Month: June 2021

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Catching Up on Lincoln, The Book

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David at Lincoln MemorialI often check The Lincoln Log to catch up on what was happening this day in Abraham Lincoln’s life. And today I can also update where things stand on my new Lincoln book.

Among other events listed for June 30, 1864 is that Lincoln abandons the idea of colonizing freed black men to Chiriqui, a coal region in what is now southwestern Panama. I discuss both colonization and the role of coal in the Civil War in my forthcoming book. I doubt whether it is truly accurate to say that Lincoln abandoned colonization on any given day, or that he even was as big a proponent of it that history has made him. I discuss that in the book too.

So what is the status of this book?

I submitted the full manuscript to the editor at Rowman & Littlefield last week. I’m currently in my “take a breather” phase, which means I’m desperately working to catch up on all the other obligations I backlogged while busy writing. With the July 4th holiday starting this weekend, the editor has told me that I won’t hear anything for a while. My guess is that by late July I’ll have the editor and copy editor’s edits (e.g., to edit sentences like this one). Barring any major disagreements, the book will be into cover design and layout by August. Our tentative plan is to release the book around February 2022. I’ll provide updates when the publisher settles on a date, and especially when the pre-ordering can begin. Some background on the book is in this earlier post. I’m hesitant to jinx myself by revealing more until the manuscript has been accepted, but expect more this summer. Stay tuned.

The aforementioned backlog included the first Lincoln Group of DC Board meeting I’ve chaired as President. While I’ve been president of scientific organizations four times in my career, this is the first Abraham Lincoln organization for which I’ve carried that responsibility. Luckily, the Lincoln Group Board is exceptionally capable of making the process as efficient as it is active. We have some big issues on the table. First, there is the return to in-person dinner/lunch lectures, which we tentatively are working on to accomplish in October with none other than renowned Lincoln expert Ron White. Second, we are beginning to plan our own Lincoln Memorial Centennial for next May. And we won’t forget all those who have been able to join us on our monthly virtual events – expect to see a continuing schedule of virtual lectures, discussions, and possibly even some hybrid events. You can keep up on Lincoln Group events and Lincoln news on our website at Lincolnian.org.

This summer should also bring more books to review for the Abraham Lincoln Institute book award. I serve on that committee and act as Treasurer for ALI. Unless there is a major COVID setback, we plan to go back to our normal in-person full-day symposium at Ford’s Theatre in March 2022. Videos of previous symposia speakers can be found on the ALI website.

I’m also looking forward to getting in some travel again after more than a year’s hiatus. More on that as it happens.

David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America. His newest Lincoln book is scheduled for release in February 2022. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Follow me for updates on my Facebook author page and Goodreads.

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Lincoln Sues the Railroad Hand That Feeds Him

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Abraham Lincoln photoOn June 23, 1857, Abraham Lincoln sued the Illinois Central Railroad. The Railroad had hired him on many occasions to defend their interests, but on this occasion they balked at the unusually high fee Lincoln charged – $5000. Lincoln had served the railroad well over many years, often taking limited fees, for example he had drawn only $150 for a year’s worth of work encompassing “at least fifteen cases (I believe one or two more) and I have concluded to lump them off at ten dollars a case.” This time, the McLean County Tax Case, he wanted to get paid the value of the work.

After jockeying around to ensure Lincoln was free to represent them, the railroad had paid him a retainer to get him started. The case was complicated, involved several trials, including the Illinois Supreme Court. Lincoln won the case and submitted his bill for $5,000, an amount more than the annual salary of the Illinois governor. After a week he wrote to the railroad’s counsel requesting status, who indicated it had been sent to the company president and attorney, who refused to pay it. Lincoln sued. Knowing he needed to justify such a large amount, Lincoln included an affidavit providing for the depositions of other prominent lawyers, all of them his friends—Norman Judd, Isaac Arnold, Grant Goodrich, Archibald Williams, and his former law partner, Stephen T. Logan—each of whom vouched for the appropriateness of the fee.

In his own brief, Lincoln wrote:

“Are, or not the amount of labor, the doubtfulness and difficulty of the question, the degree of success in the result; and the amount of pecuniary interest involved, not merely in the particular case, but covered by the principle decided, and thereby secured to the client, all proper elements, by the custom of the profession to consider in determining what is a reasonable fee in a given case.

That $5000 is not an unreasonable fee in this case.”

When the case came up for trial, no representative for the railroad was present and the judge awarded Lincoln the five thousand dollars. John Douglass, the Illinois Central railroad’s attorney, did show up the next day and begged for a new trial, which Lincoln did not resist. Setting aside the earlier verdict, they retried the case and the jury again decided for Lincoln. This time they awarded him $4,800 because Lincoln had received $200 as a retainer (in fact, the records show he had received $250). As with all fees received by the firm, Lincoln shared this fee equally with William Herndon.

[Adapted from my forthcoming book, due out in February 2022]

David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America. His newest Lincoln book is scheduled for release in February 2022. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Follow me for updates on my Facebook author page and Goodreads.

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A House Divided – Lincoln Takes a Stand

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Lincoln Douglas DebatesAbraham Lincoln lost his 1856 Senate campaign, but in 1858 he had another opportunity to run for Senate, this time against his old rival Stephen A. Douglas. In June Lincoln gave what is perhaps one of his most cited oratories, the “House Divided” speech. Once again he warned that the Kansas-Nebraska Act had opened the country to expansion of slavery—not just in the territories, but throughout the nation. Beginning with a paraphrased line from the Bible (Mark 3:25), Lincoln notes:

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the states, old as well as new—North as well as South.

Lincoln was not using hyperbole; he firmly believed slavery was in danger of becoming a national institution. The Kansas-Nebraska Act could allow all of the remaining territories to welcome slavery. The Fugitive Slave Act required the federal government and all states to actively capture any slaves who had escaped into free states and return them to the South. And the Dred Scott decision had effectively invalidated any rights of citizenship even for free blacks, no matter where they lived. One more Supreme Court decision like Dred Scott could result in the right of slave owners to move to any free state and legally bring their slaves, thus making all of the United States open to slavery.

The night before giving his speech, Lincoln asked Republican friends to read it and offer advice. Unanimously they begged him to tone down the passage cited above, fearing it was too inflammatory. Lincoln listened, then told them he would keep it in: “I think the time has come to say it, and I will let it go as is.” Those who felt slavery was wrong had been compromising for decades, with all compromises resulting in continued political strength to slave owners. For Lincoln, the time had come to make a stand.

[Adapted from Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America]

David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America. His newest Lincoln book is scheduled for release in February 2022. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Follow me for updates on my Facebook author page and Goodreads.

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Lincoln Sees a New Weapon He Likes

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Lincoln testing a SpencerAbraham Lincoln had an interest in technology, and on June 10, 1861 he sees a new weapon he likes. I write about this and other incidents in my forthcoming book:

A few weeks into the war, he pressed Captain James Dahlgren on a new gun presented by Orison Blunt. After encouraging Dahlgren to “please see Mr. Blunt,” Lincoln wrote “What do you think of it? Would the government do well to purchase some of them?” When Dahlgren replied positively the same day, Lincoln endorsed the envelope with another prod for action: “I saw the gun myself, and witnessed some experiments with it,” Lincoln wrote, adding “I really think it worthy the attention of the government.” Presumably these were the Enfield-patterned rifles Blunt made for the Army a year later.

Pursuing another promising new rifle, Lincoln wrote to Ripley “to introduce you to Mr. Strong who has what appears to be an ingenious and useful Carbine” and asked Ripley to give it a service test. Strong was an unlikable man with dubious ethics, but his breechloading carbine provided the advantage of faster loading at the base of the shorter barrel compared to the longer barreled, muzzle loading muskets most commonly in use. Ripley was unimpressed. While admitting that the new system was “novel and ingenious,” he told Lincoln that it was no better than any of the other breechloading rifles available, which Ripley found to be too complicated to employ in service. Keep it simple was Ripley’s motto, and he preferred old muskets to simplify supply of guns and ammunition to thousands of green troops.

The above is just a teeny snippet from the new book. I’m doing the final editing for submission to the publisher within the next few weeks. Over the next several months I’ll have more information to release about the book, including a stellar Foreword by a well-known author, a cover reveal, and much more.

Stay Tuned!

David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America. His newest Lincoln book is scheduled for release in February 2022. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Follow me for updates on my Facebook author page and Goodreads.

 

 

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Stephen A. Douglas Dies

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Stephen A. DouglasAt 9:10 am on Monday, June 3, 1861, Stephen A. Douglas died in Chicago at the age of forty-eight. Thus ended a remarkable life, both as a leader in the antebellum Democratic party and as a foil to Abraham Lincoln’s rise. Douglas had fallen ill weeks before while headed back to Illinois to lobby for Democratic support of the newly elected President Lincoln once the Civil War started. Lincoln immediately directs that government offices be close on the day of the funeral and that the Executive Mansion (aka, the White House) and departments be draped on mourning for thirty days. On June 4th, Secretary of War Simon Cameron issues a circular to Union armies, announcing “the death of a great statesman…a man who nobly discarded party for this country.”

Douglas’s legacy is a complicate one. He rose to great influence in the Senate, perhaps single-handedly pushing through passage of a series of bills that became known as the Compromise of 1850. He also pushed through the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which voided the Missouri Compromise of 1820, thus putting the United States on a path to ultimate civil war. He was a horrific racist, who used blatant racism as a tool to defeat Lincoln in the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates during his Senate reelection campaign. He became the catalyst of the split between northern and southern Democrats in the 1860 election. As I wrote in Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America:

As expected, northern Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas. Because of Lincoln’s clever positioning on slavery during the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates—especially coaxing Douglas into the Freeport Doctrine—the Democratic Party had split into two factions, and Douglas represented only the North. Southern Democrats from the eleven slave states nominated their own candidate, John C. Breckinridge, the sitting Vice President under James Buchanan. To split the vote further, John Bell was nominated for a new Constitutional Union party, the main goal of which was that everyone just get along.

 

Lincoln again stayed in Springfield, as it was considered inappropriate for candidates to personally hit the campaign trail. Instead, Seward, Davis, and others made the case for him. Stephen A. Douglas, in contrast, campaigned extensively, spending a large amount of time in the South warning against disunion. Douglas race-baited as usual, insisting that government was “made by white men for white men” forever, but did try to convince southerners that they were better off working within the Union than trying to separate.

 

Because the Democratic Party had split, Republicans felt confident that Lincoln would win the election. Indeed, he won with about 40 percent of the popular vote and 180 of the 303 electoral votes available; 152 were needed to win. He won all the northern states plus the two new states of California and Oregon. John Breckinridge came in second, gaining 72 electoral votes from most of the southern slave states. Bell got 39 electoral votes by capturing the three border slave states of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Douglas, once considered the likely winner, received only 12 electoral votes from the two states of Missouri and New Jersey. Lincoln was president-elect.

 

And yet, after the election, and after the Civil War began, it was Stephen A. Douglas who tried to rally the country to support Lincoln’s efforts to retain the Union. His life would come to an early end, but Douglas was a major influence – for good and for bad – on the antebellum nation. Douglas is buried in Chicago.

David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America. His newest Lincoln book is scheduled for release in February 2022. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Follow me for updates on my Facebook author page and Goodreads.