Tag Archives: abraham-lincoln

Insights on Lincoln

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Ida Tarbell is a name familiar to Lincoln scholars and Gilded Age historians alike.  Our knowledge of Lincoln’s early years is far more rich thanks to her researching (or muckraking, if you will) spirit.

Ferguson says Tarbell was obsessed with Lincoln throughout her life. “After World War I, she went and sort of fulfilled a part of her obsession that she had always wanted to, which was to retrace Lincoln’s movements with his family since he was a little boy, from Kentucky to Indiana and into Illinois. And as she did this, there were still people alive who knew the Lincolns. It’s a part of time that we can’t really get access to any other way,” Ferguson says.

In the days when Lincoln was growing up, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois were remote areas struggling to develop. “It was just a couple of steps up from the Bronze Age, really,” Ferguson says.

But rather than embracing his hardscrabble background, Foner says, Lincoln distanced himself from frontier culture.

“He doesn’t like hunting, he’s not a violent person, he doesn’t hate Indians, he doesn’t drink. And he understands very early — and where this comes from, who knows — that the way to get ahead is through your mind, not through just hard physical labor, which is what his father does. [Lincoln] gets as far away from the frontier as he can, pretty early,” Foner says.

via Best Books (And Surprising Insights) On Lincoln | WAMU 88.5 – American University Radio.

Abraham Lincoln Filed a Patent For Facebook First

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Some idiot “historian” has been making waves on the Internet this week, claiming he uncovered a patent Lincoln made for a paper version of Facebook.  Naturally, I clicked with interest, but knew at first sight it was a hoax.  No pictures were printable in 1843, and the reference to Lincoln “sons” when only Robert was born by that point.

The whole Springfield Gazette was one sheet of paper, and it was all about Lincoln. Only him. Other people only came into the document in conjunction with how he experienced life at that moment. If you look at the Gazette picture above, you can see his portrait in the upper left-hand corner. See how the column of text under him is cut off on the left side? Stupid scanned picture, I know, ugh. But just to the left of his picture, and above that column of text, is a little box. And in that box you see three things: his name, his address, and his profession attorney.

The first column underneath his picture contains a bunch of short blurbs about what’s going on in his life at the moment – work he recently did, some books the family bought, and the new games his boys made up. In the next three columns he shares a quote he likes, two poems, and a short story about the Pilgrim Fathers. I don’t know where he got them, but they’re obviously copied from somewhere. In the last three columns he tells the story of his day at the circus and tiny little story about his current life on the prairie.

Some of the comments compare this kind of hoax to Lincoln’s “tall tales” (apparently mistaking Lincoln for Mark Twain), but the difference is, Lincoln’s jokes were actually funny.

via Abraham Lincoln Filed a Patent For Facebook First.

The Capper

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As if the Lincoln Library needs more adversity in this troubled sesquicentennial, it seems one of their centerpieces is of questionable provenance.  Such a sham(e).

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield has long proclaimed that an 1850s-era stovepipe hat in the museum’s possession belonged to Lincoln.

But this month, after Dave McKinney of the Chicago Sun-Times began looking into the matter, museum officials admitted they can’t prove it.

via Editorial: The mystery of Lincoln’s hat – Chicago Sun-Times.

The Adventures of Abraham Lincoln’s Corpse

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For those who haven’t yet heard the tumultuous story of Lincoln’s corpse, here’s some macabre reading for you.  Possibly the inspiration for Weekend at Bernie’s? I’m not sure.

I’m curious as to the provenance of the illustration that accompanies the article: It was a well known fact that all but one glass negative of Lincoln’s body, bier and coffin were destroyed by Stanton, and I’ve heard nothing of heretofore unknown negatives being uncovered.  This photo looks remarkably authentic.  I’ve written in, but have no response yet from the author, so if anyone can enlighten me, please leave a comment!

Abraham Lincoln was one of the most celebrated and mysterious presidents in the in U.S. (maybe this is why he made such an excellent vampire hunter.) His assassination sent a nation into mourning, and was followed by a two week funeral tour by train car. But Lincoln’s body did not find rest at the end of this procession. Everyone from thieves to politicians tried to take control of the corpse — even decades after it was finally buried.

Here is the macabre tale of the journeys taken by Lincoln’s corpse over the decades before 1901, when at last it came to rest in a ten foot block made of cement and steel.

via The Adventures of Abraham Lincoln’s Corpse.

A Museum Divided

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The Lincoln Museum in Springfield is deep in debt and feuding internally. A shame that this is happening during the sesquicentennial celebrations.  Here’s hoping they can get their act together and their debt paid off, and get on with being an informative and entertaining center of history.

Just seven years old, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is on its third executive director. Attendance is down and money is tight.

The institution is not accredited, and American Association of Museums in 2010 found shortcomings ranging from an inadequate disaster preparedness plan to a governance structure with potentials for conflicts of interest. There is tension between the institution and its private fundraising foundation. Not even Lincoln’s iconic stovepipe hat is a given.

via A museum divided.

Lincoln Giveth, and Lincoln Taketh Away

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If you’re an American reading this, your income taxes are due today.  Lincoln, of course, famously instituted the income tax into law, but did you know that your two day “tax holiday” this year is due to Abe as well?  Turns out DC shuts down for Emancipation Day, which commemorates an event most of us have long forgotten: The purchased emancipation of DC’s slaves, in 1862.  Harold Holzer wrote this nifty little summary, and it’s worth a read. (Assuming, of course, you haven’t got taxes to finish… or start?)

So the future “Great Emancipator” kept the D.C. freedom bill on his desk, unsigned, for two long days – delaying, he confided, until one Kentucky congressman could spirit his own aged servants back to his home state, where slavery remained lawful. This very newspaper reported “turbulence and disorder” throughout Washington, with “slave-hunters chasing up their dark-skinned chattels, to remove them, into Maryland and Virginia” before emancipation could be approved…

Yet the mere fact that a Congress and a president had worked together to end generations of pro-slavery tradition somewhere resonated with breathtaking power in April 1862. No doubt the excitement owed much to the venue: the national capital. It did not seem to matter that only 3,000 were liberated in Washington while millions remained in chains nationwide. As Frederick Douglass predicted: “Kill slavery at the heart of the nation, and it will certainly die at the extremities. This looks small, but it is not so. It is a giant stride toward the grand result.”

Tax holiday inspired by freedom – Philly.com.

Ford’s Theater Expansion

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Today is the anniversary of Lincoln’s death, the process of which started the night before at Ford’s Theater, and ended across the street at the Petersen House. This year, both events and locations have been commemorated in a newly expanded museum housed in the building adjoining the House Where Lincoln Died.

Wait a minute, you might think. Education and leadership? The Civil War is barely over. Lincoln is dead. The nation is in shock. How do we get from there to a “center for education and leadership”? I have questions about that, but before exploring the quirks of contemporary commemoration, it is worth paying tribute to what has been accomplished. Lincoln has long been at the heart of the capital city: the National Mall is an affirmation of the Union he championed, the Lincoln Memorial on one end, and the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial on the other. But there was, until recently, no extensive exhibition here about Lincoln and his times. Ford’s Theater, Mr. Tetreault explained, used to be a brief stopping point.

Now, with these exhibitions, Lincoln has found a home in a place best known for his death. With the historian Richard Norton Smith as adviser, and displays designed by Split Rock Studios and Northern Light Productions, Mr. Tetreault has given visitors a grounding in the history of Lincoln’s time, a sense of the melodrama of his murder and an affirmation of Lincoln’s influence.

The biography is omitted — for that you should visit the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill., which turns his life into a series of special effects and tableaus — and his ideas could be more fervently explored, but there may be no better survey of Lincoln than the one offered here. The emphasis is not on artifacts, though you can see the ring of keys found on Booth’s body and other objects. But the exhibition succeeds because of a careful narrative, well-chosen images and informative touch screens; the new completes the old.

I keep putting off my trip to Washington, and keep finding articles like this chastising me and reminding that this is a bad decision!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/arts/design/lincolns-legacy-at-expanded-fords-theater-complex.html?_r=1

False Witness

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It’s the anniversary of the Lincoln Assassination. I saved this Knoxville newspaper’s article for today. Despite its poor research and even poorer writing, I thought it worth discussing.

The story trumpets a letter inherited by a local man from his great-great-grandfather. There’s no indication of whether he’s connected to the writer or the addressee, but as the following is transcribed without question, I suppose investigative reporting is not this paper’s strong suit:

Ohio Congressman James Morris is in the audience watching as Abraham Lincoln is shot. He documented that night through a detailed letter to a Senator friend…

Morris explained.”I saw the assassin, as he proved to be, in the President’s box making for the front. when he had reached it he placed his hand on the banister and cried out sic semper tyrannis and leaping over alighted on the stage bringing down with him some of the drapery surrounding the box. The President fell or leaned forward, and I think his head rested on the banister front.”

If there’s one thing the eyewitnesses agreed on that night, it’s that they couldn’t agree on anything. I’d picked up the book We Saw Lincoln Shot a few years ago, and it was an interesting insight into the fallacy of memory. 100 eyewitness accounts, with myriad subtle (and just as many enormous) changes between each telling.

The story recounted in this “news” item makes me wonder if the writer was there at all. It reeks of an attention-seeker trying to impress a superior. Sadly, were this modern day, I get the feeling the paper would’ve printed it with as little care for the truth as they did here.

http://www.volunteertv.com/home/headlines/139770423.html

Volck at the NPG

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If – like me – you’re planning a visit to DC during this 1862 sesquicentennial year, be sure to add the National Portrait Gallery to your must-sees.  In addition to an exhibition of Brady’s portraits of the Union generals, there’s a collection of Adalbert Volck etchings on display.

A Volck lithograph was reproduced in the very first Civil War book I was ever given, and his clean, line-drawn caricatures and wicked sense of humour immediately caught my attention.  I’m excited to see what’s on view.

A dentist by trade, Volck served the Southern cause in a myriad of ways, including smuggling medical supplies to Virginia across the Potomac River. However, Volck’s most significant contribution to the Confederate cause was his production of pictorial propaganda that vilified Lincoln, abolitionists and Union soldiers in his publication Sketches from the Civil War in North America.

 

 

via The National Portrait Gallery/Exhibitions/The Confederate Sketches of Adalbert Volck.

Lincoln’s Waterways

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I’m trying and failing to turn a pithy river course/course of his life phrase, here. Maybe this blog has a future as a kind of New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest?

I wish I’d been in the audience for this presentation on Lincoln’s relationship with rivers. I’m a sucker for unusual essay themes and anecdotes of small incidents that have big consequences.

Lincoln discovered that a river that contained plenty of fish in the warm months presented danger in the winter.

He recalled that during his first winter in Macon County he stepped through the ice, suffered frostbitten feet and spent a couple of weeks recuperating in Sheriff Warnick’s home. He took advantage of his misfortune by reading law books found in the sheriff’s home.

I also adored this throwaway last paragraph:

Green said he and his wife, Barbara, attended the opening of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in 2005 in Springfield, which featured about 100 Lincoln look-alikes. A memorable moment of that affair was when the ceremony ended and everyone went outside.

“All of the Lincolns were talking on their cellphones,” Green said.

http://www.carmitimes.com/topstories/x1341772232/Museum-shows-rivers-impact-on-Lincoln?zc_p=1