The Chronicles of the War Series is a series of monthly Civil War “Updates from the ‘President'”. They are scheduled to be issued each month through April, 2015. They are written and produced by Fritz Klein; filmed and edited by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. They are aired on the Illinois State Civil War Sesquicentennial Website and in the Lincoln Home National Park. Lincoln did not issue monthly updates, so although as much quotational material as possible is used, they are largely interpretive. Much of what actually happened is not mentioned. The scope is enormous and even Lincoln did not grasp it all. We try to keep them to 4-5 minutes. Some material, such as cabinet or military difficulties is excluded because Lincoln would not have aired such material to the public. It might have been impolitic, private, unknown to him at the time, (McClellan’s revealing letters to his wife, or Gideon Welles’ private diary) or discouraging to a war-weary public. The material is run past scholars and though filmed in Springfield, Illinois, set in Washington DC, 1860. We hope you enjoy viewing these “personal glimpses” as much as we enjoy putting them together. You can access the March 1862 issue here.
For archives, you can see the January 1862 installment here, and February 1862 installment here.
