Was Lincoln’s family dirt-poor, or were they on a par with most of the families in that region? And what was Thomas Lincoln’s work ethic? This article, featuring comments from Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame, made me question facts I didn’t know I had to question about Lincoln’s youth.

Another mystery is Lincoln’s father. The question is “whether his father was an industrious and responsible fellow or rather shiftless,” Burlingame says. “I fall into the latter category in interpretation because there’s so much testimony from his neighbors and relatives (that) he was basically a good-natured fellow, but he was not ambitious, and he discouraged his son from acquiring an education, really wasn’t very close to his son and didn’t treat him very well.”

Source: Uncertainty surrounds Abraham Lincoln’s early years

I was lucky enough to be able to visit the old Pension Office on my last trip to Washington. It now housing an Engineering museum, but I got to sneak in quickly during setup for an event and take a few pictures of the massive columns inside. This blogger has taken far more – and far better – photos than I managed, and provides some excellent history on the construction and architecture of the building, which was all done under the eye of former Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs. It’s a magnificent building, and well worth a visit if you’re in the DC area.

Meigs insisted that the mule driver be an African American; he wrote to Buberl, “Most of the drivers of Baggage Wagons were freedmen Blacks….By all means make the driver a Negro full blooded….I leave all the clothes to your taste, but he must be a Negro, a plantation slave, freed by the war.” (See Testaments to Union.)

Source: Landmarks: Meigs’s Red Barn

The Lincoln Prize was awarded last month, and this year’s winner sounds fascinating:

“Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War–Era South,” made her one of the five authors nominated for the 2019 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.

Sommerville began thinking about writing the book, which focuses on mental health in the 19th century American South, after she tried and failed to find scholarly information about mental illness during the era…

The Lincoln Prize is awarded annually for the best historical, nonfiction work on the Civil War. Throughout her book, Sommerville examines the ways class and race influence mental health issues by examining how they coincided with a period of collective suffering. She argues that in the period following the Civil War, suicide within white communities in the South started to be seen as a valorous act, while black communities saw an opposite effect, with African Americans being labeled manic and dangerous when they struggled with mental health.

Source: History professor nominated for Lincoln Prize – Pipe Dream

I wasn’t able to blog much in 2017, and subsequently missed much of the furore over the Confederate monuments being removed from public spots. I’m catching up on some of these arguments in The Atlantic. I particularly liked this suggestion of removing the monuments, but leaving the empty pedestals behind to foster discussion.

That summer, I traveled for the first time to Prague, in the former Soviet-bloc country of Czechoslovakia. I noticed almost immediately the concrete foundations and empty pedestals where monuments to communist leaders once stood. Some statues had been relocated to museums, while others were destroyed; skate boarders and sunbathers had since claimed their spot.

Source: Why I Changed My Mind About Confederate Monuments – The Atlantic