Month: April 2023

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Abraham Lincoln Goes to West Point (Plus, The Lincoln Legacy Award)

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West Point MuseumAbraham Lincoln made a secret trip to West Point in 1862. My recent trip to West Point was not so secret, and I also picked up and award in Lincoln’s legacy. I have the Lincoln Society of Peekskill to thank for both.

General Winfield Scott had been a hero of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War of 1846-1848, as well as the Whig nominee for president in 1840. Old Fuss and Feathers, as he was called because of his insistence on proper military etiquette, was the go-to man to become General-in-Chief at the beginning of the Civil War. By this time, however, he was 75 years old with enough medical problems to be incapable of field leadership, so by the fall of 1861 both he and Lincoln felt the need for a change. Scott retired to West Point to live out his days (ironically, he outlived Lincoln). Gone from leadership, but with his mind still sharp, Scott occasionally would be called on for input on military strategy. The desire for consultation with Scott is what led Abraham Lincoln to secretly travel to West Point in June of 1862. Secret in the sense that it was planned privately and not announced to the public. But once at West Point, the newspapers caught on and spread the news widely, along with speculation as to the reasons. Lincoln never commented on his trip, but the word was out. Anthony Czarnecki, past president of the Lincoln Society of Peekskill, wrote a wonderful history of the visit in the Winter 2012 issue of History, the quarterly journal of the New York State Historical Association.

Tony had invited me to be the keynote speaker for the Lincoln Society’s annual banquet on April 15, 2023. I arrived from my New England road trip the day before and met Tony and Lincoln Society vice president Emily Lapisardi (who took over as president the next night). Emily is music director of the Catholic Chapel at West Point, a position from which she arranged a tour of West Point during my stay. I’ll have more on the tour in another post, as well as my tour of the Lincoln Depot Museum, the Lincoln Society banquet itself, and other aspects of my road trip. I will mention that West Point is an amazing place in itself, but the insider information from Emily heightened the experience even more. It also helped that Emily both gave an impromptu concert on the massive organ in the Cadet Chapel (to the delight of a small tour group that happened to be there at the time) and sang during the Society’s banquet.

It seemed altogether fitting and proper that I should follow Lincoln’s footsteps through New England and to West Point. I could feel his presence. I was even more honored that the Lincoln Society of Peekskill presented me with their Lincoln Legacy Award at the banquet following my presentation. In presenting the award, Tony Czarnecki and outgoing Society president Michael Macedonia mentioned my service as president of the Lincoln Group of DC, my efforts to organize and emcee the Lincoln Memorial Centennial program on the Memorial steps in May 2022, and of course, the success of my book, Lincoln: The Fire of Genius (of which I signed many copies at the banquet). The award itself is a beautiful bronze of the Daniel Chester French seated Lincoln from the Lincoln Memorial.

So, my personal thanks to Tony Czarnecki, Emily Lapisardi, Michael Macedonia, Paul Martin, and everyone else at the Lincoln Society of Peekskill for the wonderful tours and attention given to me on my recent visit. I’m honored to receive the Lincoln Legacy Award and will do my best to, as Lincoln once said, be worthy of the esteem of my fellow men and women.

[All photos by David J. Kent]

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.

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Abraham Lincoln Goes to Harvard and Yale

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Massachusetts State HouseAbraham Lincoln famously had less than one year of formal schooling, but you can find him now at both Harvard and Yale.

Needless to say, you can find him at every university in Illinois and colleges in other states. During his senate campaign against Stephen A. Douglas in 1858, the two men were required to walk in the door of the Old Main, still the oldest building on the Knox College campus. Once inside they climbed out a window onto the makeshift speaker’s platform, moved next to the building as protection against a rainy day. Lincoln quipped that this was his first time ever going into a college. After a laugh, the audience settled down to a rip-roaring 3-hour debate between the two long-time rivals.

During the Civil War, Lincoln’s son Robert attended Harvard, alma mater of quite a few American presidents, as well as abolitionists like Charles Sumner (whose statue sits just outside of Harvard Yard) and writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, T.S. Eliot, and perhaps more surprisingly, Henry David Thoreau. Lincoln was given honorary degrees from Knox College, Princeton, and Columbia, but never Harvard. And yet, there he is in Cambridge Commons, a full figure of Lincoln standing tall in the center of a monument to the city’s Civil War heroes.

Not to be outdone, the Massachusetts State House in downtown Boston has a bust of Lincoln and a painting in Doric Hall (apparently another bust is in the Senate chambers, but I missed that). I didn’t miss the women’s rights protest outside featuring Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, and Mayor Michelle Wu (who I had also seen a half hour earlier at Boston City Hall for a ceremony honoring a late state congressman).

Lincoln Memorial Oak tabletSeveral days before my visit to Harvard I was on the Yale campus. Lincoln had given a speech in 1860 in Union Hall. The hall no longer stands (the High School in a Community is now in its place) but there is a memory of Lincoln on the green at Yale. There, at least up until recently, stood a majestic Oak deemed the “Lincoln Memorial Oak” that had stood for ages. In late 2012 the stately old tree was toppled by Superstorm Sandy, revealing old bones from the 17th and 18th centuries from the original graveyard it had been growing over. With the massive old tree gone, a new tree was planted along with a granite stone explaining its history.

I’ll have more photos and stories from my road trip as I get the chance.

[All photos by David J. Kent]

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.

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Road Tripping Lincoln in New England

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Lincoln Covered WagonAbraham Lincoln made two trips to New England in his lifetime, and I will soon embark on a road trip of my own to follow in his footsteps. This isn’t my first such trip. Pre-COVID I made several road trips – long solo drives tracing Lincoln’s roots through Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, with side trips into Lincoln-related sites in Tennessee, Michigan, Wisconsin, and elsewhere. You can check out my previous road trip reports here or by searching “Chasing Abraham Lincoln.” Seeing the locations in person brought life to my research and helped flesh out my most recent book, Lincoln: The Fire of Genius. Plans to do other trips into New York and New England ground to a halt during the pandemic and my book writing, but it’s time for another drive. New England it is!

Lincoln’s first trip was 1848. The still fairly young one-term U.S. Congressman was asked to head up to Massachusetts between sessions to stump for the Whig presidential candidate, Mexican War hero Zachary Taylor. Taylor was a strange choice for the Whigs, who had generally disapproved of the Mexican War as a transparent attempt to enlarge the territory in which to expand slavery. But the Whigs felt he was the only candidate who could win (both major parties courted him) and that he would be pliable (he professed no firm political views) so they chose him over perennial candidate, Lincoln’s beau ideal of a statesman, Henry Clay. That wasn’t the only problem. As a Southern slaveowner, Taylor rankled the antislavery sensibilities of the liberal wing of the Whig party in Massachusetts, although the more conservative Whigs (e.g., textile mill owners who depended on the availability of Southern cotton) were less concerned. Disaffected Whigs had built a Free Soil movement to promote an antislavery candidate and Lincoln was sent to smooth over ruffled feathers in an attempt to keep party leaders in the Whig camp. Lincoln was well received and did seem to convince many Whigs, and although the central part of Massachusetts with its more stringent Free Soil passions voted for former president Martin Van Buren as the Free Soiler candidate, the full contingent of Massachusetts’s electoral votes went to Taylor. Taylor became president.

Lincoln’s second, and last, trip was 1860. Riding the high of a successful Cooper Union Address, Lincoln again headed to New England, this time bypassing Massachusetts and giving a dozen lectures in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. In the latter state, Lincoln visited with his son Robert, who was at Phillips Exeter Academy preparing to re-take the Harvard entrance exams he had failed so miserably the year before. [Perhaps not surprisingly, Harvard admitted him soon after Lincoln’s presidential nomination a few months later.] This time Lincoln was stumping more on his own behalf and promoting the now Republican party view that slavery must not extend into the western territories. Again, he was well-received, and this time the New England electoral votes were comfortably in Lincoln’s corner (as they would be also in 1864).

My road trip will hit most of the stops Lincoln made during his two visits, although not necessarily in the same order. I had already spent some time in the area, for example, last December when I stopped in Concord, Massachusetts to see the special Lincoln Memorial Centennial exhibit at the Concord Museum. On this trip I’m hoping to touch base with a few colleagues, see a few statues, hit a few museums and other historical sites, and take as many photos as time and weather allow. I’ll post here and on FB if possible.

[Photo of Lincoln Covered Wagon from Enjoy Illinois: https://www.enjoyillinois.com/explore/listing/worlds-largest-covered-wagon/]

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.