probably the most gifted and influential American politicians of the 19th century, William Pitt Fessenden (1806-1869) helped devise Union grand procedure throughout the Civil warfare. a local of Maine and son of a fiery New England abolitionist, he served within the usa Senate as a member of the Whig social gathering throughout the Kansas-Nebraska problem and performed a formative position within the improvement of the Republican social gathering. during this richly textured and fast paced biography, Robert J. prepare dinner charts Fessenden’s upward push to energy and probes the effective mixture of political ambition and republican ideology which impelled him to hunt a spot within the U.S. Senate at a time of emerging pressure among North and South. A made up our minds and self-disciplined guy who fought, no longer regularly effectively, to maintain his passions in fee, Fessenden helped to spearhead Republican get together competition to proslavery enlargement through the strife-torn 1850s and led others to withstand the cotton states’ efforts to secede peaceably after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. in the course of the Civil conflict, he chaired the Senate Finance Committee and served as President Lincoln’s moment head of the Treasury division. In either positions, he shaped and applied wartime monetary coverage for the USA. additionally, Fessenden’s multifaceted courting with Lincoln helped to foster powerful operating kinfolk among the president and congressional Republicans. prepare dinner outlines Fessenden’s many contributions to severe elements of northern grand technique and to the sluggish shift to an efficient overall warfare coverage opposed to the Confederacy. so much significantly, cook dinner exhibits, Fessenden helped craft congressional coverage in regards to the confiscation and emancipation of slaves. prepare dinner additionally information Fessenden’s tenure as chairman of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction after the conflict, in which he authored that committee’s record. even if he sanctioned his party’s holiday with Andrew Johnson lower than a yr after the war’s finish, cook dinner explains how Fessenden labored decisively to thwart makes an attempt via Radical Republicans to revolutionize post-emancipation society within the defeated Confederacy. the 1st biography of Fessenden in over 40 years, Civil battle Senator unearths an important yet frequently sidelined historic determine and explains the important function performed by way of occasion politics and partisanship within the coming of the Civil struggle, northern army victory, and the final word failure of postwar Reconstruction. cook dinner restores Fessenden to his position as probably the most very important politicians of a afflicted generation.