Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America

Join us Saturday, April 25, 2026 at 2PM for a book talk on Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America by Scott Ellsworth.

By the late summer of 1864, the outcome of the Civil War was far from certain.  Virginia had turned into a vast killing field, a peace movement was on the rise in the North, and even Lincoln himself was convinced that he would not be re-elected.  But necessity is the mother of invention, and the Confederate high command would launch an unprecedented attempt to reverse their declining success on the battlefield, one that would ultimately involve John Wilkes Booth.  Based on extensive contemporary accounts and long-ignored scholarship, Scott Ellsworth brings a fresh perspective the last, fraught months of the nation’s costliest war.

Described by one reviewer as “a historian with the soul of a poet,” Scott Ellsworth is the New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Game, winner of the2016 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, and The Ground Breaking, his critically acclaimed account of the Tulsa race massacre. Formerly a historian at the Smithsonian Institution, he has written about American history for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. He lives in Ann Arbor, where he also teaches at the University of Michigan. His most recent book, Midnight on the Potomac, published in 2025.

This presentation is included with admission to the museum and FREE for members.