Publications
Kutzler publishes book review
Dr. Evan Kutzler, assistant professor of history, was invited to review “Lincoln’s Lie: A True Civil War Caper through Fake News, Wall Street, and the White House” by Elizabeth Mitchell in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
The Gold Hoax at the center of “Lincoln’s Lie: A True Civil War Caper Through Fake News, Wall Street, and the White House” exemplified the uncertainty of this era and the challenge of controlling misinformation. When a teenager delivered a fraudulent presidential proclamation about a new draft of 400,000 more Union soldiers at 3:30 a.m. on May 18, 1864, newspaper night managers quickly decided whether to publish it or not. Only two newspapers — the New York Journal of Commerce and the New York World — took the bait. “Every New Yorker was sure to tremble at a renewal of the draft,” Elizabeth Mitchell writes, “given that Lincoln’s first draft, less than a year before, had turned New York’s streets into blood-soaked, charred avenues of terror when the citizenry rebelled.” The four-day draft riots in July 1863 left more than 100 people dead and intensified distrust between the city’s Irish population and the wartime government.
Read Kutzler’s full review of “Lincoln’s Life” here.
