Month: December 2021

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The Year in Science Traveling -2021

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Lincoln at GettysburgLast year I started off my annual science traveling post with “Well, this shouldn’t take long.” Despite expectations, I could have started my 2021 post with: “Ditto.”

My year in traveling looks like my previous year’s “goals” list; just change the date and carry over everything to this year. Now I’ll be carrying most of it over to 2022. As with everyone else, I’ve grown exhausted by the continuing battle with COVID, in part due to its evolving variants, and in part due to the irresponsible choices of many to remain unvaccinated. And as with everyone else, it has crimped my traveling schedule. Luckily, I was too busy to travel in the first half of 2021, which I’ll talk more about in my annual “A Year in the Writing Life” that will come out next week.

I again planned to do a series of “Chasing Abraham Lincoln” road trips. Some were local (Richmond, Gettysburg, Washington DC), while others were a bit farther afield (Illinois, upstate New York, New England, California). All are now transferred to my 2022 plans. As usual, my goal was to get to five new countries this year. The reality is that the last trip I took out of the country was to Cuba in May 2019. Things started looking up in July when my brother proposed a two-week catamaran trip around the British Virgin Islands for November. Circumstances soon changed and that trip was cancelled. The idea of sailing around Spain and Portugal in November was put on the table, then removed literally the next day as both countries were added to the State Department’s “Do Not Travel” list due to COVID. Okay, let’s do the Caribbean instead. Same problem. All of this was after foregoing a trip to the Galapagos because we thought we would be tied up at that time.

Around the time things were getting the most depressing, I saw that a writing acquaintance was doing a self-imposed “writer’s retreat” on Long Island. It was a lightbulb moment, and before long the plan became a mini vacation on Long Island on the way to New England for a Thanksgiving visit with my family. The trip was delightful. We had no trouble getting accommodations because it was off-season, although several restaurants on the coast were closed for the same reason. But we did get to see my 60th aquarium and visit some cool museums at the Vanderbilt estate, plus hiked the beautiful fall woodlands at Sands Point. Then there was the wine tasting at Lieb Cellars vineyard. All-in-all, a wonderful trip. As was the chance to see my family for the second time in a year, a treat given the continuing restrictions.

Looking back, it seems my entire traveling year was crammed into November. Prior to leaving for Long Island, I attended my one and only in-person conference in two years. The Lincoln Forum had gone virtual in 2020, but they were intent on holding an in-person event in 2021. All attendees were required to be fully vaccinated – and prove it – in order to be present. Everyone was required to wear masks for all lectures and meetings, although removal was okay (by necessity) during meals. Around 300 people enjoyed a mostly normal Forum, exchanging ideas and learning about ideas. I was elected to the Board of Advisors. I’m happy to say that a grand total of zero reports of COVID cases arose from the meeting. Luckily for us, the omicron variant didn’t show up until just after our conference. It was nice to be back with people.

There was one additional in-person event in 2021. The Lincoln Group of DC, of which I am now president, had a tour of a local battlefield in September. We car-pooled and masked to limit exposure, with the rest of the tour being completely outside. Again, we managed to do it with no reported cases before or after.

So, what’s the plan for 2022?

Largely, the 2022 plan is “see 2021 plan.” The uncertainly of the omicron surge in cases has already sunk several plans for the spring, but I’m hoping/praying/pleading that travel is back on the table. In fact, we’ve already booked a Windstar cruise for late September/October that begins and ends in Istanbul and bounces around the Black Sea. We’re hoping to book another major travel destination in the early spring or early summer, but the options are still open for that one. September will be a busy month, in part because of the Windstar trip but also because my new book is scheduled for release on September 1. I’m likely to go to New England at least three times, the July 4th and Thanksgiving holidays and on my “Chasing Abraham Lincoln – New England” tour. I expect to be doing some road trips to accommodate a speaking tour for the book. I’ll also be checking off as many of the “local” road trips I’ve been carrying for two years.

A quick note on the “Year in Science Traveling” title. This website was originally called “Science Traveler” to reflect my intent to delve into the science of worldwide traveling. That was the plan when I left my last science job in 2013, the same year my first book came out (on Nikola Tesla, followed a few years later by Thomas Edison). I continue to travel and have plans for more science travel-related content, but regular readers will notice that I’ve renamed the website with my author name to reflect my divergent interests. Abraham Lincoln had always been my side-gig, but it’s clear to anyone reading this that Lincoln is now my main job and science traveling is the side-gig. I’m planning to revamp the website in early 2022 to make it more modern and functional. Stay tuned.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America. 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.

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

[Photo credit: David J. Kent, 2021, Detail of “Return Visit” sculpture]

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Abraham Lincoln Book Acquisitions for 2021

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Books 2019The biggest feature of my Abraham Lincoln book acquisitions for 2021 is that most of the books I acquired aren’t even mine. As usual, I begin my annual “Year in the Life” posts with my Lincoln book collection. You can read last year’s post here. My shelves are getting fuller, but my garage and basement are now also filled with boxes of books, piles of books, and random books. In a sense, I’ve become a temporary storage facility.

This new role started in the spring. I had already become the holder of the Lincoln Group of DC‘s (LGDC) paper archive, big cabinets full of files, brochures, newsletters, and even some old photos, CDs, and VHS tapes. These cabinets were moved in a couple of years ago when the previous holder had to remove them from the borrowed space in a non-profit office downtown. Because of the limitations of travel due to COVID in 2020, the previous president of the Lincoln Group decided to move permanently to Denver so he and his wife could see more of their family. He was holding quite a few Lincoln books that belonged to LGDC, and since I was taking over as the organization’s president, I agreed to take them until we could get them to members. At this same time, the long-time secretary of the organization also decided to downsize, and 20-years of stored books from her basement shifted to my basement. We then had two members pass away, leaving instructions that their collections should be donated to LGDC.

All of this has led to the aforementioned boxes and stacks of books currently swamping my space. All told, there are many hundreds of books that belong to LGDC. To push the situation from the sublime to the ridiculous, or at least a bit overwhelming, I had already reached a critical point in shelf space, thus necessitating a bit of a purge of duplicate books. Those duplicates have joined the LGDC books and effectively are another donation to the Lincoln Group. The plan, if you could call it that, is to make as many as possible available to LGDC members. The continuing restrictions on in-person meetings due to COVID is making it hard to get them out to members, so they remain in my possession for the time being. That said, they will NOT be in my garage and basement for the next 20 years (or 2).

Beyond that, I have actually acquired quite a few Lincoln books this past year. While I limited my purchases of new books, I did pick up a few carefully selected used books from a variety of places, including two local used book stores, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. As with last year, I also received books from publishers for review in the Lincolnian, the Lincoln Herald, and elsewhere. The majority were related to my role on the book award committee of the Abraham Lincoln Institute (ALI), which I’m diligently trying to finish reading before our decision during the first week in January. I also won two book giveaways on Goodreads (one of which was a Lincoln book), received one book in a giveaway by a Civil War Round Table, and got seven books from my insurance company using points accrued. Thirty-eight of the books were published in 2021, while others have more time under their covers. The oldest book was published in 1865, and its poor condition reflects that fact. I was able to get several of the new books signed by their authors at the only in-person event that actually occurred in-person this year, the annual Lincoln Forum (of which I recently was elected to the Board of Advisors).

Among the books I acquired was one I purchased because it relates somewhat to my own forthcoming book – The Science of Abolition by Eric Herschthal. Several prominent Lincoln scholars were well represented. Michael Burlingame had two books come out this year. The first was An American Marriage, which turned out to be quite controversial as it describes the marriage of Abraham and Mary Lincoln in dramatically stark terms. Later in the year he published The Black Man’s President. The title is based on a quote from Frederick Douglass and in the book, Burlingame delves into the racial sentiments and experiences of Lincoln. In my personal opinion, it is one of the most important Lincoln books in many years. Another important book is James Oakes’s The Crooked Path to Abolition, which focuses on Lincoln’s belief – and the belief of most northern Americans – that the Constitution was an anti-slavery document.

The Oakes book was discussed in LGDC’s Study Forum, our group within the group that intently studies Lincoln’s life and times through books. The Study Forum is now working on another new book I added to my collection, Michael S. Green’s Lincoln and Native Americans. Lincoln’s role in Native American relations during the war, in particular the Dakota War in Minnesota, has been a topic of heavy discussion this past year. I did a presentation in April (summarized here) and have been familiarizing myself with the issues. Green’s concise book gives a solid overview and should be read in conjunction with other books on the topic I’ve read lately. Two other notable books this year were Ronald C. White’s Lincoln in Private, which deals with the 111 fragments Lincoln wrote to himself, and Getting Right With Lincoln by Ed Steers, which examines a dozen “knowns” about Lincoln that are either myths or still highly debated.

As always, collecting these books means I do a lot of reading. While I can’t claim to have read all of them, I have read many of them and plan to read the rest over time. And, of course, acquire even more. Note to publishers: I’m always open to receiving books in return for an honest review via my various venues, including Goodreads and Amazon.

We’re now on the cusp of 2022, and contrary to previous years, I hope to offload as many books as I acquire. I hope to remain on the ALI book award committee and expect to pick up selected Lincoln books as I deem necessary, but mostly I’m looking to cull my collection. That means sorting out any duplicates I may have and disposing of them through listings on eBay and Amazon, selling to local used bookstores, and donating to the local library (or to LGDC members). I plan to do the same with the LGDC books, with the focus on getting them in members’ hands at in-person events (which omicron might put in jeopardy). I hope to end 2022 with a significant net reduction in books. That’ll be a change.

One book I’m looking forward to having in my hands in 2022 is my own new book. I submitted the manuscript to the publisher in late June 2021 with the expectation that it would come out in February. The continuing COVID pandemic had other plans, however, as the supply chain issues that we all hear about has affected the publishing industry as well. Books in the pipeline were delayed, and the publisher pushed my book release date to September 2022. I’ve already seen a cover and the title is now settled, so I’ll start to release that information in January as the final countdown progresses. Stay tuned!

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America. 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.

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

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Lincoln the Philanthropist

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Emancipation Proclamation with LincolnFew people know that Abraham Lincoln was also a philanthropist. We remember him for saving the union and the Emancipation Proclamation, but he also was a big donator to charity. On December 17, 1863, he sent a letter thanking the Sanitary Commission of Chicago for a watch that was sent to him for his contributions. He wrote:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, December 17, 1863
To James H. Hoes
My Dear Sir,

I have received from the Sanitary Commission of Chicago, the Watch which you placed at their disposal, and I take the liberty of conveying to you my high appreciation of your humanity and generosity, of which I have unexpectedly become the beneficiary. I am very truly yours

A. LINCOLN

So why was he receiving a watch?

The managers of the Northwestern Soldier’s Fair at Chicago had earlier written to Lincoln, noting:

`Among the many remarkable incidents of our recent Fair, not one has been more pleasant, than the duty that devolves upon us, of consigning to you, on this National Thanksgiving Day, the accompanying watch; of asking you to accept it, as a memorial of the Ladies N. Western Fair. During the progress of the Fair, Mr. James H. Hoes, Jeweller of Chicago, a most loyal and liberal man, after giving very largely himself, in order to stimulate donations from others, proposed through the columns of the Tribune, to give a gold watch to the largest contributor to the Fair. . . . Emancipation Proclamation . . . was sold for $3,000, the largest benefaction of any individual. . . .”

In a nutshell, Lincoln had handwritten a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation to donate to the Fair. The two-week fair was the first of many Sanitary Fairs designed to raise money to support the care of wounded and sick soldiers. The fair was entirely organized by women, and the managers that sent the letter to Lincoln were indeed Mrs. Abraham H. Hoge and Mrs. David P. Livermore. Most of the crafts, food, and entertainment for sale at the fair were created and provided by women. Dignitaries such as Lincoln donated documents, lithographs, and other items for sale and auction. The Chicago Fair brought in $80,000 (roughly $1.7 million today). Many hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised in subsequent fairs held around the country through the end of the war.

Lincoln’s contribution garnered the greatest gain for the Fair, hence the watch. What became of the watch is unknown, but perhaps he donated to the next Sanitary Fair.

On a related note, a printed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation but signed by Lincoln was sold at auction in 2012 for $2.1 million. The buyer was modern philanthropist David Rubinstein, who has donated millions of dollars to renovations of Lincoln-related buildings around Washinton, D.C. A total of 48 printed copies were made in 1863, with Lincoln signing all of them and donating them to the Sanitary Commission for auction.

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity andEdison: 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.

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Lincoln and John Dahlgren, Weapons Guy

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John DahlgrenLincoln liked John A. Dahlgren, his weapons guy, of sorts. On December 8, 1862, Lincoln sent a telegram to the Washington Navy Yard with the succinct request: “Will Capt. Dahlgren please call and see me at once?”

What they discussed on that particular occasion is unknown, but Lincoln often conferred with Dahlgren about the war effort. A few weeks into the war, he had pressed 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.

Not long before the mysterious 1862 telegram, Lincoln had visited Dahlgren at the Navy Yard along with Secretary of State William Seward, and Secretary of Treasury Salmon P. Chase. Dahlgren took the group down to the banks of the Anacostia River to witness testing of the Hyde rocket. Instead of shooting off across the river as planned, the rocket exploded, nearly sending shrapnel into the group of distinguished leaders, all of whom escaped unharmed. Lincoln skipped the next trial two days later when the rocket flew out of control and landed on the roof of a nearby blacksmith shop.

Lincoln had also consulted with Dahlgren to discuss the veracity of claims by one of Lincoln’s old friends, Isaac Diller, who had proposed “a new and secret art of making gunpowder.” Diller was acting as an agent for a German developer of a chlorate-based gunpowder as an alternative to that based on saltpeter (potassium nitrate). Satisfied with Dahlgren’s assessment, Lincoln entered into an agreement with Diller authorizing additional secret testing in a rented building on Timber Creek in New Jersey.

Dahlgren was such an asset to Lincoln that after Lincoln signed into existence the new National Academy of Sciences, Dahlgren was assigned as one of the fifty charter members, alongside another Lincoln science advisor, Joseph Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. It was no surprise then that Lincoln and Mary’s carriage ride on April 14, 1865, took them to the Navy Yard to talk strategy with Dahlgren, who by that time had risen to the rank of Admiral. While there, Lincoln viewed three ironclad ships recently damaged in action at Fort Fisher, North Carolina, including the Passaic-class monitor, USS Montauk. After touring the vessels and talking with Navy Yard staff, the Lincolns returned to the White House and shortly thereafter set out again for what they had hoped would be a relaxing night at the theater. Our American Cousin, a comedy, should lift their spirits as this long grueling Civil War appeared to be coming to an end.

The rest, as they say, is history.

[Adapted from Lincoln: The Fire of Genius, due out in September 2022]

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America. 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.

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

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Lincoln on the Importance of Education

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Lincoln reading by firelight“Upon the subject of education,” Abraham Lincoln wrote in his Communication to the People of Sangamo County in 1832, “I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.”

True to his word, on December 2, 1840, during his tenure in the Illinois state legislature, Lincoln offered a resolution: “That the committee on education…inquire into the expediency of providing by law for examination as to qualifications of persons offering themselves as school-teachers, that no teacher shall receive any part of the public school fund who shall not have successfully passed an examination.” This resolution is embodied in sec. 81 of common school code adopted at this session.

Up to that point, teachers on the frontier weren’t required to have any qualifications beyond “readin, writin, and cipherin’ to the Rule of Three.” The state of education on the frontier was so limited that “if a straggler supposed to understand Latin, happened to so-journ in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard.” Even with his limited access to formal education, Lincoln quickly outclassed his occasional teachers in capability, mostly because he did what he could to “pick up from time to time under the pressure of necessity” any other education. To give him proper credit, that included teaching himself English grammar, Euclid geometry, surveying, and the law.

In fact, a closer look at Lincoln’s ciphering book (often referred to as his “sum book”) shows that Lincoln was less than forthcoming about his educational achievements, intentionally downplaying his expertise for political expediency. The ciphering book includes an additional page covering his practice with the double rule of three, a slightly more complicated skill than he suggested. There are also several fragmented pages in which he practices both simple and compound interest, and calculation of a discount rate. Based on these few entries, only a fraction of the original 100-page volume, Lincoln clearly gained more intense mathematical knowledge than suggested in his biographical sketch. Early twentieth century researcher M.L. Houser went so far as to suggest Lincoln received a “collegiate education” before he was 18 years old. Taking Lincoln at his word that he ciphered clear through Pike’s Arithmetick, with additional study in Daboll’s book, he would have covered more advanced skills such as reduction (converting unlike numbers), vulgar (simple) fractions, decimals (called decimal fractions), duodecimals, and the inverse rule of three. He likely studied square and cube roots (and their extraction), permutations, and involutions. The two books also provided instruction in practical mathematics that he would find useful in his later life as a store clerk, including gauging the volume of casks used for liquid goods, ways to calculate payments, and general bookkeeping skills. Pike’s provides information on mechanical powers of levers, an introduction to physics that Lincoln would have found useful in loading and unloading flatboats. From Daboll’s he could have learned geometrical progression, or how to determine the sum of the terms in any series of numbers increasing or decreasing by one common multiplier.

But there is so much more about Lincoln’s education that I discuss in my book, Lincoln: The Fire of Genius.

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

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.