As we near the sesquicentennial of America’s most famous battle, all eyes will be on Gettysburg, Pa. The road there for the troops from New Jersey had been long and rocky. By the end of summer 1861, the war that had been expected to be a short and glorious one had shown it was going to be long and bloody.

Politics would play as much a part in winning the war as muskets. President Abraham Lincoln, today thought of as kind and gentle, was, in fact, a cunning, pragmatic politician.