It was in a mood of intense irritation that Senator Roscoe Conkling arrived in Chicago. Chet Arthur had been sent out in advance, his bulk trundled into a railway carriage like an overstuffed suitcase...

The Justices’ conference room, ordinarily the witness to judicial sparring, now became the battlefield for a newspaper war. Justice Stephen Field led the first charge, greeting his colleagues the day ...

The first gathering of the Stalwarts was, of necessity, an intimate one. It had been far too long since the social business of politics had occurred under the supervision of Kate Chase. Mary Todd Linc...

Kate had yet to arrive at a satisfactory arrangement with her husband. Sprague had insisted that Kate spend the summer of ’seventy-nine at the estate in Canonchet, near Narragansett, so that he might ...

The sun blazed down upon Cave Hill Cemetery, bathing the graves of the fallen with tribute for their ultimate sacrifice. John Marshall Harlan stood among an impatient crowd. He knew some of the men in...

Laurenda did not like the look of those men, not at all. She had been hanging the washing up on the clothesline behind the cabin when she heard the tortured whinnying of horses driven too hard, and th...

The Chief Justice would not consent to die. He had felt the tremors first in his fingers, when the train had departed Niagara Falls, but dismissed the barely perceptible tingling as the motion of the ...

Colonel George Corkhill of the Chronicle was ushered into Justice Samuel Miller’s parlor, and anxiously removed his hat. His face was flushed, and his countenance bore the marks of bad news. “The posi...