Customer Reviews

Inside Lincoln's White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay

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Hay, the young Assistant Presidential Secretary, was like a son to Lincoln. The President, in the diary often affectionately and irreverently referred to as "The Tycoon", relaxed around Hay as around few others, giving the diarist an insight into the character of Lincoln which is almost unique. This alone would make the book worthwhile, but Hay's views on other personalities and events of those dramatic days are also valuable, and engagingly written.
Hay's diary has been published before, but incomplete and poorly edited. This is the first complete edition, with all the entries restored and with extensive explanatory notes, which are necesary to follow Hay's refernces to obscure persons and events.
Essential for the Lincoln scholar and highly recommended for anyone's Civil War shelf.

(The numerical rating above is an ineradicable default setting within the page. This reviewer does nort employ numerical ratings.)

One reviewer found Hay's diary uninteresting, and that is hardly strange. Most diaries I've read are dull because they are most often jottings of information out of the head of an individual. I, too, would have liked more inside information out of John Hay, but he did not write it, so let's not downgrade the book because we didn't get what we would have liked. Burlingame's editing is top-notch, just what you would expect from a quality historian. My two gripes about the book were undoubtedly caused by the publisher's decision, which I recognize from first-hand experience: 1) Why endnotes instead of footnotes? If all the notes listed were sources, endnotes would be fine, but Burlingame's notes are critical and provide a lot of additional information. Constantly turning back to the endnotes breaks up the reading experience. 2) Burlingame maintained the crossed-out words in Hay's diary by using a strike-through font, which is fine except that the publisher used a strike-through so dark that it is hard to read the words underneath. Nonetheless, this is fine work, and I highly recommend it. If nothing else, you will gain knowledge of the enormous number of people with whom Abraham Lincoln had to deal every day.

Nicolay and Hay were basically the White House Chief of Staff and Administrative Aid. Fortunately for those of us who are both history and political junkies it doesn't get any better than this. With Hay we have the nation's most unpopular president pursuing a most unpopular war (one that will claim more American casualties than any other), with a critical press and political opponents galore. There is political intrigue, dirty politics, and presidential personal tragedy. In Lincoln we have a president who imprisoned US citizens without trial and without habeas corpus, we have a president who captured foreign nationals (Confederates) from a British ship and imprisoned them in the US, a president who was soundly and rightfully criticized for suspending personal rights, a president who sent troops to arrest an entire state legislature. In Lincoln we have a president called stupid and a baboon.

Hay's Diary takes us inside the White House in these most troubling of times. One sees close parallels to today. It is hard not to read Hay in the light of the current White House and presidential race. Only the names have changed, the issues are very much the same. I could not recommend a better source to obtain some perspective for the current political season.

John Ellingson

My opinion of Hay's diary is very different then the other reviewer. I found it very hard to read, to understand, and to learn from. For a Lincoln scholar it might be useful, For me, a general history reader, I was very disappointed. The language was often bizzare, superficial, and very small. A great many names but no real people! Just names. Flat,flat,very flat. Hay died in Teddy Roosevelt's administration during the canal project as Sec. of State. He must have had a great deal on the ball to be so useful so long. I see nothing of it is his "Civil War Diary".