Prize-winning historian Martha Hodes, a professor of history at New York University, explores the nation’s first presidential assassination on a human scale. Hodes is the first to delve into personal and intimate responses: of African Americans and whites, men and women, Yankees and Confederates, soldiers and civilians. Drawing on a remarkable range of diaries and letters from the spring and summer of 1865, including holdings at the Schlesinger Library, Hodes tells a story not only of shock and sorrow, but also of glee, anger, blame, and fear. Black freedom and the fate of the nation were at stake for everyone, whether they grieved or rejoiced when they heard the news.