Month: December 2024

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Abraham Lincoln Book Acquisitions For 2024

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Books 2019How time flies. The year 2024 is almost over and I think I’ve finished accumulated new books for the year, to it’s time for my annual Abraham Lincoln book acquisitions post. As you’ll quickly see, my goal to reduce the number of books I buy has been relatively successful-the total number of books acquired is definitely fewer-coming in at 25 new acquisitions. Reducing the total number of books? Not so successful. You can read about past years acquisitions by scrolling through this link.

I did manage to acquire fewer Lincoln books this year despite some great new books hitting the shelves. The 25 “new” books in 2024 compares to 37 in 2023 and 34 in 22, so that’s a plus. I also received fewer books as gifts or from publishers. My grand total is split pretty evenly between 11 new hardcover books and 12 new softcover books, plus there are 2 books as PDF files only. Both PDFs, which are the two older books acquired, were downloaded because they provide source material for my current work in progress (which I’ll discuss soon in my “Year in a Writer’s Life” post). The hardcover versus softcover split is interesting. I definitely prefer hardcover books, but it seems publishers are shifting to producing more softcover books. This seems especially true for some academic publishers, who either don’t produce a hardcover version of the book or price it at some astronomically ridiculous price point in order to push the softcover version. As just one example, one book that is expected to come out in June is listed on Amazon as $90 for the hardcover and $25 for the softcover. Another book I recently bought was $65 for the hardcover and $28 for the softcover. At a recent conference, the on-site bookstore didn’t even bother trying to sell the hardcover, stocking only the softcover even for a receptive audience. Like the 18/20/22% tip suggestions they now put on restaurant bills, this is clearly a case of what Dan Ariely called “predictably irrational.”

Meanwhile, about half the books I acquired were actually published in 2024 (another is to be published in January 2025, but I received an ARC; more on that in a moment). That’s a shift from my previous habits where I focused more on collectible books from the early 20th and even 19th centuries. This year, the two oldest books by publication date are the two PDFs (publication dates of 1909 and 1910). The oldest physical book is 1963, but then they jump up to 1996 and again to 2001 before settling most into the last decade. I’m a bit surprised by this, but not completely given that I’ve made an attempt to collect less. I even read more Lincoln books I borrow from the local library since my bookshelves are already full, but somehow a dozen books published this year found their way into my home.

The most recognizable author from this year is almost certainly Erik Larson, whose Demon of Unrest dives into the period between Lincoln’s election and the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, the event usually pegged as the beginning of the Civil War. Larson is a guaranteed bestseller since his Devil in the White City and other books hit the shelves, although I was less impressed with this particular volume. Maybe I knew too much to read it as simply a good story and found myself either bored or critiquing details too much. Beyond Larson, the rest are either relatively obscure or are considered exceptional scholars in the Lincoln studies world but not so much to the general publish. Looking at my list, I realize that I know several of them fairly well, including Allen Guelzo, Harold Holzer, Jonathan W. White, Walter Stahr, and Jeffrey Boutwell, and then this year met Jon Grinspan, Mark Neels, and others because of the topic of their books.

I also had a back-cover blurb published on one book that come out this year. In January I received a request from Southern Illinois University Press to review a PDF manuscript by Leonne Hudson, and when that book, Black Americans in Mourning, came out this fall, my blurb praising the book was there along with those from Civil War experts James M. McPherson and Hilary N. Green. This is actually the second blurb I’ve had published on books, the first was on Nancy Bradeen Spannous’s Defeating Slavery from 2023. Perhaps it’s a trend.

I have to admit that I haven’t yet read all of the books I acquired this year despite reading over 100 books in 2024. I’m currently reading Boutwell, a book about George Boutwell, Lincoln’s first commissioner of internal revenue and later Grant’s secretary of the treasury. The book is written by Jeffrey Boutwell, a distant descendant. The publisher sent me the book to review. Other books I liked this year included Harold Holzer’s Brought Forth on this Continent, about immigration in Lincoln’s time; Allen Guelzo’s Our Ancient Faith, about democracy; Robert W. Merry’s Decade of Disunion, about the volatile 1850s; and I especially liked Jon Grinspan’s Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War.

The year 2025 will continue my plan to acquire fewer books and, perhaps more importantly, try to offload some of the books to make room. My proximal reading list includes Nigel Hamilton’s Lincoln vs. Davis, about the two presidents serving during the Civil War; Manisha Sinha’s The Rise and Fall of the Second American Revolution, which is quickly becoming the definitive treatise on reconstruction; and Doug MacDougall’s The Agitator and the Politician, about the difficult relationship between abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and Abraham Lincoln. I’m sure there will be more great books coming out in 2025 that I’ll also find myself reading, and perhaps also acquiring.

See the 2024 list showing author/title/publication date below my signature blurb below.

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.

 

Here is the 2024 list! [Author, Title, Date of Publication]

Achorn, Edward The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention that Changed History 2023
Ayers, Carol Dark Lincoln and Kansas: A Partnership for Freedom 2001
Boutwell, Jeffrey Boutwell: Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy 2025
Current, Richard N. Lincoln and the First Shot 1963
Derber, Jesse Abraham Lincoln: Statesman Historian 2024
Grinspan, Jon Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War 2024
Guelzo, Allen C. Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and The American Experiment 2024
Hamilton, Nigel Lincoln vs. Davis: The War of the Presidents 2024
Hanna, William F. Abraham Among the Yankees: Abraham Lincoln’s 1848 Visit to Massachusetts 2020
Holzer, Harold Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration 2024
Hudson, Leonne M. Black Americans in Mourning: Reactions to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln 2024
Jansen, Axel Alexander Dallas Bache: Building the American Nation Through Science and Education in the Nineteenth Century 2011
Larson, Erik The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War 2024
Learned, Marion Dexter Abraham Lincoln: An American Migration 1909
MacDougall, Doug The Agitator and the Politician: William Lloyd Garrison, Abraham Lincoln, and the Emcipation of the Slaves 2020
Masur, Kate and Clarke, Liz Freedom Was in Sight!: A Graphic History of Reconstruction in the Washington, DC, Region 2024
Merry, Robert W. Decade of Disunion: How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849-1861 2024
Neels, Mark A. Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates 2024
Newton, Joseph Fort Lincoln and Herndon 1910
Pearsall, Alan American Town: The History of Ipswich, Massachusetts 2009
Schwalm, Leslie A. Medicine, Science & Making Race in Civil War America 2023
Sinha, Manisha The Rise and Fall of the Second American Revolution: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 2024
Stahr, Walter Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln’s Vital Rival 2022
White, Jonathan W. and Griffing, William J. (Eds) A Great and Good Man: Rare, First-Hand Accounts and Observations of Abraham Lincoln 2024
Williams, Frank J. and Pederson, William D., eds. Abraham Lincoln: Contemporary 1996
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Lincoln and the Dakota

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On this date, December 11, 1862, Abraham Lincoln transmitted to the U.S. Senate his response to their request that he “furnish the Senate with all information in his possession touching the late Indian barbarities in the State of Minnesota, and also the evidence in his possession upon which some of the principal actors and head men were tried and condemned to death.”

In today’s news, we hear the phrase “largest mass hanging in U.S. history.” This past October 14, which has traditionally been known as “Columbus Day” but more recently referred to by some as “Indigenous Peoples Day,” saw a recurrence of vandalism to the iconic Lincoln statue in Chicago and elsewhere. Usually, this vandalism includes red paint with the words “Dakota 38” defacing the statue itself and the accompanying exedra, the high-backed bench that forms a semicircular platform around the statue.

I have discussed the misunderstanding around Lincoln’s role in the “Dakota 38” in a previous post, so please read that as well.

There is also a video available here that digs further into why we honor Lincoln, including my portion discussing the Dakota 38.

In his letter to Congress of December 11, 1862, Lincoln notes:

I further state, that on the 8th. day of November last I received a long telegraphic dispatch from Major General Pope, at St. Paul, Minnesota, simply announcing the names of the persons sentenced to be hanged. I immediately telegraphed to have transcripts of the records in all the cases forwarded to me, which transcripts, however, did not reach me until two or three days before the present meeting of Congress. Meantime I received, through telegraphic dispatches and otherwise, appeals in behalf of the condemned, appeals for their execution, and expressions of opinion as to proper policy in regard to them, and to the Indians generally in that vicinity, none of which, as I understand, falls within the scope of your inquiry. After the arrival of the transcripts of records, but before I had sufficient opportunity to examine them, I received a joint letter from one of the Senators and two of the Representatives from Minnesota, which contains some statements of fact not found in the records of the trials, and for which reason I herewith transmit a copy, marked “C.” I also, for the same reason, inclose a printed memorial of the citizens of St Paul, addressed to me, and forwarded with the letter aforesaid.

As I detailed in my previous post, Lincoln carefully examined all of the records of the trials, separating out those who participated in rapes or murders from those merely participating in battles. The result was 38 who were found demonstrably guilty of heinous crimes to be executed as per the previous trials, but also Lincoln stopped the executions of 264 Dakota men where he believed the trial records did not support the sentence. Each of the men executed were found guilty of violating women (rape) or participating in a massacre (murder).

The previous post and the video links above provide more detailed information.

 

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 Immediate Past 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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John Brown Hanged Today

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John BrownBack in the days when inciting an insurrection against the government was considered disqualifying, on December 2, 1859, abolitionist John Brown was hanged.

Brown, of course, was an evangelical Christian of strong religious convictions. He believed he was an “instrument of God,” destined to eradicate the evils of slavery through direct violence. Considered by some a prophet, by others delusional, Brown saw the culmination of his life to bring equality to all Americans. His use of violence to “persuade” went back several years to the Kansas territory, where he and his followers responded to the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas (by pro-slavery mobs bent on murdering free-state settlers) by singling out five pro-slavery men and summarily hacking them to death with broadswords. Escaping punishment for that action, in 1859 he worked to start a slave revolt at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia).

This was not a sudden act of vengeance but a pre-planned attack. Brown had lobbied many eastern abolitionists to support and fund the stockpiling of weapons, persuasively arguing that “a few men in the right, and knowing that they are right, can overturn a mighty king. Fifty men, twenty men, in the Alleghenies would break slavery to pieces in two years.” To the Sharps rifles provided by his backers he added 1,000 pikes specially made for him and intended to be supplied to the combatants. On October 16, 1859, Brown led his armed band to Harpers Ferry, where their objective was to take the armory, the arsenal, the town, and the rifle factory. The expectation was that he would be joined by masses of enslaved men once the attack began. That never happened. 

In short, Brown and his men killed four townspeople and one Marine. Most of his men were killed, escaped, or were captured. United States Marines led by First Lieutenant Israel Greene under the overall command of Colonel Robert E. Lee and including First Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart, quickly subdued Brown. After a quick trial, Brown and others were executed by hanging on December 2.

A few months later, Abraham Lincoln traveled to New York City to give his famous Cooper Union address. In it he tackles the Southern conservative Democrat charge that somehow the new progressive Republican Party was to blame for John Brown’s actions. Lincoln denied it:

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper’s Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper’s Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper’s Ferry affair but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with “our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live,” declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us, in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood and thunder among the slaves.

Lincoln went on to argue that Brown’s use of violence necessarily failed:

John Brown’s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution.

Lincoln would go on to become president of the United States and, in the course of secession and a brutal Civil War started by the South to preserve and expand slavery, found himself in a position to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and push through the 13th Amendment forever banning slavery.

Lincoln acknowledges that inciting an insurrection was wrong and that Brown was held accountable for his actions. Perhaps we need to revisit that accountability today.

[Photo of John Brown By Ole Peter Hansen Balling – 6wGTA-pgdPr_9w at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21870468]

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 Immediate Past 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.