This is my first time trying to
genuinely sound smart so... take it easy...
So apparently this Hampton Roads Conference, the one that took place on the Warship, was poorly documented in that only Alexander Stephens (the Vice President of the Confederacy at the time) and Confederate Emmissary John A. Campbell were the ones that had documented what was said in said conference?
Also apparently the new sources that Paul Escott uses were 'private letters in North Carolina' and a previously uncited recounting of the meeting published in the
Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel, a Southern newspaper, based on an interview with Alexander Stephens.
From: Justin A. Nystrom "What Shall We Do With The Narrative of American Progress? Lincoln at 200 and National Mythology"
Reviews in American History 38, no. 1 (2010): 67-71.
Some of the other journal reviews I found seemed critical of the third portion of the book about how Lincoln would allegedly push the slaves back into slavery in exchange for peace and the United States would apparently cheerfully comply with such.
From: Darrel E. Bigham.
The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, vol. 107, no. 1, 2009, pp. 109–110.
It seems to suggest that even around the time of the ending of the Civil War, Lincoln was rather strongly for the emancipation of slaves and that the Author mistakes
persuasion for
ambiguity which when politics is involved, can be rather mysterious.
From: Matthew Mason.
Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, vol. 31, no. 1, 2010, pp. 66–69.
According to this fellow (though obviously a
LINCOLNITE) he's far less forgiving of the analysis of Lincoln in apparently portraying him as the White Racist (though that's at best anachronistic term I suppose) but more tellingly, a timid, pro-Southern and unprincipled President and strategist and that the Author interprets the maneuvering done at the Hampton Conference as Lincoln being conciliatory as opposed to both sides politically maneuvering into making the other appear rather unreasonable