{"product_id":"every-drop-of-blood-used-hardcover-edward-achorn","title":"Every Drop of Blood (Used Hardcover) - Edward Achorn","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBy March 4, 1865, the Civil War had slaughtered more than 700,000 Americans and left intractable wounds on the nation. After a morning of rain-drenched fury, tens of thousands crowded Washington's Capitol grounds that day to see Abraham Lincoln take the oath for a second term. As the sun emerged, Lincoln rose to give perhaps the greatest inaugural address in American history, stunning the nation by arguing, in a brief 701 words, that both sides had been wrong, and that the war's unimaginable horrors--every drop of blood spilled--might well have been God's just verdict on the national sin of slavery. Edward Achorn reveals the nation's capital on that momentous day--with its mud, sewage, and saloons, its prostitutes, spies, reporters, social-climbing spouses and power-hungry politicians--as a microcosm of all the opposing forces that had driven the country apart. A host of characters, unknown and famous, had converged on Washington--from grievously wounded Union colonel Selden Connor in a Washington hospital and the embarrassingly drunk new vice president, Andrew Johnson, to poet-journalist Walt Whitman; from soldiers' advocate Clara Barton and African American leader and Lincoln critic-turned-admirer Frederick Douglass (who called the speech \"a sacred effort\") to conflicted actor John Wilkes Booth--all swirling around the complex figure of Lincoln.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn indelible scenes, Achorn vividly captures the frenzy in the nation's capital at this crucial moment in America's history and the tension-filled hope and despair afflicting the country as a whole, soon to be heightened by Lincoln's assassination. His story offers new understanding of our great national crisis, and echoes down the decades to resonate in our own time.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e1023WS\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Reach Literacy","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":68117090533600,"sku":"History","price":6.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0431\/0794\/2562\/files\/49757564.jpg?v=1792772969","url":"https:\/\/reachareader.com\/products\/every-drop-of-blood-used-hardcover-edward-achorn","provider":"Reach Literacy","version":"1.0","type":"link"}