Eight Weeks in Washington, 1861

A close look at the first eight weeks after Abraham Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861, reveals a time when the fate of the nation's capital, certainly of the Lincoln Administration, and perhaps of the nation itself, seemed very much in doubt. This is a story of a president uncertain and sometimes amateurish, of a man not yet fully recognized as a legitimate leader, of an executive anxious to the point of illness, of a beleaguered figure, occasionally despairing, but also starting to find his