The novel 's emphasis is on the president 's political and personal struggles , and not the battles of the Civil War . Though Lincoln is the focus , the book is never narrated from his point of view ( with the exception of several paragraphs describing a dream Lincoln had shortly before his death ) . Vidal 's portrait is drawn from contemporary diaries , memoirs , letters , newspaper accounts , and the biographical writings of Hay and John Nicolay , Lincoln 's secretaries ; and is buttressed by the work of both 19th - and 20th-century historians
death
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln (novel)