The Confederates never bombarded the White House, but during the Lincolns’ tenure things were pretty wild there anyway. Now, drawing on primary archival documents never before published, best-selling author Kevin Orlin Johnson brings us the true story of the most misunderstood episodes of the most misrepresented years in American history.

Mr. Johnson presents a highly readable account, lightened by the trademark humor that his readers have come to expect but utterly unfiltered when he targets the absurdity of historic events and skewers the pretensions and propaganda retailed by today’s more prominent Lincolnolators.  

But make no mistake:  this is serious history, drawn from original primary documents and artifacts never before considered by professors of Lincoln Studies.  

In fact, The Lincolns in the White House begins with a methodological view of the logical fallacies and procedural faults that have structured much of the literature on Lincoln from the earliest days to the present.  Another chapter examines in particular the enduring and bitter personal bias nursed in the bosom of Lincoln Studies against Mary Todd Lincoln, which further distorts modern treatments of the time.  With the perspective adjusted, the topics of the other essays swing into clearer view.  

Subsequent chapters rectify general aspects of the Lincolns’ tenancy in the Executive Mansion, including the fiscal and administrative chaos of the White House from Washington’s time to the present; the surprising numbers of thieves, spies, arsonists, and certifiably insane persons hired there; the unexpected history of presidential drinking, dancing, and dining; and the long-standing myths about Mary Todd Lincoln’s extravagance and irresponsibility, which also collapse in light of ample primary documentation persistently ignored by Lincoln Studies.  

More specifically, other chapters go on to explain the oddly prominent falsehoods about Mary Todd’s purchases of dinnerware; what really happened when the Prince Napoléon came to dinner; whether Lincoln ever actually damned the “flub-dubs” bought for the house; and whether Mary Lincoln actually stole the diamonds sent to the President by the King of Siam ― which study included Johnson’s re-discovery of the royal sword that King Mongkut sent, mis-catalogued and mis-filed by the Department of State for more than a century.  

The final chapter settles the financial accounts of both of the Lincolns, again using neglected primary documents in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and elsewhere.  

Most interesting, of course, is Lincoln’s ownership and sale of slaves.  Documentation of this, too, has long been suppressed or even stolen by prominent figures in the field, but now the matter is openly displayed and beyond any possible doubt.  Mr. Johnson’s treatment of the personal circumstances and the juristic context of these transactions, likewise grounded in primary documents, is the first to appear in print anywhere.  

No previous book on Lincoln has addressed these matters properly, or at all.  None offers more new information and more penetrating insight into the lives of Abraham Lincoln and those around him.