Author: David J. Kent

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler, scientist, and Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of books on Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, and Abraham Lincoln. His website is www.davidjkent-writer.com.
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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!

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The Pre-Presidential Debates That Made Lincoln President

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Lincoln Douglas DebatesIn 1858, Abraham Lincoln began following Douglas from town to town as they campaigned against each other for Douglas’s Senate seat. Challenging the incumbent Senator in a Democratic-dominated state, Lincoln had to coax Douglas to go against his own interests and formally debate. Whenever Douglas gave a major speech, Lincoln told the crowd he would respond that evening or the next day. After doing this for a while, and with the help of his influential friend Jesse Fell, Lincoln approached Douglas about holding a series of joint debates across the state. Reluctant at first, Douglas eventually agreed to one debate in each of the nine congressional districts in Illinois. They had both already spoken in Springfield and Chicago within a day of each other, so they agreed to seven additional joint debates in Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, and Alton over the next two months. For each debate one candidate would speak for sixty minutes, followed by the other for ninety minutes, and the first would get a thirty-minute reply. They alternated who would speak first, with the incumbent Douglas getting the benefit of doing so in four of the seven debates.

The optics of the debates were almost comical. Lincoln was as tall and thin as Douglas was short and wide. Douglas tended toward inflammatory and racist language, while Lincoln was calmer and more logical in his arguments. Douglas had a reputation as a blatant liar; Lincoln as “Honest Abe.” Douglas often arrived in town on a special train accompanied by boisterous bands. Lincoln rode coach. Douglas was prone to histrionics, personal attacks, dogmatic exclamations, blatant negrophobic pandering to white superiority, and lying without remorse. Lincoln avoided sliding in the muck, focusing on making his key points clear to the often large crowds.

Because of the way Illinois was settled—the south moving up from slave states, the central from free states to the east, and the north from the upper states via the Great Lakes—each debate city offered a different range of public opinion. And while topics like banking were briefly mentioned, the main focus of all debates was the defining issue of the day—slavery.

Douglas and Lincoln explored several aspects of the slavery question, with Douglas largely sticking to his stump speech at each stop while Lincoln built on his arguments over time. One aspect was whether slavery was right or wrong. Lincoln argued that slavery was inherently wrong, both from a moral view and from a public policy perspective. Douglas asserted that he “cares not whether slavery is voted down or voted up.” To Douglas, each state could choose whether it wanted slavery, and the federal government had no right to dictate policy. Lincoln disagreed, noting again that the Founders had banned slavery from the territories that became Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and parts north. The Founders also banned the import of new slaves from Africa. As such, Lincoln argued, the federal government had every right to restrict slavery in the territories, and had done so repeatedly.

Sensing this was a difficult position, Douglas went on the attack. He accused Lincoln and all “Black Republicans” of being abolitionists, intent on removing slavery from all the southern states where it currently existed. Lincoln denied this, reminding people that he acknowledged the Constitution protected slavery where it existed. His goal was simply to stop it from expanding. Douglas took his attacks a step further, accusing Lincoln of being for the full equality of the races. This was a straw man used to play to the flagrant racism that permeated the North as well as the South. Douglas knew that if he could paint Lincoln as a “left wing radical,” it would help his campaign.

But Lincoln was hardly a radical. Today he might be considered a “prudent progressive.” True, he achieved great things, including the radical idea of emancipation, but he did so by sticking to authority constrained by the U.S. Constitution. Lincoln, and most Americans at the time, believed that while slavery was immoral (he once said, “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong”), the acknowledgement of its existence in the Constitution meant the federal government did not have the authority to ban it in the states where it already existed. Each state must take action to remove slavery from within its borders, which is how each of the northern states had achieved their free status. As noted above, however, Lincoln believed that Congress did have the power to block slavery from entering the federal territories and the District of Columbia. He and Congress later took steps to ensure freedom from slavery in both of those.

Later, as President, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which did free enslaved people in those states in active rebellion against the Union. This actually remained consistent with the Constitution as it provided for special powers in case of insurrection, powers that would not have been available in the normal state of affairs. Lincoln used these powers as a military necessity. Acknowledging that the Proclamation would become legally moot once the war ended, Lincoln worked hard to have Congress pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which permanently enshrined the freedom of all men and women regardless of race.

All of this was possible because of the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. In particular, during the second debate in Freeport, Lincoln posed a set of questions to Douglas. Always thinking ahead, Lincoln set a trap, and Douglas had no choice but to fall into what would become known as the Freeport Doctrine. Lincoln asked:

Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution?

The question directly pit Douglas’s Popular Sovereignty against the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision. Douglas was forced to choose between alienating those people he required to get reelected to the Illinois Senate or the Southerners he needed in his third run for the presidency two years later. He responded that people in a territory could keep out slavery despite the Dred Scott decision, which stated that federal and state governments had no authority to exclude slavery because it would deprive slaveholders of their “property” rights without due process.

Lincoln was ecstatic over Douglas’s response, although he did not show his hand. Southerners, who wanted the ability to expand slavery without limit, had grown concerned that states could choose to exclude slavery in accordance with Douglas’s Popular Sovereignty. They saw the Dred Scott decision as confirming their right to bring slaves wherever they wanted, and now Douglas was saying that was not true. This presented a long-term problem for slave-owning states. While they knew that most of the new territories were grossly inadequate for growing cotton, which was still the primary driver of the need for slaves, they recognized that every new slave state would increase their representation in Congress—and their continued power to dictate policy.

When the votes were counted, Lincoln had won the popular vote and the Republican Party picked up seats in the legislature. But the state legislature, which was majority Democratic, was still choosing Senators. Douglas retained his Senate seat. Lincoln likely realized his chances of winning the seat were close to nil because of the legislature’s makeup. When he was asked why he would give Douglas an advantage for Senate reelection, Lincoln replied that he had a longer view in mind: Douglas might win the Senate, but he would lose the presidency. The Freeport Doctrine would see to that.

The rest, as they say, is history.

[Adapted from Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America]

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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When Abraham Lincoln Appointed a 10th Supreme Court Justice

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LincolnAbraham Lincoln is the only president to appoint a tenth justice to the Supreme Court. He made five appointments, one of the most prolific appointers-in-chief in our history. And it all started because of Dred Scott.

In 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote the 7-2 majority opinion denying Dred Scott and his family the right to live as a free man, returning him to slavery. Taney further declared that African Americans can never be citizens and had no rights to which white men were bound to respect. One of the two dissenters, Justice Benjamin Curtis, was so disgusted he left the court to return to private practice. The second dissenter, John McLean, died a few weeks after Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861. John Campbell, a pro-slavery firebrand, resigned from the Court to become the Confederate Assistant Secretary of War. Lincoln had several vacancies to fill immediately. He did so by nominating Noah Haynes Swayne, Samuel Freeman Miller, and his old friend David Davis, all of whom the Senate quickly confirmed.

While all of us today have seen nine justices all our lives, the Constitution doesn’t actually specify how many Supreme Court justices will sit. Early on that number varied between five and nine. Congress decided to deal with the complications of the Dred Scott decision (including its rather pro-slavery leanings) by adding a tenth justice to the Court. So in 1863 Lincoln was able to fill the extra seat with Steven Johnson Field. Chief Justice Roger Taney then died in October of 1864. After Lincoln won the election in November, he nominated his former Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase as the new Chief Justice, his fifth justice appointed. Interestingly, the Court still ruled against Lincoln posthumously in an 1866 case known as Ex parte Milligan in which they determined the Lincoln administration had exceeded its authority by relying on a military tribunal to convict Lambdin Milligan and three others, stating that Indiana civil court should have been employed for the trial.

After Lincoln’s assassination, Congress decided it needed to limit the ability of his successor, Andrew Johnson, from appointing pro-slavery justices to the Court, so they reduced the number to seven. Immediately after Johnson was out of office, Congress reset the number again to nine, and since 1869 that has been the standard to today.

Which means there is precedent for changing the number of justices on the Supreme Court to thwart racist and anti-American behavior by presidents (and the Court itself). That said, there is a reason that the Court has remained stable at nine justices since the aftermath of the Civil War. Also, ten – or any other even number – sets up the potential for a Court mired in constant ties, for which there is no remedy (unlike the Senate, where a tie is broken by the Vice President’s vote). Which means any change in current circumstances would have to be to add two justices to reach eleven. Can it be done? Yes. Should it? That depends on the honesty and integrity of the Senate and President, something that we’ve seen is not always guaranteed.

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 San Marino – Wiegers Calendar September

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Wiegers September calendarSeptember in the 2020 calendar series by David Wiegers brings us to the tiny city state of San Marino, where Abraham Lincoln not only makes a showing, he’s a citizen.

I actually wrote about this way back in 2013 in a post called “Did Abraham Lincoln Have Dual Citizenship?” It turns out he did. As I wrote then:

Tiny as it is, San Marino apparently had a good marketing department when they decided to send a letter to the new President of the United States in 1861. Two recently discovered documents have now been provided to The Papers of Abraham Lincoln, a project “dedicated to identifying, imaging, transcribing, annotating, and publishing all documents written by or to Abraham Lincoln during his entire lifetime (1809-1865).” 

Read more on the original post.

This month’s calendar shows the bust of Lincoln by Raymond Barger presented by the United States to the Republic of San Marino in 1932. It has a place of prominence in the Palazzo Pubblico, which serves as the official town hall and federal government building. Since San Marino is so small (it’s considered a microstate completely surrounded by Italy and barely showing up on a map), the Palazzo is the seat of the Republic’s main institutional and administrative bodies, which are the Captains Regent, the Grand and General Council, the Council of XXII, and the Congress of State, all packed into a building much tinier than you might expect. The building itself looks like an old castle, with battlements topping a series of corbels. A clock tower gives height to an otherwise unimpressive building. Essentially, Palazzo Pubblico looks like Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio met Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

Still, its small-town population managed to convince Abraham Lincoln to become a citizen. Given the timing – May 1861, a mere few weeks after the fall of Fort Sumter – Lincoln may have been thinking about contingencies should the newly started Civil War not go the way he hoped. 

In all my travels in Italy I’ve never been to San Marino. COVID has eliminated travel until at least next year, but once Europe lets Americans within their borders again, I’ll be visiting Lincoln at the Palazzo Pubblico.

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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Abraham Lincoln and the Devil

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Abraham Lincoln Healy PortraitAbraham Lincoln and the Devil? That’s a connection most people wouldn’t easily make, but did you know that Abraham Lincoln had a particular affinity for the fable of Faust?

The Faust of German legend is an intellectual scholar, highly successful but rather bored and dissatisfied with his life. He falls into melancholia and, in a bout of severe depression, tries unsuccessfully to take his own life. Failing in that, he begs the Devil to give him “magical powers with which he can indulge in all the pleasure and knowledge of the world.” Being a shrewd bargainer, the Devil appears in the form of Mephistopheles to serve Faust with his powers for a set number of years, after which Faust must give up his soul to eternal damnation.

Hardly a light day at the office.

Most people know that Lincoln was also prone to bouts of melancholy, and on one occasion his depression got so deep that his friends put him on 24-hour suicide watch. But most people do not know that Lincoln, who was not himself able to play music, was still a lover of music played by others. He liked much of the popular music of the day – ballads, jocular minstrel songs, and even the song Dixie. He also enjoyed opera, and one of his favorite songs was the soldier’s chorus in Charles Gounod’s operatic version of Faust. Gounod’s opera is based on the two part tragic play written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, considered by many to be one of the greatest works of German literature.

Interestingly, the legend of Faust has come to mean people giving up their integrity to ambition in order to achieve undue power and success for some defined period of time. That hardly describes Lincoln given his long history of integrity – he had been given the nickname Honest Abe at a relatively young age. More likely Lincoln was attracted to Faust both for the quality of the opera and to garner some insight into the machinations of his overly ambitious Generals and Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury who worked behind Lincoln’s back in an attempt to replace him as the 1864 nominee for President.

Lincoln is said to have dealt with the grief of his son Willie’s death in the White House in 1862 by borrowing a copy of Goethe’s Faust from the Library of Congress. The main character’s trials may have helped Lincoln cope with his own great loss. The original play is written largely in rhymed verse – an epic lyrical poem – in Goethe’s native German. Lincoln obviously would have read an English translation.

So Lincoln did have a connection to the devil, albeit in a good way.

[Adapted from Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate]

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 and the Calcium Light

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In late August of 1864 Abraham Lincoln was still pushing research in technological advancement that might help the war effort. This interest put him in the middle of testing a calcium light between the Old Soldiers Home and the Smithsonian.

Homer Bates is best known for his post-war book, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, in which he recounts the many visits by the President to the War Department next door to the White House. Bates recalls an incident in which a demonstration was arranged for his benefit while Lincoln was staying at what is now referred to as President Lincoln’s Cottage. Major Thomas Eckert and Bates traveled to the Soldiers Home one night while their colleagues set up a similar array in the tower of the Smithsonian Institute castle. Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry was also present to witness the tests.

Calcium light

Calcium light was not exactly new technology. Sometimes called Drummond light, and more commonly referred to as limelight, calcium lights were already in use as stage lighting for theaters and concert halls, hence the derivation of the phrase “in the limelight” for people in the public eye. The intense light is created by directing an oxyhydrogen flame at a cylinder of quicklime (calcium oxide).

According to Bates,

Lincoln was greatly interested in this exhibition and expressed the opinion that the signal system of both the army and navy could and would be improved so as to become of immense value tot he Government.

The calcium light signaling method did go on to be of value to the war effort, as were several other signaling and coding inventions. Lincoln encouraged these developments, and in some cases like this, was intimately involved in the testing of advancements. Calcium lights were eventually replaced by arc lighting, which in turn was replaced by direct current and then alternating current. This development becomes one thread that ties Abraham Lincoln to Joseph Henry to Nikola Tesla (and Thomas Edison too).

[Diagram courtesy of By Theresa knott (original); Pbroks13 (redraw) – Limelight_diagram.png, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4171671]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. 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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The Party of Lincoln

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Lincoln RoomAbraham Lincoln was the first Republican President of the United States. As the southern slaveholding states seceded from the Union, Lincoln was faced with an existential crisis that would define, or destroy, the last best hope on earth. Today, both the Republican and Democratic parties claim the mantle of Lincoln. So who has the better case?

Lincoln’s Republican Party was cobbled together from several pre-existing parties. Lincoln himself was “always a Whig in politics,” and the Whig party was the central backbone of the new Republican party. In the 1850s the Whig party splintered and the Republican party came into being. Lincoln helped define the new party, especially in Illinois, by encouraging them to focus primarily on a platform restricting the expansion of slavery into the federal territories. Joining most Whigs were anti-slavery factions of the Democratic party, as well as similar-minded members of the Free Soil, Know Nothing, Liberty, and other minor parties. The Whigs had gotten their start as an opposition party to challenge the Jacksonian Democrats.

The new Republican party carried on the Whigs support for internal improvements. With Lincoln as its premier champion in Illinois, internal improvements were government funded infrastructure such as roads, canals, navigable rivers, and railroads. These improvements would enable economic expansion and a chance for all men to better their condition. Whigs, and Lincoln, believed that education was of critical importance to the growing population of the United States. As one scholar put it, whiggery was the triumph of the cosmopolitan and the national over traditional folkways and customs. The Whig and Republican parties believed in giving all men a fair chance at advancement. They were a party of diversity of views, including those driven by moral reform, anti-slavery abolitionists, and those opposed to Andrew Jackson’s harsh and racist treatment of Native Americans in his rush to expand the nation’s border. Whigs also favored passing relief legislation (aka, stimulus packages) in response to the financial panics of 1837 and 1839. In short, Whigs were for a strong central government that supported education and federal investment in people’s lives such that all had an equal opportunity to make their lives better. Today they would be called a progressive party.

The Republican party ran its first presidential candidate in 1856. John C. Fremont lost that election, but was close enough that he could have won if a few more states’ electoral votes had gone his way. This scared the slaveholding class of the South who had controlled the federal government since its inception. Seeing a trend that would reduce their federal power, slaveholding states immediately stepped up their activities to protect and expand slavery, and by extension, their power. The Dred Scott Decision of the pro-slavery conservative Supreme Court in 1857 helped their case, but Stephen A. Douglas, the most prominent Democrat in the nation and the likely nominee for the 1860 election, while he himself was racist and didn’t care if slavery spread into the territories, let Southerners know that under his Popular Sovereignty mechanism of the Kansas-Nebraska Act most states would probably choose to be free, not slave, states. The Lincoln-Douglas Senate debates of 1858 reinforced southern slaveowner belief that Douglas was not going to protect slavery expansion. This split the Democratic vote (Southern Democrats and Northern Democrats ran different presidential tickets), a decision which ensured their loss in the 1860 election. When a Republican won, the southern slaveholding states chose to destroy the Union rather than take a chance of losing their system of slavery. In its essence, the Civil War was about rich plantation owners protecting their profitable business model; profitable because it required the forced enslavement of Americans based on the color of their skin.

In addition to the progressive economic views of the Whig party, the new and diverse Republican party added to their platform the restriction of expansion of slavery into the federal territories, which by this point included not only the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands but also the rest of the land to the west coast acquired at the end of the war with Mexico in 1848. Republicans did not seek to ban slavery in the states where it existed, merely to restrict its expansion in the belief that slavery would eventually die under the weight of its own immorality and bad economic policy. Lincoln reiterated many times that he believed (as did most Americans) that, in its tacit acknowledgement of slavery while avoiding the actual words, the Constitution allowed slavery to continue in those states where it existed. Still, slaveholding states felt that to protect slavery they must break apart the Union. Most Northern Democrats were pro-slavery but also pro-Union, as were at least some Southern Democrats who but for circumstances would have been against secession.

So we have Lincoln’s Republican party as the progressive party favoring a federal government that actively supports its citizens, advocates for government support of infrastructure projects that benefit the masses, and federal intervention in times of crisis to protect the ability of the people to better their condition. Lincoln’s party sought to remove unfair labor practices, provide for equality for all, and “do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot, so well do, for themselves.” Undoubtedly Lincoln’s party would support equal rights, the end to discrimination, federal support for high-speed rail and other internal improvement projects, and stimulus bills during extreme financial crises that threaten the individual and national economy. Lincoln never forgot his impoverished upbringing and always sought to bring the benefits of science, technology, and economic development to the masses, not just to the super-rich. Lincoln’s Republican party was progressive and Hamiltonian in its economic philosophy.

The Democratic party of Lincoln’s time was conservative. They favored status quo policies that protected the rights and profits of the wealthy, including the idea that whites were superior to non-whites and thus could enslave other people. The Jacksonian Democratic party of the time was significantly more racist and exclusionary; it was also more Jeffersonian in its economic philosophy, that is, more rural and agronomic on a large scale.

Today, of course, these primary characteristics are reversed. The Republican party held control through the end of Reconstruction, ending around 1877 when the former slaveholding states of the South were able to advantage their increased congressional power (they now could count 5/5ths of all African Americans rather than the 3/5ths of enslaved people) and began engaging in legal and extra-legal practices to eliminate African American voting rights. Conservative Democrats held control throughout the first half of the 20th Century, largely by implementing Jim Crow laws to segregate the populace, intimidation to restrict voting and other human rights (via the KKK and other racist organizations), and otherwise promote white supremacy in America. But by the 1950s a shift was beginning. Strom Thurmond, an openly racist Democrat from South Carolina, had run for president in 1948 under a new party mantra called the Dixiecrats (he later switched to Republican). After Brown v. Board of Education required the desegregation of schools, racist Democrats in the South began a massive shift. Democratic President John F. Kennedy began supporting civil rights for African Americans, and his successor, Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, signed into law the 1964 Civil Rights and 1965 Voting Rights Acts. This led the Dixiecrat contingent of the Democratic party to lead the exodus of racist Democrats to the modern Republican party. Johnson’s successor, Republican Richard M. Nixon, intentionally engaged in what he called “the Southern Strategy” to recreate the Republican party as the party of the Confederacy with a stronghold in the deep South and focused on building a white supremacy-based electorate in which fear of non-whites became the central theme. This spawned today’s version of Jim Crow laws to restrict non-white citizenship and pressing a dystopian view of black violence against whites inherent in today’s screams of “law and order” and “Suburban Housewives of America.”

This reversal of parties also extends to economic philosophy. The slaveholding economy benefited the few richest Southerners who managed to absorb smaller farms into huge plantations. Plantation owners were immensely wealthy compared to the masses; they were the 1% of the time. Small family farms largely ceased to exist in much of the South. The wealthy plantation owners controlled not only the economy but the politics, often serving directly as political leaders or indirectly by funding – and controlling – surrogates whose function was to protect the wealth of the plantation owners, not the masses. In contrast, the North was dominated by smaller businesses ranging from family farms to cottage industry to the occasional factory employing neighbors. Northern Whigs and Republicans favored homesteading, i.e., allowing small families to move westward into the territories to start farms on federally owned parcels of land, which would become theirs after five years of production. Southerners were against any westward expansion or other free-labor arrangements because they saw it as “too much power to the federal government” (aka, cutting into their system of slave labor). Southern Democrats believed in “small government,” except of course when they controlled it. Today this reflects more the Republican party, which avers its belief in small government except when it benefits the richest Americans.

The issue is more complicated than this, of course, but in general the two parties have switched places. Lincoln’s more progressive Republican party is more akin to today’s Democratic party. Lincoln himself could be characterized as a prudent progressive. The conservative Democratic party of Lincoln’s time, and up to about the 1960s, is more akin to today’s Republican party. This isn’t a partisan position (I don’t belong to either party); it’s simply an acknowledgement of history.

To make the point more obviously, take a look at a map of the United States at the beginning of the Civil War using today’s “red state/blue state” graphics. The Confederacy was all “blue” state back then; today the same states are “red.” The Union was all “red,” today they are “blue.” The states have reversed. This isn’t because conservatives from the South all moved North. People who identify as conservative and liberal remained where they always were, they merely changed political identification (see Strom Thurmond et al. above).

Today’s Republicans proudly announce they are the “party of Lincoln.” And yet, they are the ones who cry “You’re trying to erase my heritage” to anyone suggesting that flying a Confederate battle flag is inappropriate, or who suggests taking down Confederate statues and monuments. You can’t be both the party of Lincoln and the Confederacy any more than you can wave a Nazi symbol and be pro-American.

All of this is hard to grasp in a nation where the teaching of history often promotes different realities depending on where you grow up. All presidents, and perhaps all American politicians, today seem to have a need to avow fealty to Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln saved the Union from destruction and took large steps in ending slavery, so it’s no surprise that another tall transplanted Illinoisan would find common ground with our 16th president. Other presidents also crave the mantle of Lincoln but clearly don’t live up to the ideal. Still, we can all learn from Lincoln. As long as we first understand what Lincoln means.

Fire of GeniusLincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America was released on September 1, 2022.

The book is available for purchase at all bookseller outlets. 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.

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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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Lincoln in Austria – Wiegers Calendar August

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Wiegers calendar AugustLincoln is in Salzburg, Austria. I missed it…and yet I didn’t. Each month I explore the statues and locations from the 2020 calendar prepared by David Wiegers. For August we’re in Austria.

The statue itself depicts Lincoln reading while sitting on his horse, the stead munching on some grass during a break on the circuit. Lincoln often read while traveling the 8th Judicial Circuit as a lawyer, and sometimes judge, moving from town to town and picking up cases in each district. Called “Abraham Lincoln on the Prairie,” it’s a massive piece by sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington. Huntington once studied under renowned sculptor John Gutzon Borglum, who is probably best known for Mount Rushmore and his huge bust of Lincoln that now resides in the Capitol crypt. One of the few female sculptors prominent in the New York City artist community, Huntingdon is especially known for her equestrian sculptures.

I saw the statue, not in Salzburg, but in front of New Salem, Illinois. Another copy of the statue stands in Lincoln City, Oregon to commemorate the territorial governor’s post that Lincoln turned down (yes, even places Lincoln rejected still honor him). I passed through Lincoln City on a northwest road trip a couple of years ago, and once again missed a statue I didn’t find out existed until after I was there. The same occurred in Salzburg.

It’s hard to believe that my visit to Salzburg was a decade ago. I was two-thirds of the way through my three year stint working and living in Brussels and decided a road trip was in order. A quick flight on discount airline Ryan Air got me to Bratislava, Slovakia, where I picked up a rental car at the airport. [There’s a long story about how the car would not go into reverse, but I’ll save that for another time] On a whistle-stop tour covering five countries I stayed one night in Bratislava, then a night each in Vienna (Austria), Munich (Germany), Fussen (Germany), Salzburg (Austria), squeezed in a day in Ljubljana (Slovenia), and finally two nights in Budapest (Hungary). Driving through the mountains – and the 10-mile-long tunnels – was amazing.

Like all European cities, Salzburg has its castle up on the hill and a very walkable old town replete with cobblestones. Mozart’s old house is a museum. The churches are massive, the beer is not bad, and there was an interesting 25-foot diameter golden ball on a pedestal, on top of which stood a sculpture of a remarkably anachronistic modern-dressed man. I enjoyed the city immensely. But I missed the Lincoln statue.

Salzburg, Austria

According to “the internets,” the Austrian Minister of Education had originally seen “Abraham Lincoln on the Prairie” on exhibit in the Illinois State Pavilion of the 1963 New York World’s Fair. Greatly enamored of the statue, and with many political connections, the Minister was able to have a copy gifted to Austria in 1965 and placed near the “Teacher’s House” in downtown Salzburg. Unfortunately, the location is now private property and the statue stands in the backyard. David Wiegers told me that the statue is visible through the fence and apparently no one bothered him as he stealthily moved closer to snap the photo for the August calendar month.

I’ll end with a note about my own photo above. While walking around Salzburg there are the usual street performers. This one worked a pretty cool marionette playing the piano (including a little Jerry Lee Lewis). Quite a few people were enthralled with the performance, including this little well-dressed boy, who stood there for some time communing with the puppet. As much as I admire statues, it’s real people with real emotions like this that make traveling such an amazing experience.

[Photo credits: My close up of David Wiegers August 2020 calendar page; my Salzburg photo]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. 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!