Abraham Lincoln: The War Years

Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, four-volume biography by Carl Sandburg, published in 1939. It was awarded the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for history. After the success of Sandburg’s 1926 biography, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, Sandburg turned to Lincoln’s life after 1861, devoting 11 years to research and writing. The biography is informed not only by the author’s journalistic style but also by his unwavering admiration for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s liberal New Deal politics. Sandburg held that both Lincoln and FDR were representative of the voice of the American people, and in many respects the biography expresses his faith in the workings of democracy through the office of a compassionate, gifted leader.