This historian won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for History for the second part of a biography divided into The Prairie Years and The War Years. For 10 points each:
[10m] Name this historian and poet who wrote the six-volume biography Abraham Lincoln. Those books by this historian inspired Robert Sherwood’s play Abe Lincoln in Illinois.
ANSWER: Carl Sandburg [or Carl August Sandburg]
[10e] Sandburg devoted much of The War Years to the congressional plot against this Secretary of State under Lincoln, whose work to purchase Alaska was called his “Folly.”
ANSWER: William Seward [or William Henry Seward]
[10h] In an Atlantic review, Stephen Vincent Benét cited this politician as one of many “Congressmen, cranks, [and] soldiers” whom Sandburg depicted. The Birchard Letter addressed this politician’s arrest for violating General Order 38.
ANSWER: Clement Vallandigham (“vuh-LAN-dig-um”) [or Clement Laird Vallandigham]
<NS, American History>