essentially the most proficient and influential American politicians of the 19th century, William Pitt Fessenden (1806-1869) helped devise Union grand procedure throughout the Civil battle. a local of Maine and son of a fiery New England abolitionist, he served within the usa Senate as a member of the Whig get together in the course of the Kansas-Nebraska main issue and performed a formative position within the improvement of the Republican social gathering. during this richly textured and fast paced biography, Robert J. cook dinner charts Fessenden’s upward thrust to strength 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 decided and self-disciplined guy who fought, no longer consistently effectively, to maintain his passions in cost, Fessenden helped to spearhead Republican get together competition to proslavery growth 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. throughout 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 us. additionally, Fessenden’s multifaceted dating with Lincoln helped to foster potent operating family members among the president and congressional Republicans. cook dinner outlines Fessenden’s many contributions to severe elements of northern grand process and to the slow shift to a good overall conflict coverage opposed to the Confederacy. so much particularly, prepare dinner indicates, Fessenden helped craft congressional coverage concerning the confiscation and emancipation of slaves. prepare dinner additionally information Fessenden’s tenure as chairman of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction after the warfare, within which he authored that committee’s record. even if he sanctioned his party’s holiday with Andrew Johnson below a yr after the war’s finish, prepare dinner explains how Fessenden labored decisively to thwart makes an attempt by means of 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 usually sidelined old determine and explains the imperative function performed by way of social gathering politics and partisanship within the coming of the Civil warfare, northern army victory, and the last word failure of postwar Reconstruction. prepare dinner restores Fessenden to his position as the most very important politicians of a bothered generation.