy this book. Much of the machinery is surprisingly recognizable. Presidential politics in 1860 involved media strategy, opposition research, geographic calculations, surrogate campaigning, convention management, factional disputes, candidate positioning, and relentless efforts to shape public perception. The technology has changed beyond recognition. Human political behavior has not. Even some issues have not changed. Lincoln, a former Whig, was balancing between many varied interests, even aside from slavery. It was the era of the aptly named “Know-Nothings” and their nativist political views. Lincoln was careful about public pronouncements but gave his views in a private letter to his friend Joshua Speed:
“I am not a Know-Nothing-That is certain-How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of, degrading classes of white people?’ he asked. ‘As a nation, we began by declaring that all men are created equal. We now practically read it all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.’ He concluded this letter with typical humor: ‘When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some other country where they make no presence [sic] of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].’”
Earle, Jonathan: He Has the People: Abraham Lincoln and the Election of 1860. Pg. 72
Maybe we file that under the more things change the more they stay the same. We are still involved with the immigration issue, and despotism in Russia remains alive and well.
There are countless books about Lincoln the president and Lincoln the wartime commander in chief. He Has the People succeeds because it reminds us that before Lincoln could save the Union, destroy slavery, or become the central figure in the American historical memory, he first had to win an election.
And winning that election required considerable political skill.
Jonathan Earle has written an accessible, fast-moving, and highly informative account of what may well have been the most consequential presidential election in American history. More importantly, he restores something that the Lincoln legend sometimes obscures: Abraham Lincoln was not simply a great statesman. He was a formidable politician.
That is a Lincoln worth getting to know.
That distinction is important. We tend to view Lincoln as the President who saved the Union. Knowing what Lincoln became makes his rise to the presidency appear almost inevitable. It was anything but. In 1859 Lincoln was a former one-term congressman from Illinois who had lost two races for the United States Senate. William Seward of New York was the nationally prominent Republican statesman and the presumptive favorite for the party’s presidential nomination. Lincoln had ambition, ability, and a growing reputation, but his path to the White House remained remarkably narrow.
Earle is particularly good at reconstructing how Lincoln traveled that path. The Making of the President, 1860 might have been a good substitute title. We would wait 100 years for the great Ted White book, and this one, while not as detailed, has a similar objective.
The election of 1860 occurred amid the accelerating collapse of the American political system. The slavery question had destroyed the old compromises, shattered the Whig Party, created the Republican Party, and increasingly divided the Democratic Party along sectional lines. John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in October 1859 intensified an already poisonous political atmosphere. By the time Americans chose a president a year later, the country was approaching a constitutional crisis from which there would be no peaceful escape.
Yet He Has the People is not primarily another book about the coming of the Civil War. It is a book about politics—about nominations, conventions, newspapers, speeches, organizations, personalities, geography, factions, and the difficult business of assembling enough supporters to win an election.
And this is where Lincoln comes alive.
The Lincoln presented by Earle is neither an accidental candidate nor a saint waiting for history to summon him. He is intensely ambitious, politically shrewd, patient, disciplined, and unusually perceptive about both people and political timing. Lincoln understood something that many politicians never learn: a candidate does not always need to be everyone’s first choice. Sometimes it is enough to be the candidate everyone can eventually live with.
That became crucial in confronting Seward.
Lincoln’s supporters understood that defeating the Republican frontrunner required more than enthusiasm. They needed organization, favorable geography, careful management of delegates, and an ability to attract supporters from candidates who could not win themselves. The Republican convention in Chicago becomes one of the most fascinating portions of Earle’s narrative. Lincoln’s victory was not political magic. It was the product of an exceptionally well-run political operation combined with a candidate whose opponents consistently underestimated him.
Lincoln himself carefully maintained the convention-era fiction that candidates stood above the scramble for delegates. He did not. He knew what his supporters were doing, understood the political calculations involved, and wanted very badly to win.
That makes him more interesting, not less admirable.
One of the strengths of the book is Earle’s use of Murat Halstead, the pioneering journalist who followed the campaign and reported extensively on the political conventions. Through Halstead’s observations, the reader gets something close to a ringside seat at a nineteenth-century presidential campaign. These conventions were not the carefully scripted television productions of the modern era. They were loud, uncertain, sometimes chaotic affairs in which delegates actually mattered and nominations could genuinely turn on events inside the hall.
The title itself captures the central argument. Seward possessed many of the advantages normally associated with a winning candidate: national stature, powerful political allies, money, and an impressive organization. Lincoln possessed something ultimately more valuable. He had developed a connection with the Republican electorate, particularly across the rapidly growing West, and his debates with Stephen Douglas and his Cooper Union address had established him as a credible national spokesman for opposition to the expansion of slavery.
Once nominated, Lincoln benefited enormously from the disintegration of his opposition. The Democratic Party split, with Stephen Douglas and John C. Breckinridge representing competing wings, while John Bell carried the banner of the Constitutional Union Party. Lincoln did not need to win the South—indeed, in much of it his name did not even appear on the ballot. His political task was to hold together a sufficiently broad Northern coalition, and he did so decisively.
Earle also avoids the temptation to pretend that everyone participating in the election understood precisely where events were headed. They did not. Lincoln’s election would trigger secession and ultimately civil war, but the participants were operating without knowledge of what came next. Restoring that uncertainty is one of the book’s great virtues. The election feels consequential because the outcome is uncertain rather than because the author is simply marching the reader toward Fort Sumter.
For students of politics, there is another reason to enjoy this book. Much of the machinery is surprisingly recognizable. Presidential politics in 1860 involved media strategy, opposition research, geographic calculations, surrogate campaigning, convention management, factional disputes, candidate positioning, and relentless efforts to shape public perception. The technology has changed beyond recognition. Human political behavior has not. Even some issues have not changed. Lincoln, a former Whig, was balancing between many varied interests, even aside from slavery. It was the era of the aptly named “Know-Nothings” and their nativist political views. Lincoln was careful about public pronouncements but gave his views in a private letter to his friend Joshua Speed:
“I am not a Know-Nothing-That is certain-How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of, degrading classes of white people?’ he asked. ‘As a nation, we began by declaring that all men are created equal. We now practically read it all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.’ He concluded this letter with typical humor: ‘When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some other country where they make no presence [sic] of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].’”
Earle, Jonathan: He Has the People: Abraham Lincoln and the Election of 1860. Pg. 72
Maybe we file that under the more things change the more they stay the same. We are still involved with the immigration issue, and despotism in Russia remains alive and well.
There are countless books about Lincoln the president and Lincoln the wartime commander in chief. He Has the People succeeds because it reminds us that before Lincoln could save the Union, destroy slavery, or become the central figure in the American historical memory, he first had to win an election.
And winning that election required considerable political skill.
Jonathan Earle has written an accessible, fast-moving, and highly informative account of what may well have been the most consequential presidential election in American history. More importantly, he restores something that the Lincoln legend sometimes obscures: Abraham Lincoln was not simply a great statesman. He was a formidable politician.
That is a Lincoln worth getting to know.
September 21, 2026
What a marvelous work! Before reading it, a deep dive into the machinations and nuances of a most consequential presidential election seemed daunting to this reader who rarely reads 1800s American history. But Dr. Earle strikes the balance between employing meticulous, credible research, and producing a captivating and entertaining work that is very easy to read.
I enjoyed learning about what really unfolded that led Lincoln to victory and how he was able to thread the political needle in the midst of a fractured Democratic Party, swelling chaos, and seemingly inevitable conflict. I shook my head in dismay at the words and actions of politicians on both sides of the divide. I laughed out loud at the colorful characters and factions and wild scenes described throughout. (For example, are you familiar with the “Know Nothings” or the “Wide Awakes”?). Dr. Earle also exposed me to a prolific political and wartime journalist from that era named Murat Halstead, whose writings and observations influenced aspects of the book. Halstead struck me as a bit of a precursor to Hunter S. Thompson in the sense that he was personally immersed in the events he was covering, was colorful and edgy in his accounts, and withering in his criticism of politicians he disliked.
Thus, I highly recommend this well-written book. For folks who already are interested in the history of that specific era, I submit that you will be exposed to a different perspective on the underpinnings of that election. For anyone else who simply enjoys a fascinating, page-turning account of an important moment in time, you will find this read to be well-worth your time.
I enjoyed learning about what really unfolded that led Lincoln to victory and how he was able to thread the political needle in the midst of a fractured Democratic Party, swelling chaos, and seemingly inevitable conflict. I shook my head in dismay at the words and actions of politicians on both sides of the divide. I laughed out loud at the colorful characters and factions and wild scenes described throughout. (For example, are you familiar with the “Know Nothings” or the “Wide Awakes”?). Dr. Earle also exposed me to a prolific political and wartime journalist from that era named Murat Halstead, whose writings and observations influenced aspects of the book. Halstead struck me as a bit of a precursor to Hunter S. Thompson in the sense that he was personally immersed in the events he was covering, was colorful and edgy in his accounts, and withering in his criticism of politicians he disliked.
Thus, I highly recommend this well-written book. For folks who already are interested in the history of that specific era, I submit that you will be exposed to a different perspective on the underpinnings of that election. For anyone else who simply enjoys a fascinating, page-turning account of an important moment in time, you will find this read to be well-worth your time.
September 3, 2026
I'm about halfway through and thoroughly enjoying it. The book captures the tension within political parties between appealing to a broad base and appeasing extreme, sectional factions; a dynamic that feels strikingly relevant today, and one the author frames as a consequence of the system as much as the moment.
What stands out most is how quickly party politics shift a debate from substance to strategy. Using slavery as the case study makes this vivid: few politicians actually engage with the morality of the issue itself, focused instead on how to leverage it for votes. The idea of a "compromise" on slavery is almost absurd on its face, yet the search for one drives the political maneuvering throughout.
A genuinely compelling read so far, highly recommend.
What stands out most is how quickly party politics shift a debate from substance to strategy. Using slavery as the case study makes this vivid: few politicians actually engage with the morality of the issue itself, focused instead on how to leverage it for votes. The idea of a "compromise" on slavery is almost absurd on its face, yet the search for one drives the political maneuvering throughout.
A genuinely compelling read so far, highly recommend.
September 4, 2026
A fascinating look at one of the most important elections in American history. I liked how Jonathan Earle focuses not just on Lincoln himself, but on the political strategy, rivalries, and divisions that shaped the 1860 election. The historical detail is strong, though a few parts felt a little dense. Overall, an engaging read for anyone interested in Lincoln and American history.
September 4, 2026
He Has the People offers a fascinating look at Abraham Lincoln's 1860 presidential campaign and the political forces that shaped American history. Jonathan Earle brings the era to life with clear, engaging writing and thoughtful analysis. Informative, well-researched, and accessible, it's an excellent read for anyone interested in Lincoln or the Civil War era.
September 18, 2026
Earle’s "He Has the People" is a brilliant, gripping dive into political history that you simply won't be able to put down! Earle brings the era to life with vibrant storytelling, sharp insights, and meticulous research that keep you hooked from the very first page to the back cover. A absolute must-read for history buffs and political enthusiasts alike!
August 15, 2026
Excellent read, very interesting. Really well written. High recommend.
August 15, 2026
Amazing! Not usually into history since it can be so boring but this author really makes it so engaging.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews