Description

“You have come too late,” said President Abraham Lincoln to John Brown Baldwin of Augusta County, Virginia on April 4, 1861. At Lincoln’s invitation, Brown had secretly traveled to the White House as the leader of the strong anti-Secession representation in the 1861 Virginia Convention called to consider whether Virginia would withdraw from the Union.  Had President Lincoln followed Baldwin’s advice, American history may have taken a different path with a peaceful solution to the political turmoil that would become America’s bloodiest war.  This biography traces the life of John Brown Baldwin as a lawyer, legislator, Confederate officer, and leader of the Confederate Congress through Virginia’s secession, civil war, and recovery periods.