The 116 is the definitive account of the Frontier Guard who defended President Lincoln from a kidnapping and assassination plot in the opening days of the Civil War. Based on more than 500 original sources discovered at the Library of Congress, The 116 delves into the lives of these 116 men and their charismatic leader-Kansas "free state" advocate and lawyer Jim Lane. It paints a provocative portrait of the 'civil war' between Free-State and Pro-Slavery forces that tore Missouri and the Kansas Territory apart in the 1850s, and gives a vivid picture of the legal battles pertaining to the protection and abolition of slavery that riled Congress on both a federal and state level, eventually leading to the eruption of war in 1861.