‘Political cesspool’: Lincoln, Davis and a battle with echoes for the time of Trump

At a time of division in the US, biographer Nigel Hamilton returns to a similarly difficult moment to tell the story of a nation’s fate hanging in the balanceNigel Hamilton is a bestselling biographer, his major subjects including John F Kennedy, Franklin D Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. His new book, Lincoln vs Davis: The War of the Presidents, was published on Tuesday, the US presidential election day when Kamala Harris faced Donald Trump.Late in his book, Hamilton notes a harsh 1862 verdic