House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War

For all the talk of the CivilWar's pitting brother against
brother, no book has told fully the story of one family
ravaged by that conflict. And no family better illustrates the
personal toll the war took than Lincoln's own.Mary Todd
Lincoln was one of fourteen siblings who were split between
the Confederacy and the Union.Three of her brothers fought,
and two died, for the South. Several Todds—including Mary
herself—bedeviled Lincoln's administration with their scandalous
behavior.Their struggles haunted the president and
moved him to avoid tactics or rhetoric that would dehumanize
or scapegoat the Confederates. By drawing on his own familial
experience, Lincoln was able to articulate a humanistic, even
charitable view of the enemy that seems surpassingly wise in
our time, let alone his.
In House of Abraham, the award-winning historian
Stephen Berry fills a gap in CivilWar history, showing how
the war changed one family and how that family changed the
course of the war.