Everyone on the planet knows Abraham Lincoln. But as a historian of antebellum U.S. politics (politics before the Civil War), I've always been struck by how…ahistorical we become when we teach and write about his election to the presidency in 1860. Of course that fully self-realized boy born in that Kentucky log cabin would make it to the White House at the moment of the nation's severest crisis! Of course he would, against considerable odds, prevail in a Civil War and prevent government "of the people, by the people, for the people" from perishing from the earth! Yet even chance occurrences at pivotal moments can (and do) affect large historical forces and yield momentous consequences. This is part of what makes history so inherently interesting: one never knows what twists and turns will turn a humdrum story on its head. Emphasizing the contingency of events can help historians return human agency, free will, and decision-making to a central place in the writing and teaching of history.

So my project starts with the presupposition that all historical events contain a considerable amount of contingency: ways things could have gone in a completely different direction. I also wanted to write a narrative history of a "pivotal moment" – in this case, a long-ago election – for a general reader. We historians have ceded so much of what we are trained to do (tell stories, explain "why" something happened the way it did, and not just the "what" happened) to non-professionals, that I wanted to see if I could make cutting-edge history vivid and entertaining for the reader.

Ongoing thread. More from Jonathan Earle to follow.