Book of the Week #6

Abraham Lincoln in New Hampshire by Elwin L. Page, introduced and updated by Mike Pride (Concord, NH: Monitor Publishing Co., 2009.)

"On February 29, 1860 Abraham Lincoln arrived in Exeter, New Hampshire to visit his oldest son, Robert, a student at Phillips Academy. During the next three days, he made four speeches in New Hampshire that helped to propel him to the presidency.
Nearly seven decades later, Elwin L. Page followed Lincoln's path through the state in the delightful Abraham Lincoln in New Hampshire. He told his story through original research and interviews with aged members of Lincoln's audiences. Only 785 copies of Page's 1929 book were published.
This updated edition ... incorporates new information that has come to light since then. Without sacrificing the flavor of the original, it adds the only known contemporary account of Lincoln's appearance in Exeter, a letter Lincoln wrote to Mary Lincoln the day before he left the state, and other material discovered of made available in recent years.

In the weeks after his New Hampshire speeches, Lincoln rose from obscurity to become the New Hampshire delegation's overwhelming choice on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Chicago. A year to the day after he wrote to Mary from New Hampshire, he took office as the nation's sixteenth president." (jacket copy)

Edwin L. Page (1876-1974) was a lawyer and judge in Concord, NH and served as an associate justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court from 1934-1946. Mike Pride is the editor emeritus of the Concord Monitor and an amateur historian.