House Divided

First published in 1947, this bestselling historical novel is cherished and remembered as one of the finest retellings of the Civil War saga—America's own War and Peace. In the first hard pinch of the Civil War, five siblings of an established Confederate Virginia family learn that their father is the grandfather of Abraham Lincoln. The family's story, and the story of their descendants, is presented in this tale that includes both soldiers and civilians—complete with their boasting, ambition, and arrogance, but also their patience, valor, and shrewdness. The grandnephew of General James Longstreet, the author brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in history, and details war as it really is—a disease from which, win or lose, no nation ever completely recovers.

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Take three brothers and two sisters of an old Virginia family, loyal Confederates, and in the first hard pinch of the War for Southern Independence let them learn that their father was also the grandfather of Abraham Lincoln. Tell the effect of that disclosure upon the character of each one.

Tell the story of these five men and women, and of their children and grandchildren; and through them tell the story of six million men and women and children who fought and lost the first total war of the Christian era.

Tell a story not of soldiers but of Southern civilians; paint the ignorant boasting, the greedy ambition, the complacent arrogance and the secret sense of inferiority which are the soil in which the seeds of war most easily thrive; portray the patient valor of the simple man and the covetous rapacity and the sly evasions of the shrewd; present war as it is and was and always will be, as a bestial murder of fine generations yet unborn, as a disease from which, win or lose, no nation ever recovers.

When Mr. Williams began House Divided, this is the task which he set himself. It is a book that America will want to remember and cherish and return to generation after generation.

—from the dust jacket