"The men and women whose portraits make up this book were approximately contemporaries. They represent a respectable cross-section of American life in all its phases between the years 1850 and 1865. The careers of some of them intertwined and reacted one upon another-sometimes they were opposed in debate on the floor of Congress, or across the conference table-but there is only one common thread that binds them all. They sat for these portraits to the great American photographer, Mathew B. Brady. He is the real author of this book. Brady has been called 'the photographer of an era,' and properly so, for consciously, and with an eye to business, he made photographic portraits which bore his signature a mark of social arrival. The fact that Mathew Brady sought you out to take your picture meant that you were news. You could be notorious, or interesting, or famous. You need not necessarily be good and great. And so, if many of the good and great of the era in which Abraham Lincoln grew to prominence are not represented in this book, the reader must blame Mr. Brady's failure of moral vision, rather than the author's."--Introduction.

Includes index.

1: Decade of adventure -- 2: Face of reform -- 3: Voices of the past -- 4: Lighter side of life -- 5: Last chance -- 6: War -- 7: Tightening chain -- 8: Home front -- 9: "Abraham Lincoln, give us a man" -- 10: Prospect.