Month: October 2020

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Do We ‘Erase History’ by Removing Confederate Monuments?

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Confederate monumentsA week ago I wrote a post titled, “The Rational Case for Removing Confederate Monuments.” There were a couple of important comments that I addressed on that post, but one in particular that I would like to address here – Do we ‘erase history’ by removing confederate monuments?

The short answer is no, but the longer answer reveals that this question is more complicated. In fact, the question is really two questions: First, do Confederate statues accurately reflect history? Second, does removing statues disable us from learning history? Keep in mind that when I say monuments I include Confederate statues as well as naming schools, army bases, and roads after Confederate generals and political leaders.

As I noted in my original post, the history that these monuments honor is a false history, which is commonly referred to as “The Lost Cause.” Confederate monuments were a concerted attempt to rewrite history to deny slavery’s role in antebellum America and its fundamental causation of secession and the Civil War. Erecting Confederate monuments joined with Jim Crow laws and intimidation by white supremacist groups like the KKK to both undermine the voting rights of African Americans and promote a white superiority political power structure.

Why? One reason is inherent in the paragraph above – to maintain white-dominated political, social, and economic power. Prior to the Civil War the South was dominated by a plantation economy based on the existence of slave labor. Small farmers were bought, or forced through intimidation, out of the cotton market (as well as tobacco and sugar markets) because they couldn’t compete with huge plantations. This put all economic and political power in the hands of the wealthy few. Since vast acreages of cotton required significant manual labor, Americans of African origin were held in enslavement and forced to do the work. For a variety of reasons, this slave-labor based economic system grew in the South while diminishing in the North. Compromises in the Constitution, in 1820, and in 1850 tried to limit the spread of slavery as the geographic area of the United States expanded (because of the Louisiana Purchase and Mexican War, for example) while also securing continuing rights of slaveowners in those states in which slavery existed. The Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 and Dred Scott decision in 1857 gave more power to slave states, again focused on the power of wealthy plantation owners. With the near-election of John C. Fremont in 1856 and the actual election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, these wealthy plantation slaveowners felt that slavery was in danger. Worse, they saw that potential racial equality would eliminate their white superiority power structure. Thus, the slaveholding states decided to secede and go to war to protect and expand slavery, and along with it, their belief that whites were superior to blacks. That perceived racial superiority continued to drive actions to disenfranchise black rights as guaranteed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.

But there is a second reason for why the Lost Cause mythology caught hold, and why the United Daughters of the Confederacy and others focused on erecting statues in the early 20th century. As with most Americans, I am rightly proud of my father’s service in World War II. Others are proud of their own personal or family service in fighting for our nation. But consider the position of sons and daughters of Confederate veterans. Their fathers fought in a war to break up the United States and expand the right to enslave other people. True, most rank and file soldiers were probably not slaveowners themselves and may not have even been all-in on the idea of the war (which is why their leaders lied to soldiers, telling them it was a “war of northern aggression”), but to some extent their descendants must have felt similar to what the sons and daughters of Nazi soldiers felt in the decades following WWII. We all want to honor the bravery of our ancestors. The Lost Cause fabricated a mythology that allowed us to honor them. Even today there are many members of Civil War roundtables who proudly trace their heritage back to Confederate soldiers. Now, I’m going to stop here on this particularly topic because it requires a much deeper dive into history that I’ll attempt in a future post. I’ll leave by saying that I think people today should still warmly regard their ancestors that fought in the rank-and-file for the Confederacy. They should do so with a full understanding of the history, both of the Civil War (including pre- and post-) and their ancestors’ specific circumstances. I highly encourage genealogy and historical studies on both sides of the conflict.

To summarize this first part of the question – Confederate monuments do not accurately reflect our history. Instead, their purpose is to deflect from actual history and create a feel-good alternative, and false, history.

Which gets us to the second part of the question: Does removing statues erase history, or perhaps better put, keep us from learning and understanding history?

In fact, removing Confederate statues may actually allow us to better understand our history. Once these monuments to a false history are removed, we can focus on doing a better job of communicating our actual history. In essence, the monuments distract us from learning history by replacing it with a political and social debate. A more accurate view of our history would need to include an honest discussion of the dominant role of slavery from our Constitution through the Civil Rights acts and beyond. It would require an accurate recounting of the pervasiveness of slave-based economic system, including the relationships between cotton plantations of the South, financiers and shipbuilders of New York, and the textile mills of New England. With respect to specific monuments, here is what I wrote in response to a comment on my original post:

As for “real historical information,” most would define that as accurate and complete history of individuals and the times. For example, Robert E. Lee might include his service in the United States Army prior to rejected the Union and fighting for the Confederacy to protect and expand slavery. His time after the war as president of Washington College (renamed Washington and Lee after his death) might be relevant if any of his actions were relevant to his standing. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s history would obviously included his Confederate Army service, as well as his roles in the murders of black Union troops (USCT) at Ft. Pillow and elsewhere, as well as his role as grand dragon of the KKK. In all cases, the full story would need to be told.

All of this and more would be necessary for us to gain a fuller understanding of our shared history.

So does this mean that all Confederate monuments should come down? Maybe. Or maybe not. The goal here is to encourage a rational debate on the fate of Confederate monuments, but also in a larger sense, a discussion of our often complicated and not-always-admirable history. Rather than call for feel-good propaganda – a hallmark of fascist and authoritarian states, not democracies – we should be calling for a more complete understanding of the principles and actions of our nation. Individual statues might remain or moved or provided with additional context. A rational discussion of Confederate monuments can help us communicate the realities of our history to the public such that the public can make more informed and rational choices. The more we can do this proactively, the less we’ll see of uninformed mob action.

This process has another benefit. The discussion may help us come closer to the Founders’ ideal of “all men are created equal” endowed with the unalienable rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The goal isn’t to remove anyone’s rights but to ensure the rights imbued by our Constitution apply to ALL Americans.

I’ll continue with future posts addressing other rebuttals or concerns to my original post outlining a rational case for removing Confederate monuments. If you have any thoughts, either in support or refutation of what I’ve written, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to provide a response. As always, any rational and respectful comment will be addressed. Non-respectful, racist, or vulgar diatribes will not. The goal here is rational dialogue.

[Photo credit: (Abdazizar/Via Wikimedia Commons)

David J. Kent is an avid traveler, scientist, and Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World as well as two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Lincoln in Paris – Wiegers Calendar October

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Ah, Paris in the spring, er, fall. October takes me back to Paris on the David Wiegers 2020 calendar. Given lack of travel in the time of COVID, this is as close to Europe as I have gotten this year. Last year I went only to Costa Rica and Cuba (my “C” year), so it’s been a while since I’ve seen the old country.

I don’t recall offhand how many times I’ve been to Paris. My first trip was the tail end of a London/Paris week back in 2002. Those photos are stuck somewhere in storage as I was still clinging to 35-mm film at the time. I went back a few years later for a few days to get away from the grind. In 2008 I moved to Brussels, Belgium to begin my three-year stint working from my previous company’s European office. That’s where the fuzziness comes in. Soon after arrival I took the ultraspeed train from Brussels to Paris and spent the day at a consortium meeting for a client, and occasional work would take be back. I also had friends and family visit me in Brussels, and usually that meant hopping the train to Paris because, well, everyone wants to visit Paris. I became quite adept at the “highlights tour,” both in the city itself and the Louvre. I’ve also been to Paris once or twice (or thrice?) since I returned to the states and even after quitting my job at that company. It’s been a while since I’ve been so finding this month’s calendar featured photo was a treat.

Wiegers calendar Paris

This particular statue is unique in that it is the work of two men. In 2009, the American embassy commissioned a statue, which was dedicated at the University of Chicago Center in Paris, located a bit upstream on the Seine River from the traditional tourist areas. The structure of the statue itself was created by Henri Marquet. It shows a standing Lincoln with one arm to his side and the other stretched above his head. But all but the head of this structure is covered by the mosaics of Vincent Charra. Interestingly, the original statue structure included an homage to new U.S. President Barack Obama’s “Yes we can” campaign slogan. This was covered up by the mosaics, but the visible pattern does include “Captain O’ My Captain,” Walt Whitman’s poem about Abraham Lincoln following his assassination.

As with other statues in this calendar, I wasn’t aware of this one until after my last visit to the City of Lights. I’m eager to go again.

COVID is keeping me traveling solely by memory and photographs this year, but hope reigns that next year I’ll be back on the road and the air and the sea.

[N.B. The next post will get back to answering rebuttals to my “Rational Case for Removing Confederate Monuments” post.]

David J. Kent is an avid traveler, scientist, and Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World as well as two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

 

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The Rational Case for Removing Confederate Monuments

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Protests swept the nation after the death of George Floyd in the spring. While most protests were peaceful, some took advantage of the situation to destroy property, including pulling down a handful of the more than 700 Confederate monuments. All told, as of August, about 60 Confederate symbols (statues, flags, school names, etc.) had been removed, renamed, or relocated. Nearly 1,800 of these symbols remain. Some of these removals have been done peacefully; others were pulled down by mob action. Abraham Lincoln spoke out against such a “mobocracy” in the past, but is there a rational case for removing Confederate monuments?

Sociologist James W. Loewen, best known for his books, “Lies My Teacher Told Me” and “Lies Across America,” points out that all monuments reflect three distinct time periods. I explored this concept in a recent dialogue and discovered that all three time periods, and the motivations of the people of those times, provide a rational basis for removing Confederate monuments. Keep in mind that all statues, school names, Army base names, etc. are to honor the person or people depicted.

1. The Subject: The first time period represented is the subject of the statue (or name, in the case of school naming). All Confederate statues represent aspects of the Confederacy and its four year existence during the Civil War, primarily reflected by statues of Generals, Confederate government leaders, and sometimes generic soldiers. The rational question: Is it appropriate to honor the Confederacy and its leaders?

Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu noted on a recent Zoom discussion that Confederate leaders were people who acted to “destroy the United States in order to protect and expand slavery.” Renowned Civil War and Abraham Lincoln historian Allen Guelzo put the question even more bluntly: “Why would you erect statues to people who committed treason?”

These views are backed up by history. Eleven states chose to break the Constitution to secede and engage in a civil war to protect and expand slavery because they didn’t like the results of a national election. This wasn’t simply an irrational reaction to Lincoln’s election, it was a decision planned for many years. While still part of the United States, individual States, Congressmen, Senators, and even President James Buchanan’s Secretary of War John Floyd shipped arms and munitions south and ordered the Union’s limited navy offshore to minimize Union resources for possible response after secession, not to mention any Union response to foreign nations who might take advantage of domestic disarray. Colonel Robert E. Lee of the Union Army was offered the position of General-on-Chief, but chose instead to renounce his citizenship to join the Confederacy. Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis and former Georgia Congressman Alexander Stephens also renounced citizenship to become President and Vice President of the Confederacy. Many other military officers and congressional representatives joined them. All chose to forsake the Union and actively go to war against the United States.

Former George W. Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently questioned the “glorification of the Confederacy” and especially the glorification of “military officers who tried to destroy the country,” adding, “I don’t get it.”

2. When monuments were erected: Placement of monuments began shortly after the Civil War, but the majority occurred in a large spike after the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling that allowed “separate but equal” segregation. This graph gives a good visual of what I’m about to describe (right click to open the image in a new tab so it’s easier to read):

Confederate Monuments SPLC

A special emphasis was to erect Confederate statues in front of courthouses as a form of intimidation to African Americans, many brought in on trumped up charges during the Jim Crow era. Erection of these statues was part of a larger scheme of intimidation where the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy groups ran rampant and everyone, white and black, knew that the judge, prosecutor, and sheriff bringing black men into the courthouse might very well have been wearing a white hood and burning crosses the night before. The time period (post-reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation) also reflected a conscious attempt to rewrite history, creating a “Lost Cause” mythology that denied slavery’s role in antebellum America and the cause of the Civil War. This massive undertaking to rewrite history and engage in intimidation lasted up to the second world war. A smaller spike occurred immediately after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that reversed the earlier Plessy and deemed segregation unconstitutional because it created and institutionalized inequality. Unlike the earlier spike that emphasized courthouse statues, this response to the desegregation of schools decision was focused on naming schools after Confederate leaders, again directed intimidation to demonstrate to African Americans that white supremacy still ruled despite the Court order. This continued through the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act.

These choices of when and were to erect Confederate monuments and name schools and Army bases was not random or accidental, as the graph shows. Rather than merely coinciding with Jim Crow laws or pushback against civil rights progress, the act of erecting monuments to the Confederacy was another plank in the platform to promote white supremacy and rewrite history. The United Daughters of the Confederacy were instrumental in this program. The UDC was also behind the rewriting of textbooks to minimize the role of slavery (e.g., “African immigrants came to America to find work” instead of the reality of the forced international slave trade).

3. The present: The final time period reflected by all monuments is today; the time in which we all view and evaluate, or reevaluate, the appropriateness of monuments to the past. While some see Confederate monuments as representative of “heritage,” others see them representing a continuing subjugation based on race. Let’s rationally examine the two views.

The argument for the monuments reflecting “heritage” is, we all must admit, rather weak. The Confederacy lasted only about 4 years. What we refer to as the “Confederate flag” existed for even less time. This hardly is enough time to reflect heritage. Also, the “heritage” presented is a false history that intentionally dismisses slavery as the key to secession and the cause of the Civil War despite the Confederacy, both at the state and federal level clearly and repeatedly stating that protection of slavery was the cornerstone of secession and war. So what is the actual heritage of the Confederacy? It’s the slave-based plantation economy and white supremacy. This is why you can see Confederate flags flying in North Dakota, New Jersey, and other areas that either didn’t exist at the time or were Union states, not part of the Confederacy. It’s also why the most ardent defenders of Confederate statues are modern day KKK, tiki torch-carrying neo-Nazis, and white supremacists such as the Proud Boys.

Meanwhile, the majority of African Americans today view these monuments as a continuing reminder of white supremacy. We are 150 years after the Reconstruction amendments that guaranteed freedom, citizenship, and voting rights to all Americans (and reiterated 50+ years ago with the Civil and Voting Rights Acts), and yet African Americans and other minorities still feel they are being blocked from exercising their constitutional rights. They feel that these Confederate monuments exacerbate and provide and anchor for continuing racism in America. The deaths of unarmed African American men and women for minor or non-crimes while white supremacist mass murderers are taken without violence reinforces this perception of inequality.

What I’ve presented above is a rational case for the removal of Confederate statues, school names, and other monuments to the Confederacy. This should serve as a starting point for further rational discussion. It does not provide a rationalization for mobs pulling down statues. My hope is that it provides a framework where historians, members of the community in which individual statues sit, and black rights activist groups such as Black Lives Matter can proactively sit down to discuss the fate of any given statue, school name, etc. In a broader sense, I hope these discussions can lead to a more comprehensive discussion on equality in America such that we can identify and remove the societal barriers that keep us from achieving the more perfect union that the Founders and Abraham Lincoln saw as our national ideal.

I will follow up this post in a few days by addressing some alternative positions and rebuttals to what I’ve presented. Feel free to leave your own questions and/or rebuttals (and even solutions) in the comments and I’ll incorporate them into the next post.

Additional Posts Addressing Comments and Rebuttals:

Do We Erase History by Removing Confederate Monuments?

Can We Add Context to Confederate Monuments?

[Graphic credit: Southern Poverty Law Center]

David J. Kent is an avid traveler, scientist, and Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World as well as two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Mis-Understanding Abraham Lincoln and the Dakota 38

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Abraham LincolnThe recent pressure to remove Confederate statues has spilled over into monuments to other historical figures, most incredibly including Abraham Lincoln. As more and more of the country shifts “Columbus Day” to a more appropriate “Indigenous Peoples Day,” Lincoln has been targeted for his role in what is often referred to as “The Dakota 38.” The problem is that Lincoln’s role has been completely misunderstood and mischaracterized, which does poor service to the indigenous goal.

Dakota 38 refers to the 38 Dakota (sometimes called Sioux) Native Americans who were hanged in 1862 for crimes such as rape and murder in southwest Minnesota. The incident followed a short armed conflict in which several bands of Dakota rose up against repeated treaty violations during the 1850s that had led to increasing starvation and chronic hardship. Dakota fighters made extensive attacks on white settlers, resulting in an estimated 800 settler deaths. Hundreds of Dakota were captured by U.S. Army soldiers led by Major General John Pope. Military tribunals were held and 303 Dakota were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.

Mired in the ongoing Civil War and two weeks prior to issuing the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln assigned Pope to go to Minnesota to end the violence. Lincoln was unaware of the specifics at the time and was only informed of the capture, trials, and sentences long after they had occurred when on November 10th he received a telegram from Pope. Realizing the gravity of the sentencing, Lincoln immediately responded to Pope:

Your despatch giving the names of three hundred Indians condemned to death, is received. Please forward, as soon as possible, the full and complete record of these convictions. And if the record does not indicate the more guilty and influential, of the culprits, please have a careful statement made on these points and forwarded to me. Please send all by mail. [Lincoln to Pope, November 10, 1862, Collected Works 5:493]

Once received, Lincoln spent several weeks reviewing the trial records. Many of the trials were perfunctory, lasting as little as 15 minutes. Lincoln struggled through his review with the twin goals of ensuring the fairness of the actions while also discouraging further violence. On December 11, 1862 he responded to the U.S. Senate, which as a body had requested Lincoln provide his findings. Lincoln informed them:

Anxious to not act with so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak on the one hand, nor with so much severity as to be real cruelty on the other, I caused a careful examination of the records of trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females. Contrary to my expectations, only two of this class were found. I then directed a further examination, and a classification of all who were proven to have participated in massacres, as distinguished from participation in battles. This class numbered forty, and included the two convicted of female violation. One of the number is strongly recommended by the commission which tried them for commutation to ten years’ imprisonment. I have ordered the other thirty-nine to be executed on Friday, the 19th instant. [Lincoln to U.S. Senate, December 11, 1862, Collected Works 5:550]

One further Dakota sentence was later commuted when new information called into question his conviction. Thus, the final number executed on December 26, 1862 was 38, hence “The Dakota 38.”

So Lincoln’s role was actually to stop the execution of 264 Dakota men where he believed the trial records did not support the sentence. Each of the men executed had been found guilty of violating women (rape) or participating in a massacre (murder). The raids, capture, trials, and sentencing all occurred far away from Washington and without Lincoln’s direct knowledge until after the fact. When he found out, he personally reviewed the case records and commuted the sentences of nearly 90% of those convicted.

This, of course, does not change the horrendous treatment that the United States has imposed on Native Americans throughout our history. The arguments against honoring Columbus with a holiday include his unintentional (bringing disease) and intentional (murder) of indigenous peoples along his routes of conquest (which, ironically, never included what is now the United States). Legitimate arguments can also be made against U.S. government actions long before Lincoln took office, including forced relocation of Native Americans in the 1830s and the Trail of Tears. Likewise, “Indian wars” in the latter half of the 1800s continued the oppression and forced removal of Native Americans as white settlers moved west. When Lincoln took office he inherited a long-standing system of corruption in the Indian Bureau. He did little to reform it during his first term – after all he was fighting to save the Union – but had promised to deal with the situation in his second term once the war was over. His assassination made that impossible.

Efforts to destroy or vandalize Abraham Lincoln statues are therefore misguided. There are valid arguments for removing Confederate statues and even Columbus, but those arguments don’t support attacks on Lincoln. Other statues sometimes targeted, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because they were slaveowners, are also misguided. Washington and Jefferson helped start this country on a path where “all men are created equal.” Lincoln ended slavery in the United States. Each of these men, and all men and women, are as flawed as all of us are today. These were men who lived in the realities of their times and yet found a way to transcend those times to nudge us toward a more perfect union. We obviously have a long way to go, and often we seem to be moving in the wrong direction. But to achieve the ideal goals of this nation we must be willing to act based on knowledge and understanding. We must be focused on adding to our history by including the roles of women and people of color, as well as fully understanding historical people and incidents of the past.

Misunderstanding Lincoln and his role in the Dakota 38 executions hinders rather than advances those ideal goals and the concerns of indigenous peoples. We can better understand our history if we focus on providing the accurate context of such incidents. In many cases, that will call into question some of the omissions of history, but our goal should be understanding the realities, not creating an inaccurate and false counter-history.

David J. Kent is an avid traveler, scientist, and Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World as well as two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

 

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What Killed Abraham Lincoln’s Mother?

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Nancy Hanks LincolnNancy Hanks Lincoln died October 5, 1818 of “the milk sick.” Or did she? While Abraham Lincoln biographers generally attribute her death to milk sickness, a possibility exists that it might have actually been something else. The story goes like this:

Early in October, Thomas and Elizabeth Sparrow, relatives of Nancy who had joined them in Indiana the previous year, died of the milk sickness. Within two weeks, Nancy began showing symptoms and after a week of agony, died. While the Lincolns and others knew vaguely it was associated with milk, no one had yet connected the disease with the ultimate source. Some had noticed the seasonality of the disease and that it seemed to occur more often in years in which natural forage vegetation was in short supply. Less than normal rain in 1818 had resulted in dusty conditions and low crop yields. As a result, the Lincolns’ livestock instinctively foraged for food wherever they could find it, often into the underbrush of the neighboring forest. What they found was a weedy plant now known to be white snakeroot (current scientific name Ageratina altissima).

While early observations suggesting plants as a source occurred before Nancy’s death, it was not until 1834 that a physician and scientist named Anna Pierce Hobbs Bixby learned the connection to white snakeroot and led a campaign to eradicate the weed from her Rock Creek, Illinois community. Ohio farmer William J. Vermilya independently implicated white snakeroot in 1837. Given the lack of scientific infrastructure, these early discoveries were insufficient to settle the issue and as late as 1841 the Kentucky legislature was offering $2,000 to anyone “who shall, within five years after the passage of this act” succeed in discovering “the true cause of the disease, now known to be caused by the poisonous effects of the wild, flowering white snakeroot transmitted by the milk, butter, and flesh of cattle consuming the plant.”

That “true cause” was a natural toxin called tremetone that remains active even after the plant was dried for hay. Sometimes farmers noticed listlessness, trembling, and peculiar odors found in the breath of cattle, sheep, and horses. The tremetone easily passes into the milk, which was how most humans were exposed to the toxin. Milk sickness was not a pleasant disease. One of the symptoms is a scent similar to acetone (similar to today’s nail polish remover). Persistent vomiting, abdominal pains, muscle stiffness, and eventually tremors, respiratory distress, and agonizing pain were obvious to the Lincoln family. Not seen was the intense inflammation of Nancy’s gastrointestinal tract, enlarged liver and kidneys, and swelling of her heart. Milk sickness was a painful death.

The definitive conclusion that milk sickness was caused by tremetone was not determined until the early twentieth century. In 1818, all the preadolescent Abe could do was helplessly watch his mother die. Death from the lack of scientific knowledge was one reason Lincoln later supported the greater use of science in agriculture—and the broad dissemination of information to farms of all sizes throughout the nation.

But wait. Tremetone? Virtually everyone that mentions milk sickness says the toxic is called tremetol, not tremetone. For those who are into organic chemistry, the “-ol” means it is the alcohol version of the chemical; the “-one” means it is the ketone version. [Since this isn’t a chemistry lesson, you can look up the difference.] Tremetone is found in tremetol, which is actually a toxin mixture from the aforementioned white snakeroot plant. While most sources say the tremetol is the toxic component, biomedical researcher and Lincoln historian Edward Steers, Jr. argues that tremetone is the actual toxic chemical. Like Steers, I’m also both a scientist and Lincoln historian, so I think I’ll go along with him on this one.

But wait, there’s more.

Steers also suggests that Nancy may not have died of milk sickness at all. When you think about it, the circumstances seem suspect, not the least of which is the fact that no one else in the Lincoln family died despite all of them drinking the same milk and eating the same food. Steers suggests that Nancy may possibly died of brucellosis, a bacterial disease associated with unpasteurized milk or undercooked meat, especially from goats but also from cows and pigs. Symptoms are similar to milk sickness, including fever, sweating, vomiting, weight loss, and muscle pain. Because it is contagious, Nancy may have gotten it when she was nursing the Sparrow family.

So was it milk sickness, brucellosis, or something completely different? In truth, we don’t really know. The series of symptoms and deaths were attributed to milk sickness at the time, but as we’ve seen, they didn’t really understand what was causing the disease, just that it had some vague connection to milk. Or so they thought. Since it’s impossible to accurately diagnose from the limited anecdotal hearsay available from family and friends, biographers stick to the generally accepted story that Lincoln’s mother died from milk sickness. But maybe she didn’t. This is an important reminder that historians need to be careful when they simply report old sources without fully researching the details. And perhaps, that more scientists need to be historians.

[Adapted from my forthcoming book]

David J. Kent is an avid traveler, scientist, and Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World as well as two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!