On March 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln gave perhaps the greatest inaugural address in American history, stunning the nation by arguing, in a brief 701 words, that both sides had been wrong, and that the war's horrors might have been God's verdict on the national sin of slavery. In indelible scenes, Edward Achorn vividly captures the frenzy in the nation's capital at this crucial moment, with a cast of characters that includes embarrassingly drunk new vice president, Andrew Johnson; poet-journalist Walt Whitman; soldiers' advocate Clara Barton; African American leader Frederick Douglass; and John Wilkes Booth, who would kill Lincoln just five weeks later.