Martha Hodes is an American historian and professor at New York University. Her research examines race, slavery, the Civil War, family, and individual experience in nineteenth-century America. In "Mourning Lincoln," Hodes reconstructs public and private reactions to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865 through diaries, letters, memoirs, and other personal records. Comparing responses across North and South, Black and white communities, and supporters and opponents of the president, she challenges the later image of a nation united in grief and reveals a landscape of mourning, celebration, fear, and silence. The book was longlisted for the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction and won both the Lincoln Prize and the Avery O. Craven Award.
