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FORBES.COM OCTOBER 20 20-^
FACT^&COMMENTSteve Forbes Cont.Introducing
What’s Ahead
The podcast hosted
by Steve Forbes.
Subscribe now on iTunes
or GooglePlay Store.a distillation of millennia of hard-earned
human experience about justice, mo-
rality and self-advancement. He could
quote entire chap-
ters of it by heart.”
Yet he had clearly
come to believe there
was a larger force at
work in the world,
once telling a gener-
al, “Did I not see the
hand of God in the
crisis—I could not sustain it.”
There has been no shortage of books
about this crucial time in American his-
tory and about this speech. But Achorn, a
noted editor and author, does a splendid
job of recreating the atmosphere and ex-
perience of being in Washington on the
day before and the day of Lincoln’s sec-
ond inauguration. He has a gift for evoca-
tive, elaborate detail, and his descriptions
of Washington—from a canal of stinking
sewage to the new Capitol dome to the
brothels and the various social func-
tions—give readers a full fl avor of the
good and the plentifully ugly.
Achorn is masterful at sketching
known personalities, such as Frederick
Douglass, Clara Barton and Generals
Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh
Sherman, as well as the lesser known,
such as the severely wounded General
Selden Connor (who survived to be-
come governor of Maine) and the Rev-
erend John Bachman of South Carolina,
who bring the era to life.
Especially moving is Achorn’s por-
trait of Walt Whitman (whose book of
poetry, Leaves of Grass, was hotly con-
troversial; Salmon Chase, the newly
minted Chief Justice who would swear
in Lincoln for his second term, thought
the book obscene). Whitman wrangles
an easy clerical job in order to spend
immense time on his true mission:
tending to wounded and sick soldiers.
“On his rounds, Whitman brought withhim gifts of candy, fruit, tobacco, statio-
nery, stamped envelopes, newspapers,
small amounts of money—all materials
the hospitals did not provide. But his
greatest gifts were surely his sympathy,
his encouragement and his presence.”
The author does a fi ne job with Lin-
coln himself.
“Some of the most damaging
ordeals any child could suff er—
the loss of a mother, abandon-
ment, nights fi lled with fear, loneli-
ness, fi lth, cold and hunger—were
among Lincoln’s formative experi-
ences. And when he was nineteen,
his beloved sister, Sarah, died in
the agonies of childbirth. In an
1862 letter to a grieving child, he
wrote: ‘In this sad world of ours,
sorrow comes to all; and, to the
young, it comes with bitterest
agony, because it takes them un-
awares.... I have had experience
enough to know what I say.’ ”
Lincoln’s rise in the world was jag-
ged, but all his life experiences had pre-
pared him well for the harsh ordeals of
the war, in which disappointments and
setbacks were constant. Looking back,
one is still astonished at all the obstacles
he faced, from incompetent generals to
bitter political divisions in the North—
and in his own party—not to mention
domestic troubles and tragedy.
Achorn’s book is fi lled with mem-
orable anecdotes, such as General
Sherman’s blowing up 23 cannons in
Charleston, South Carolina, including
the one that fi red the fi rst shot at Fort
Sumter, which formally began hostili-
ties. Sherman blew up the cannons at
the time he fi gured Lincoln would be
taking his second oath of offi ce.
Of course, over everything looms the
sinister fi gure of John Wilkes Booth, a
dashing actor. Distinctly interesting
in this ugly episode was Booth’s rela-
tionship with Lucy Hale, daughter of a
prominent political fi gure: “Strangely,
Lucy—who surely had extensive knowl-
edge of Booth’s activities leading up to
the tragedy—would be left out of the in-
vestigation entirely.”
The contemporary reaction to Lin-
coln’s speech was all over the map.
Lincoln’s own assessment was thatthe speech would “wear as well as—
perhaps better than—any thing I have
produced; but I believe it is not imme-
diately popular.”Stop at Nothing—by Michael Ledwid-
ge (Hanover Square Press, $27). Here’s
a book that retired Lieutenant General
Mike Flynn, victim
of rogue agencies in
Washington, would
fi nd grimly satisfying.
The rest of us will sim-
ply enjoy a fast-paced
thriller by an author
who has mastered his
craft, with lots of ac-
tion, knowing detail, plenty of twists and
turns and characters to cheer or hiss.
Mike Gannon, an American expat
and Bahamas-based diving instructor,
is out on his boat when he witnesses
a Gulfstream crash into the ocean. He
can’t call for help because of a radio
mishap that occurred when he was try-
ing to haul in the proverbial big fi sh
that got away. Surprised that no res-
cue planes or boats are coming to the
site, he decides to go over the side and
dive down to the wreckage. There are
no markings on the aircraft, but in-
side are six dead bodies—and two cases
that he brings up only to discover that
one is loaded with hundred-dollar bills
and uncut diamonds. Gannon’s conclu-
sion: drug runners. He decides to take
the loot and hide it in an obscure blue
hole—“cave-like water-fi lled sinkholes
that had been formed by eons of rain
eroding through the soft Bahamian
limestone.” This one has the advantage
of an “amazing subway-like network of
corridors and caves” that will make dis-
covery by other divers impossible.
But instead of a windfall, Gannon
soon learns he has poked an African
hornets’ nest of high-powered, highly
placed government offi cials who have
all the scruples of ISIS—beheaders with
a deadly must-do agenda all their own.
Torture, cold-blooded murder, cover-ups
and quick but lethal gun battles abound.
Along the way we learn that Gannon
has a rather intriguing past of his own,
which makes him a formidable foe.