Book Review: Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America

Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America. By Scott Ellsworth. New York: Dutton, 2025. Hardcover, 336pp., $25.49.

Reviewed by Robin Friedman

Scott Ellsworth’s eloquent, highly praised book Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America offers a broad history of the final year of the Civil War, from spring 1864 through the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865.

Ellsworth begins with a personal “Note from the Author” in which he writes: “This is a book about how we almost lost our country.” With a flair for the dramatic, Ellsworth aptly observes that the Civil War was not only a contest between armies and generals but rather constituted “a fight for the very soul of the nation . . . fought by men and women, the famous and the infamous, the free and the unfree, on battlefields and in cities, in trenches and in hospitals, and in a redbrick theater located less than six blocks from the White House.” The book is geared to our own tumultuous time. It tells a story of tragedy and near-disaster followed by hope. The Union was saved, and it moved ahead precariously with what Lincoln had earlier called in his Gettysburg Address “a new birth of freedom.”

In its relatively brief scope, the book offers a sweeping military, social and political history. Famous figures such as Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee receive attention, as do many lesser-known people such as Lois Bryan Adams, a reporter from Detroit who covered the War in Washington, D.C. Ellsworth stresses throughout the crucial roles African Americans and women assumed in supporting and winning the war. While the book covers large-scale historical events, it also frequently finds room for the telling of small anecdotes. The largest single event addressed in the book is the assassination of President Lincoln, the character of John Wilkes Booth, and the Confederate terror war which proceeded the assassination.

History books are not often made by style, but Ellsworth’s book is an exception. The writing is not only clear and accessible but often becomes lyrical. The book’s organization parallels the structure of Our American Cousin, the play Lincoln was watching during his fateful evening at Ford’s Theater. It includes three “Acts,” each with several short chapters, separated by two bridging sections titled “Intermission.” Each of the chapters begins with a little phrase or story to draw in the reader. The chapters, as well as the entire book read quickly. In an Afterword, Ellsworth reflects on his history and on its relevance for contemporary America. The book does not include a conventional bibliography. It concludes with a section titled “Notes” which includes extensive references and supplemental discussions for each chapter and makes pleasurable and informative reading in its own right.

The book, particularly in military history, makes no claim to be exhaustive. In “Act One,” battles such as the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Monocacy, and Confederate General Jubal Early’s raid on Washington, D.C. are discussed quickly, leaving much unsaid for those readers interested in specific battles. In Act Two, the focus turns to politics with a detailed portrayal of John Wilkes Booth and of the Confederate Secret Service and its terrorist apparatus. Ellsworth covers briefly but well the highly contentious presidential election of 1864. He also describes graphically the relatively little-known efforts of the Confederate Secret Service to burn New York City to the ground on November 25, 1864. “Act Two” concludes with General William T. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta and on the role played by former slaves and contrabands during Sherman’s subsequent March to the Sea.

“Act Three” of the book includes the story of Henry Highland Garnet, a minister who on February 12, 1865, became the first African American to give a speech in Congress and called “for a new kind of American nation, one in which the rights and privileges of democracy would be available to all.” (184). Most of Act Three covers the Lincoln assassination and the activities of Booth and his co-conspirators. The history is recounted against the backdrop of the earlier activities of the Confederate Secret Service, including failed efforts on Lincoln’s life. Ellsworth offers a more pervasively conspiratorial view of Lincoln’s assassination than that offered in many prior accounts of this much-studied tragedy.

Ellsworth has aptly been described as a “historian with the soul of a poet.” Midnight on the Potomac will inspire readers with widely different degrees of interest in Civil War history. The book encourages reflection on the Civil War and on the never-ending rebirth of America.

Robin Friedman retired from a career as an attorney with the United States Department of the Interior in 2010. In retirement, he pursues his passion for American studies, including literature, history, philosophy, and the Civil War.