
Midnight on the Potomac
The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pre-order for $18.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
By:
-
Scott Ellsworth
About this listen
From the author of The Ground Breaking, longlisted for the National Book Award, comes a riveting saga of the last year of the Civil War—and a revealing new account of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Told with a thrilling pace, New York Times bestselling author and historian Scott Ellsworth has written the most compelling new book about the Civil War in years. Focusing on the last, desperate months of the war, when the outcome was far from certain, Midnight on the Potomac is a story of titanic battles, political upheaval, and the long-forgotten Confederate terror war against the loyal citizens of the North. Taking us behind the scenes in the White House, along the battlefronts in Virginia, and into the conspiracies of spies and secret agents, Lincoln appears, as do Grant and Sherman. But so do common soldiers, runaway slaves, and an unknown but intrepid female war correspondent named Lois Adams. Rarely, if ever, has a book about the Civil War featured such a rich and diverse cast of characters.
Midnight on the Potomac will also shatter some long-held myths. For more than a century and a half, the Lincoln assassination has been portrayed as the sole brainchild of a disgruntled, pro-South actor. But based on both obscure contemporary accounts and decades of long-ignored scholarship, Ellsworth reveals that for nearly one year before the tragic events at Ford’s Theatre, John Wilkes Booth had been working closely with agents of the Confederate Secret Service. And the real Booth is far from the one we’ve long been presented with.
Deeply researched yet captivatingly written, Midnight on the Potomac is a new kind of book about the Civil War. In it you will read about the Confederate attempt to burn down New York City, how Lincoln almost lost the presidency, about the Rebel general who nearly captured Washington, and how thousands of enslaved African Americans freed themselves—and helped secure their nation’s survival. In an age of deep political division such as our own, Scott Ellsworth’s book is an eloquent and gripping testament to the courage, grit, and greatness of the American people.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Lincoln vs. Davis
- The War of the Presidents
- By: Nigel Hamilton
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 32 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From a renowned biographer comes the greatest untold story of the Civil War: how two American presidents faced off as the fate of the nation hung in the balance—and how Abraham Lincoln came to embrace emancipation as the last, best chance to save the Union. With a cast of unforgettable characters, from first ladies to fugitive coachmen to treasonous cabinet officials, Lincoln vs. Davis is a spellbinding dual biography from renowned presidential chronicler Nigel Hamilton: a saga that will surprise, touch, and enthrall.
-
-
Disappointing
- By J B Tipton on 02-14-25
By: Nigel Hamilton
-
American Civil Wars
- A Continental History, 1850-1873
- By: Alan Taylor
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The American Civil War stands at the center of the story, its military history and the drama of emancipation the highlights. Taylor relies on vivid characters to carry the story, from Joseph Hooker, whose timidity in crisis was exploited by Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the Union defeat at Chancellorsville, to Martin Delany and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Black abolitionists whose critical work in Canada and the United States advanced emancipation and the enrollment of Black soldiers in Union armies.
-
-
fascinating!
- By Brandon Marken on 07-12-24
By: Alan Taylor
-
Grant Moves South
- By: Bruce Catton
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 17 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian's acclaimed Civil War history of the complex man and controversial Union commander whose battlefield brilliance ensured the downfall of the Confederacy. Preeminent Civil War historian Bruce Catton narrows his focus on commander Ulysses S. Grant, whose bold tactics and relentless dedication to the Union ultimately ensured a Northern victory in the nation's bloodiest conflict.
-
-
Riveting history with a great narration
- By Roberta Rothwell on 01-11-18
By: Bruce Catton
-
Decade of Disunion
- How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849-1861
- By: Robert W. Merry
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 16 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Mexican War brought vast new territories to the United States, which precipitated a growing crisis over slavery. The new territories seemed unsuitable for the type of agriculture that depended on slave labor, but they lay south of the line where slavery was permitted by the 1820 Missouri Compromise. The subject of expanding slavery to the new territories became a flash point between North and South.
-
-
Compromise sought unsuccessfully for a decade you could see the Civil War Coming I highly recommend thus book
- By Amazon Customer on 05-09-25
By: Robert W. Merry
-
Original Sin
- President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again
- By: Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson
- Narrated by: Jake Tapper
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From two of America’s most respected journalists, an unflinching and explosive reckoning with one of the most fateful decisions in American political history: Joe Biden’s run for reelection despite evidence of his serious decline—amid desperate efforts to hide the extent of that deterioration.
-
-
The Fall of the House of Biden
- By Dan Frank on 05-21-25
By: Jake Tapper, and others
-
Gettysburg
- By: Stephen W. Sears
- Narrated by: Jaime Renell
- Length: 21 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The greatest of all Civil War campaigns, Gettysburg was the turning point of the turning point in our nation’s history. Volumes have been written about this momentous three-day battle, but recent histories have tended to focus on the particulars rather than the big picture: on the generals or on single days of battle—even on single charges—or on the daily lives of the soldiers. In Gettysburg Sears tells the whole story in a single volume.
-
-
Great book and performance!
- By Steve D on 08-12-24
By: Stephen W. Sears
-
Lincoln vs. Davis
- The War of the Presidents
- By: Nigel Hamilton
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 32 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From a renowned biographer comes the greatest untold story of the Civil War: how two American presidents faced off as the fate of the nation hung in the balance—and how Abraham Lincoln came to embrace emancipation as the last, best chance to save the Union. With a cast of unforgettable characters, from first ladies to fugitive coachmen to treasonous cabinet officials, Lincoln vs. Davis is a spellbinding dual biography from renowned presidential chronicler Nigel Hamilton: a saga that will surprise, touch, and enthrall.
-
-
Disappointing
- By J B Tipton on 02-14-25
By: Nigel Hamilton
-
American Civil Wars
- A Continental History, 1850-1873
- By: Alan Taylor
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The American Civil War stands at the center of the story, its military history and the drama of emancipation the highlights. Taylor relies on vivid characters to carry the story, from Joseph Hooker, whose timidity in crisis was exploited by Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the Union defeat at Chancellorsville, to Martin Delany and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Black abolitionists whose critical work in Canada and the United States advanced emancipation and the enrollment of Black soldiers in Union armies.
-
-
fascinating!
- By Brandon Marken on 07-12-24
By: Alan Taylor
-
Grant Moves South
- By: Bruce Catton
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 17 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian's acclaimed Civil War history of the complex man and controversial Union commander whose battlefield brilliance ensured the downfall of the Confederacy. Preeminent Civil War historian Bruce Catton narrows his focus on commander Ulysses S. Grant, whose bold tactics and relentless dedication to the Union ultimately ensured a Northern victory in the nation's bloodiest conflict.
-
-
Riveting history with a great narration
- By Roberta Rothwell on 01-11-18
By: Bruce Catton
-
Decade of Disunion
- How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849-1861
- By: Robert W. Merry
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 16 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Mexican War brought vast new territories to the United States, which precipitated a growing crisis over slavery. The new territories seemed unsuitable for the type of agriculture that depended on slave labor, but they lay south of the line where slavery was permitted by the 1820 Missouri Compromise. The subject of expanding slavery to the new territories became a flash point between North and South.
-
-
Compromise sought unsuccessfully for a decade you could see the Civil War Coming I highly recommend thus book
- By Amazon Customer on 05-09-25
By: Robert W. Merry
-
Original Sin
- President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again
- By: Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson
- Narrated by: Jake Tapper
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From two of America’s most respected journalists, an unflinching and explosive reckoning with one of the most fateful decisions in American political history: Joe Biden’s run for reelection despite evidence of his serious decline—amid desperate efforts to hide the extent of that deterioration.
-
-
The Fall of the House of Biden
- By Dan Frank on 05-21-25
By: Jake Tapper, and others
-
Gettysburg
- By: Stephen W. Sears
- Narrated by: Jaime Renell
- Length: 21 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The greatest of all Civil War campaigns, Gettysburg was the turning point of the turning point in our nation’s history. Volumes have been written about this momentous three-day battle, but recent histories have tended to focus on the particulars rather than the big picture: on the generals or on single days of battle—even on single charges—or on the daily lives of the soldiers. In Gettysburg Sears tells the whole story in a single volume.
-
-
Great book and performance!
- By Steve D on 08-12-24
By: Stephen W. Sears
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Greatest Knight
- The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones
- By: Thomas Asbridge
- Narrated by: Christopher Tester
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Caught on the wrong side of an English civil war and condemned by his father to the gallows at age five, William Marshal defied all odds to become one of England’s most celebrated knights. Thomas Asbridge’s rousing narrative chronicles William’s rise, using his life as a prism to view the origins, experiences, and influence of the knight in British history.
By: Thomas Asbridge
-
1861
- The Lost Peace
- By: Jay Winik
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1861: The Lost Peace is the story of President Lincoln’s difficult and courageous decision at a time when the country wrestled with deep moral questions of epic proportions.
By: Jay Winik
-
Three Roads to Gettysburg
- Meade, Lee, Lincoln, and the Battle That Changed the War, the Speech That Changed the Nation
- By: Tim McGrath
- Length: 18 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By mid-1863, the Civil War, with Northern victories in the West and Southern triumphs in the East, seemed unwinnable for Abraham Lincoln. Robert E. Lee’s bold thrust into Pennsylvania, if successful, could mean Southern independence. In a desperate countermove, Lincoln ordered George Gordon Meade—a man hardly known and hardly known in his own army—to take command of the Army of the Potomac and defeat Lee’s seemingly invincible Army of Northern Virginia. Just three days later, the two great armies collided at a small town called Gettysburg.
By: Tim McGrath
-
The Ride
- Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America
- By: Kostya Kennedy
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Timed for the 250th anniversary of one of America’s most famous founding events: Paul Revere’s legendary ride, newly told with fresh research into little-known aspects of the myth that every American learns in school.
-
-
Interesting Tidbits of History
- By Ellen on 05-19-25
By: Kostya Kennedy
-
Nothing but Courage
- The 82nd Airborne's Daring D-Day Mission—and Their Heroic Charge Across the La Fière Bridge
- By: James Donovan
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In June 1944, German and American forces converged on an insignificant bridge a few miles inland from the invasion beaches. If taken by the Nazis, the bridge might have gone down in history as the reason the Allies failed on D-Day. The narrow road over it was each side’s conduit to victory. Continued Nazi control over the bridge near an old manoir known as La Fière—one of only two bridges in the region capable of supporting tanks and other heavy armor—would allow the Germans to reinforce their defenses at Utah Beach, one of the five landing areas chosen for Operation Overlord.
By: James Donovan
-
Taking Midway
- Naval Warfare, Secret Codes, and the Battle That Turned the Tide of World War II
- By: Martin Dugard
- Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Martin Dugard, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Bill O'Reilly's Killing series—with more than twelve million copies sold—comes a fast-paced, dramatic account of the famous yet little understood battle that turned the tide of World War II.
By: Martin Dugard
-
The Greatest Knight
- The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones
- By: Thomas Asbridge
- Narrated by: Christopher Tester
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Caught on the wrong side of an English civil war and condemned by his father to the gallows at age five, William Marshal defied all odds to become one of England’s most celebrated knights. Thomas Asbridge’s rousing narrative chronicles William’s rise, using his life as a prism to view the origins, experiences, and influence of the knight in British history.
By: Thomas Asbridge
-
1861
- The Lost Peace
- By: Jay Winik
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1861: The Lost Peace is the story of President Lincoln’s difficult and courageous decision at a time when the country wrestled with deep moral questions of epic proportions.
By: Jay Winik
-
Three Roads to Gettysburg
- Meade, Lee, Lincoln, and the Battle That Changed the War, the Speech That Changed the Nation
- By: Tim McGrath
- Length: 18 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By mid-1863, the Civil War, with Northern victories in the West and Southern triumphs in the East, seemed unwinnable for Abraham Lincoln. Robert E. Lee’s bold thrust into Pennsylvania, if successful, could mean Southern independence. In a desperate countermove, Lincoln ordered George Gordon Meade—a man hardly known and hardly known in his own army—to take command of the Army of the Potomac and defeat Lee’s seemingly invincible Army of Northern Virginia. Just three days later, the two great armies collided at a small town called Gettysburg.
By: Tim McGrath
-
The Ride
- Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America
- By: Kostya Kennedy
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Timed for the 250th anniversary of one of America’s most famous founding events: Paul Revere’s legendary ride, newly told with fresh research into little-known aspects of the myth that every American learns in school.
-
-
Interesting Tidbits of History
- By Ellen on 05-19-25
By: Kostya Kennedy
-
Nothing but Courage
- The 82nd Airborne's Daring D-Day Mission—and Their Heroic Charge Across the La Fière Bridge
- By: James Donovan
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In June 1944, German and American forces converged on an insignificant bridge a few miles inland from the invasion beaches. If taken by the Nazis, the bridge might have gone down in history as the reason the Allies failed on D-Day. The narrow road over it was each side’s conduit to victory. Continued Nazi control over the bridge near an old manoir known as La Fière—one of only two bridges in the region capable of supporting tanks and other heavy armor—would allow the Germans to reinforce their defenses at Utah Beach, one of the five landing areas chosen for Operation Overlord.
By: James Donovan
-
Taking Midway
- Naval Warfare, Secret Codes, and the Battle That Turned the Tide of World War II
- By: Martin Dugard
- Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Martin Dugard, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Bill O'Reilly's Killing series—with more than twelve million copies sold—comes a fast-paced, dramatic account of the famous yet little understood battle that turned the tide of World War II.
By: Martin Dugard
-
Scorched Earth
- A Global History of World War II
- By: Paul Thomas Chamberlin
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 23 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In popular memory, the Second World War was an unalloyed victory for freedom over totalitarianism, marking the demise of the age of empires and the triumph of an American-led democratic order. In Scorched Earth, historian Paul Thomas Chamberlin dispatches the myth of World War II as a good war. Instead, he depicts the conflict as it truly was: a massive battle beset by vicious racial atrocities, fought between rival empires across huge stretches of Asia and Europe.
-
Women of War
- The Italian Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis
- By: Suzanne Cope
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From underground soldiers to intrepid spies, Women of War unearths the hidden history of the brave women who risked their lives to overthrow the Nazi occupation and liberate Italy. Using primary sources and brand new scholarship, historian Suzanne Cope illuminates the roles played by women while Italians struggled under dual foes: Nazi invaders and Italian fascist loyalists.
By: Suzanne Cope
-
The Traitors Circle
- By: Jonathan Freedland
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Traitors Circle tells the true, but scarcely known, story of a group of secret rebels against Hitler. Drawn from Berlin high society, they include army officers, government officials, two countesses, an ambassador's widow and a former model—meeting in the shadows, whether hiding and rescuing Jews or plotting for a Germany freed from Nazi rule. One day in September 1943 they gather for a tea party—unaware that one among them is about to betray them all to the Gestapo. But who is the betrayer of a circle themselves branded “traitors” by the cruelest regime in history?
-
The Gunfighters
- How Texas Made the West Wild
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas.
By: Bryan Burrough
-
The People’s War
- Unheard Stories: Life on the Battlefront and at Home in World War II
- By: John Willis
- Narrated by: John Willis, Christine Kavanagh, Rosina Aichner, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The People's War, John Willis unearths untold stories of everyday bravery, moments of terror, and tales of life-affirming community, that guide us through the years of the Second World War. From soldiers in North Africa and prisoners of war in East Asia, to evacuees in the British countryside and women in the factories, The People's War is a truly ambitious and comprehensive journey through a devastating and pivotal period of our history, as you've never read before.
By: John Willis
-
Nagasaki
- The Last Witnesses (Embers, Book 2)
- By: M. G. Sheftall
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On August 6, 1945, the United States unleashed a weapon unlike anything the world had ever seen. Then, just three days later, when Japan showed no sign of surrender, the United States took aim at Nagasaki. Rendered in harrowing detail, this historical narrative is the second and final volume in M. G. Sheftall’s series Embers. Sheftall has spent years personally interviewing hibakusha—the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors.
By: M. G. Sheftall
-
38 Londres Street
- On Impunity, Pinochet in England, and a Nazi in Patagonia
- By: Philippe Sands
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this intimate legal and historical detective story, the world-renowned lawyer and acclaimed author of East West Street traces the footsteps of two of the twentieth century’s most merciless criminals—accused of genocide and crimes against humanity—testing the limits of immunity and impunity after Nuremberg.
By: Philippe Sands
-
The Beasts of the East
- The Fall and Rise of America’s Eastern Wilderness
- By: Andrew Moore
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before skyscrapers and smokestacks rose across the eastern U.S., elk, bison, wolves, and cougars roamed. Typically imagined as icons of the West, these large mammals are in fact native to what was once a kind of Eden—towering forests in the Northeast, rolling prairies in the Midwest, and cypress swamps in the Deep South. But, in mere decades, industrialization and unregulated hunting brought these emblems of the East to the precipice of extinction; by the 1950s, squirrels were one of the few wild mammals an easterner was likely to encounter.
By: Andrew Moore
-
America, América
- A New History of the New World
- By: Greg Grandin
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 25 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, the first comprehensive history of the Western Hemisphere, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both.
-
-
Most important history book of 2025
- By Emily B Wachsmann on 05-19-25
By: Greg Grandin
-
Spitfires
- The American Women Who Flew in the Face of Danger During World War II
- By: Becky Aikman
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
They were crop dusters and debutantes, college girls and performers in flying circuses—all of them trained as pilots. Because they were women, they were denied the opportunity to fly for their country when the United States entered the Second World War. But Great Britain, desperately fighting for survival, would let anyone—even Americans, even women—transport warplanes. Thus, twenty-five daring young aviators bolted for England in 1942, becoming the first American women to command military aircraft.
-
-
Great history!
- By cheerin' mom on 05-20-25
By: Becky Aikman
-
The Great Contradiction
- The Tragic Side of the American Founding
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A major new history from the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Founding Brothers and the National Book Award winner American Sphinx, on how America’s founders—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams—regarded the issue of slavery as they drafted the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. In this daring and important work, our most trusted voice on the founding era reckons with the realities and regrets of our founding and the tragedy of its two great failures: the failure to end slavery and the failure to avoid Indian removal
By: Joseph J. Ellis
-
John Hancock
- First to Sign, First to Invest in America's Independence
- By: Willard Sterne Randall
- Narrated by: Steve Hendrickson
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A contemporary of Samuel Adams, John Adams, George Washington, and the Marquis de Lafayette, Hancock had a list of contacts that read like a who’s who of the American Revolution. But shockingly little has been written about Hancock himself. John Hancock tells the story of a man who deserves far more credit for his contribution to the American Revolution than he previously received—and award-winning scholar Willard Sterne Randall is determined to give him his due at last.