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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Looking for Ljubljana – Slovenia’s Triple Bridge Jewel

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Triple bridge, Ljubljana, SloveniaSeveral years ago I took a road trip through central Europe. Starting in Bratislava, the route took us through Vienna, Munich, Fussen (home of the famed Neuschwanstein Castle), Munich, Salzburg, and Budapest. Rather than backtrack through Vienna, we decided on a whim to drive south to the capital city of Slovenia, Ljubljana, home of the triple bridge.

The route from Salzburg went through, over, and under the Austrian Alps. And by under, I mean through several long tunnels bored deep into the mountains, up to 8 kilometers at a time. The views were spectacular; the turn of phrase “clouds laying like cotton quilts in the beds between the ridges” popped into my mind as I drove.

Ljubljana (more or less pronounced, LOOB-Yana) was the kind of quaint old capital city I had come to expect in Europe. Most of the visitor activity was focused on a series of cobblestoned pedestrian streets, old town squares, and the ubiquitous castle high on the hill overlooking the city. While there were modern shops to keep tourists happy, my favorite section of the old town was the farmers market where the local shopkeeper and I communicated enough via hand-signals (to make up for my lack of Slovenian – a Slavic language with occasional Germanic hints) to order a local snack that to do this day I can’t identify. [But it was good]

Feeling energetic, we hiked up to the castle and scanned the city. Feeling less energetic, we took the funicular back to the ground and walked past the Dragon Bridge and on to the more famous tromostovje, the triple bridge. Originally a single stone bridge crossing the Ljubljanica River, two footbridges canted at a slight angle to the main span were added in 1932 to alleviate a traffic bottleneck. When I was there, part of the bridge was undergoing renovation and one of the side bridges was swamped with photo salesmen. Overall, however, the bridge and the city are a jewel for Slovenia.

There is always the danger of becoming jaded by the similarities present in European old towns – all have cobblestoned streets, central squares, and cathedrals with massive castles guarding on high – so I’m always happy to see the more unique street performers and artwork. Ljubljana have many of each. Check out the slideshow below.

While it was not on our originally planned route, and Ljubljana was a long side-trip, it was one that proves the point that you should always be flexible in your travel.

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 (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two 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 Room Dedicated in U.S. Capitol

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Lincoln RoomIt’s official. The room once used by Abraham Lincoln has been designated the Lincoln Room by House Resolution 1063. It’s a fitting tribute both to the 16th President of the United States and to Past-President of the Lincoln Group of DC, John Elliff. I was privileged to attend the dedication ceremony on May 1, 2019 in Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

The road to the dedication is a long one, from one former president to another. Currently Room H-226 in the U.S. Capitol, the space was the House post office during the time that Abraham Lincoln served his single term as a U.S. Congressman from Illinois. The House chambers then are now Statuary Hall, where visitors can see the statues from each of the 50 states (two for each state). A small metal plate in the floor designates where Lincoln’s desk was as a Congressman, way in the back of the hall. Behind it is a door that led to the post office. Today that room is in the rear of the suite designated for the House Majority Whip, currently Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina.

Lincoln would spend many hours between votes and debates in the post office. Representatives didn’t have offices or staffs then, so the post office was a good place to discuss issues of the day and trade stories and jokes.

Flash forward to the present. In 2014 I attended a special ceremony in Statuary Hall celebrating the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s second inaugural. Congressman Rodney Davis, who serves in part of what had been Lincoln’s district, took me into the room then occupied by Steve Scalise, who had set aside the old post office room as an unofficial tribute to Abraham Lincoln.

John Elliff also was at that ceremony. As President of the Lincoln Group of DC he recognized that Rep. Scalise’s unofficial designation might not hold after the results of the 2016 election changed party leadership of the House (much like Lincoln pushing for the 13th Amendment to codify the gains made in the Emancipation Proclamation). After finishing his presidential term in spring 2018, John began working in earnest to convince Congress to officially designate the room as the Lincoln Room.

In August 2018, John Elliff suddenly and tragically passed away. By then he had received commitments from several members of Congress to pass a resolution. The Lincoln Group of DC, the Illinois State Society, and the Abraham Lincoln Association of Springfield, Illinois (and its president, former Lincoln Group of DC officer Bob Willard) all engaged with Congress to support the permanent designation of the Lincoln Room.

Near the end of the 115th Congress, Representatives Darin LaHood and Raja Krishnamoorthi co-sponsored a bipartisan resolution to officially designate the Lincoln Room. It passed and the room was formally dedicated this week. Representatives LaHood and Krishnamoorthi, Lincoln Group of DC President John O’Brien, Illinois State Society President Jerry Weller, and John Elliff’s wife Linda all spoke at the dedication. About 50 proud members of the three organizations attended the event in Statuary Hall and toured the Lincoln Room.

As Representative LaHood noted during the dedication, this resolution and designation would not have been possible without the tireless work of John Elliff and the support of these Lincoln and Illinois organizations.

For me personally this was a fitting tribute to the man who became my Lincoln mentor, John Elliff, as well as to Abraham Lincoln himself. As I wrote in my tribute post last August, John was, as fellow friend and Lincoln scholar Bob Willard noted, “Lincolnian in character – honest, smart, hard-working, empathetic, curious.” Everyone in the Lincoln Group of DC appreciated these characteristics. He was a true leader.

And now he will be forever linked with his own political mentor, Abraham Lincoln. Thank you John, Linda, Bob, Jerry, Representatives LaHood and Krishnamoorthi, and all the members of each of the organizations that made the Lincoln Room happen. See the slideshow below for some photos of the event.

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 (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two 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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Tesla and Edison: From Paris to America

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tesla vs edisonIn 1882, Nikola Tesla’s time in Budapest was coming to an end. His close relationship with the Puskas brothers led him to Charles Batchelor, who was Thomas Edison’s man in Paris. Batchelor was an Englishman and mechanic supreme, having learned his trade in the textile mills of Manchester. But Batchelor was more than just a good technician; he was a natural salesman and organizer. Nearly single-handedly he had overseen the spread of Edison’s direct current system across Europe, mostly as isolated power plants for individual factories, hotels, shipyards, and railroad stations. This highlighted the big problem with direct current—it was limited to low voltages and could not be transmitted more than a short distance. Direct current power plants had to be installed every mile or so to light up a city, a logistical problem that meant despite his sales skills Batchelor was only able to install three central power stations, one each in the cities of Milan, Rotterdam, and St. Petersburg.

Tesla knew he had the answer to this problem—the alternating current induction motor. But newly arrived in Paris and taking a job as a junior engineer at Société Industrielle, part of the Compagnie Continental Edison, Tesla was hardly yet in a position to change the world. While he pitched his alternating current system to Batchelor and others in Paris, Edison’s people simply did not want to listen. After all, Edison had invested himself completely in making and selling direct current throughout Europe, the United States, and the world. No, Edison thought, Tesla’s alternating current system simply would not do.

Tesla’s time at Continental Edison was initially spent as a kind of traveling repairman sent to fix some of the tougher problems with the direct current system. Moving about mainly in France and Germany, he would “cure the ills” and return to Paris. This experience led him to propose improvements to the dynamos, which he implemented. “My success was complete,” Tesla would write, “and the delighted directors accorded me the privilege of developing automatic regulators which were much desired.” Having quickly built a reputation as someone who could save the day, not to mention his proficiency in the German language, Tesla was the obvious choice to send to Strasbourg, Alsace (part of Germany at the time, now Strasbourg, France). A catastrophic event had occurred during the opening ceremony of the new lighting plant at the railroad station, and help was needed fast.

The Strasbourg rail station, originally built in 1846, had just been remodeled in the current year of 1883. Dignitaries, including the aging Emperor William I of Germany, were gathered to watch the newly installed direct current electric lighting system showcase the station. The flip of the switch turned out to be more dramatic than expected, however, and a large part of a wall collapsed by a huge explosion, nearly taking William with it. Following this major malfunction and a series of other quality-control issues—lightbulbs were burning out as fast as they could be replaced—the talented Tesla was dispatched to see what he could do to repair the damage, both to the direct current system and the sensitivities of the Alsace people.

Upon arrival he realized that this was not merely a case of crossed wires; there were fundamental flaws in the direct current system design. Batchelor had been warning Edison that generators coming to Europe from America were defective—“fires from faulty armatures and poor insulation were becoming all too common.” According to Tesla, the wiring was defective and the explosion that took down the wall resulted from a massive short circuit. Tesla took on the task of correcting the problem and spent nearly a year redesigning the generators and reinstalling the lighting system. His work was a stunning success.

With the Strasbourg rail station now fully lit and accepted by the Alsace government, Tesla “returned to Paris with pleasing anticipations.” Administrators at Edison’s European works had promised Tesla “a liberal compensation” should he succeed in fixing the Strasbourg problem, “as well as fair consideration of the improvements [Tesla] had made in their dynamos.” He, perhaps naively, hoped to “realize a substantial sum.” That sum was never to be realized.

The Edison men passed around non-decisions until Tesla finally recognized that his promised compensation was more rhetorical than realistic. While hugely disillusioned by how he had been treated, Tesla was simultaneously being pressed by Charles Batchelor to move to America, ostensibly to redesign and improve on the Edison dynamos and motors. Seeing an opportunity to present his alternating current designs directly to the great Thomas Edison himself, Tesla put aside his disappointment and agreed to make the cross-Atlantic voyage to the “land of the golden promise.”

Though its actual existence is disputed, O’Neill states that Batchelor penned a letter of introduction to Thomas Edison in which he stated simply: “I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man.”

Tesla was off to America. But things were not to go exactly as planned.

In 1884 Edison had installed a complete direct current system on the S.S. Oregon, one of the most modern ships of the time. On the Oregon Edison would first put new employee Nikola Tesla to the test. Both of the twin dynamos had failed, so the ship was sitting in port with no way to run. Edison had sent several men to try to fix it, but with no luck. He was desperate, so when Tesla walked into his office Edison sent him straight to the docks. Tesla was eager to please Edison, so he packed up the necessary tools and arrived on board that evening. “The dynamos were in bad condition,” Tesla later wrote, “with several short circuits and breaks.” Seizing the initiative, Tesla put the ship’s crew to work helping him, and by daybreak he had “succeeded in putting them in good shape.” Another major success.

This incident raised Tesla’s stock in Edison’s eyes and henceforth Tesla “had full freedom in directing the work.” The work was interesting and Tesla was happy. Always the hard worker, for nearly a year Tesla regularly worked from 10:30 a.m. to five o’clock the next morning, seven days a week. Edison was duly impressed, saying, “I have had many hard-working assistants but you take the cake.” Tesla occasionally dined with Edison and other key leaders in Edison’s various companies. Sometimes they would shoot billiards, where Tesla “would impress the fellows with his bank shots and vision of the future.”

Seeing opportunities to improve Edison’s dynamos, Tesla outlined a plan, stressing the output and cost efficiency of his intended changes. Edison, perhaps in a temporarily charitable moment, promised Tesla $50,000 if he could accomplish the task. Tesla immediately set to work and over the next year he designed twenty-four different types of dynamos, “eliminating the long-core field magnets then in use and substituting the more efficient short cores” as well as introducing some automatic controls. The financial benefits to the Edison operations were enormous, but when Tesla demanded payment, Edison’s response was to laugh and say, “You are still a Parisian. When you become a full-fledged American, you will appreciate an American joke.”

Tesla, feeling “a painful shock” at what he felt was being cheated once again by Edison, immediately resigned. Tesla would set out on his own, and in the end, have the last laugh on Edison.

[Adapted from my two books, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World, both available at Barnes and Noble stores nationwide.]

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 (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two 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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Sumter, Hunley, and a Die-Hard Confederate

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What do Fort Sumter, the H.L. Hunley, and a die-hard Confederate all have in common? I saw them all during my whirlwind weekend trip to Charleston, South Carolina – where the Civil War began. It was a quick trip but a hugely impactful one. Charleston has a lot to offer, both today and in history.

Fort Sumter – as I hope everyone already knows – was the site of the shots that began the American Civil War. Union Major Robert Anderson had been garrisoned with this 85-man forces at Fort Moultrie (where I also visited) as the construction of Fort Sumter in the middle of Charleston Harbor had yet to be completed. Fearing the easy access of Moultrie to the belligerence of newly formed Confederate armies, Anderson moved his men over to Sumter under the cover of night. In the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard began a 34-hour bombardment of the fort. And the war came.

http://www.oldslavemartmuseum.com/

I was honored to be part of a group of volunteers who helped raise the flag over Fort Sumter on Easter Sunday.

Charleston also hosts the H.L. Hunley, the Confederate submarine that sunk the USS Housatonic outside Charleston Harbor in 1864. The Hunley has the distinction of being both the first successful submarine attack in warfare and the only submarine that killed more of its own men than that of its enemy. On its first training cruise, five of the eight crew were drowned due to malfunctioning equipment. On its second, all eight crew members drowned, including its inventor, H.L. Hunley. According to Dave, the volunteer tour guide at the Hunley Center, the aforementioned General Beauregard thought that the underwater ship was a danger more to its crew than to the enemy. He did, however, approve the third mission, crewed by volunteers (a tradition that remains in today’s Naval Submarine corps) and led by Lieutenant George Dixon.

Charleston SC

But here’s where it gets stranger still. Dixon and his crew successfully snuck up close to the Housatonic, struck it with a torpedo (mine) attacked to a forward spar, and sunk the ship to the bottom of Charleston Harbor. The Hunley then mysteriously disappeared, finally located more than a century later by famed writer and explorer Clive Cussler. All eight of the final crewmen on the Hunley died (scientists still today argue about why), but because the Harbor was so shallow, only five of the Housatonic‘s crew died. After viewing the submarine I stopped at Magnolia Cemetery to see the graves of the 21 men who died on the Hunley.

Charleston SCThe Civil War theme didn’t stop there. I also visited an old Slave Mart, where the buying and selling of enslaved people was moved indoors after locals started complaining how the outdoor sales were giving the city a bad name. [It should be noted that Charleston became the fourth largest city in the new United States precisely because of its major role in both the international and domestic slave trades.] I also stumbled upon a man named Braxton (not named after the Confederate General and sugar plantation owner Braxton Bragg, he assured me). Braxton was standing next to the large monument in Battery Park, “Confederate Defenders of Charleston, Fort Sumter, 1861-1865.” He and his two buddies (he was alone this day) have been coming out to guard the statue every weekend for the last four years, that is, when he isn’t playing a Confederate private (or Robert E. Lee) in local reenactments. He had a fascinating story, which I’ll tell in a future post.

To round out the weekend in Charleston I visited Magnolia plantation and gardens, the remnants of a large antebellum rice plantation owned by the Drayton family.

In the middle of all this Civil War theme, I also found time to visit the South Carolina Aquarium on the Charleston waterfront. Along with the Ft. Fisher Aquarium in North Carolina I stopped at on the way back north, this makes something like 57 public aquariums I’ve visited in my life, so far.

I’ll have more on all of these once I sort through photos and notes. 

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 (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two 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 Tesla at the Library of Congress

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Nikola Tesla’s pioneering work with alternating current electricity relies on power generated by a dynamo. Abraham Lincoln had a broad interest in science and technology. And now Lincoln and Tesla are joined in electrical science at the Library of Congress.

While Tesla likely never visited the library, Abraham Lincoln was certainly no stranger to the Library of Congress’s vast holdings. During Lincoln’s two-year term as a U.S. Congressman from 1847 to 1849 he lived at Mrs. Sprigg’s boarding house in a row of such houses from East Capitol Street to A Street SE. Directly behind the Capitol, it was a perfect location for Lincoln and his fellow boarders – mostly other Whigs and abolitionists – to discuss the issues of the day while being close enough to rush over for votes in Congress.

The row of houses was pulled down long after Lincoln’s time to make way for, you guessed it, the Library of Congress. The Jefferson Building of the Library was opened in 1897 and sits right on top of Lincoln’s once home-site. Lincoln as President was a regular borrower of books from the library’s shelves (at that time, the Library of Congress was still housed within the Capitol building). Topics of books loaned to Lincoln ranged from the strategy of war to the plays of Shakespeare, and of course, keeping up on science and technology.

Here’s where it gets interesting.

The Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress has an amazing main reading room, above which looms a beautiful dome hundreds of feet overhead. Around the central oculus is a mural by Edwin Howland Blashfield. Like Nikola Tesla, Blashfield spent much of his early life traveling around Europe. Later, once establishing himself as a widely regarded muralist, Blashfield would paint a mural in the dome of the Manufacturers’ and Liberal Arts building at the World’s Columbian Exposition (the Chicago World’s Fair), the very Fair where Nikola Tesla would become a household name.

Back in the Library of Congress, Blashfield decided on a circular mural designed to represent “Evolution of Civilization.” Various civilizations represent that evolution and the contributions each had made to society. Gazing upward you see this:

Library of Congress Lincoln Main Reading Room
Zooming in to the “one o’clock” position of the above you can see someone very familiar:

Library of Congress Lincoln Main Reading RoomAccording to the Library of Congress’s Abraham Lincoln and Civil War expert Michelle Krowl, and quoting from the book On These Walls: Inscriptions & Quotations in the Library of Congress:

“America is represented by the field of science. The figure, an engineer whose face was modeled on that of Abraham Lincoln, sits pondering a problem. In front of him is an electric dynamo, representing the American contribution to advances in harnessing electricity.”

Well how about that? The visage of Abraham Lincoln is used to epitomize America, and our contribution to society is science, depicted by an electric dynamo harnessing electricity, something that Nikola Tesla was in the forefront of bringing to the American public.

So Tesla and Lincoln are connected in several ways through science. And that’s not the end of the connections between these two men.

For more, check out my e-book on Amazon: Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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 (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two 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 Sorrow and Science of Notre Dame de Paris

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The artist in ParisYesterday the world watched in horror as the famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris blazed into the night. I’ve been to Paris a half a dozen times and on all but one trip (an in/out day train commute from Brussels), I made my pilgrimage to Our Lady, Notre Dame.

One of the marvels of Notre Dame and similar (but never equal) Gothic architecture are the ribbed vaulted ceilings and exterior flying buttresses. These counterbalance the weight of the roof, thus allowing greater height and more space for windows, most prominently the huge rose window, to bring light and color to the interior in the days before electric lamps. Since most of the parishioners at the time were illiterate, copious statuary and towering stained glass windows illustrated biblical stories for the masses.

As the fire burned we all wondered what could be saved. Early signs are that the main towers, walls, and buttresses survived and that the cathedral can be rebuilt, albeit without its centuries-old oak framing. It was that oak framing, as one report put it, “a forest of wooden latticework,” that fueled the fire. Let’s take a closer look.

Most of the framing that held the roof were old-growth trees cut down between 1160 and 1170 – a total of over 13,000 trees – each probably already several hundred years old when cut. For those who have seen Notre Dame, the roof covers a huge expanse, well over 300 feet long and nearly 50 feet wide at its widest, with a sharp pitch to give a peak over 30 feet high from the roof’s base. All this starting more than 100 feet from the cathedral floor. This expansive oak framing was necessary to hold up the heavy lead roof, which weighs in at over 210 tons.

I heard yesterday that as part of the current restoration work (which may have caused the fire) they may have removed several of the large statues from the roof of the cathedral. Thus by a quirk of fate, they are saved. It seems most of the exterior wall gargoyles survived the conflagration. Inside, some of the motive candles lit by current day parishioners and tourists were still gently burning as the wooden framework was being destroyed above.

It will be a while before the final assessment is complete, but early indications are that Notre Dame will be rebuilt with some degree of fealty to the original, although it is impossible to resurrect the centuries-old framework that was lost.

More photos of the interior oak framework can be found on the Notre Dame website. Click around for details on the other features of the cathedral. The text is in French (even on the “English” page) but the photos are worth a look even if you can’t read the language.

Ironically, as I write this I might have been in Paris. I had anticipated renting an apartment for the month of April in the “City of Lights,” but I wasn’t ready to begin researching the book I have in mind so put it off until next year. Although it will take many years to restore the church to any semblance of its former glory, I’ll be back to Paris again soon. As the mourning for Notre Dame so clearly demonstrates, Paris is a city of the world. If you haven’t been there, go. And while you’re there, pay homage to Our Lady, Notre-Dame.

[Photo Credits: Top by David J. Kent, 2008; Interiors from Notre Dame website]

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 (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two 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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Join Us – DC Emancipation and the Emancipation Proclamation – Special Event

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I’m happy to be a part of sponsoring a once in a lifetime special event. On the evening of April 16, 2019 there will be a triple header at the National Archives. You’ll be able to see the original Emancipation Proclamation, see an All-Star Panel discuss the Proclamation and DC Emancipation Day, plus be entertained by the Artists Group Chorale of Washington. And it’s all FREE.

DC Emancipation Day Event

Attendees will be invited to a private viewing of the original Emancipation Proclamation AND DC Compensated Emancipation Act documents beginning at 6 pm. Both documents are signed by Abraham Lincoln. This is a special event. Because of the fragility of these original documents, they are only on display for a short period of time and we’ll have a privileged viewing.

While viewing we’ll be serenaded by the Artists Group Chorale.

At 6:45 pm we will move down to the main auditorium in the McGowan Theater for another song from the Chorale, followed by a discussion of both documents by learned scholars. Moderated by Howard University Professor and leading Abraham Lincoln scholar Edna Greene Medford, the panel includes C.R. Gibbs, Roger Davidson, and Elizabeth Clark-Lewis.

After their on-stage discussion, the microphones will be opened up for audience questions and comments.

This is a rare event and the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia is pleased to be co-sponsoring with the National Archives and the Government of the District of Columbia.

Free registration is suggested to ensure space in the auditorium, but not required. The National Archives is located across the street from the Archives Metro Station between Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues in downtown Washington, D.C.

Please join us for this wonderful event.

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 (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two 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 Takes Tad to Richmond on His Birthday

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Lincoln and TadOn April 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln took his son Tad into the city of Richmond, Virginia. The city had fallen the day before into Union hands two days before. It was Tad’s 12th birthday.

Tad was born Thomas Lincoln III, in 1853. He was named after Lincoln’s somewhat estranged father, but everyone called him Tad because as an infant he had a large head and was as wiggly as a tadpole. Tad was born with a partial cleft palate that was not externally noticeable but gave him a lisp and made his speech difficult to understand. He and Willie ran ramshackle over the White House until Willie’s premature demise, after which Lincoln doted on Tad to the extreme.

In late March 1865, General Grant had invited Lincoln to City Point (near Petersburg), to which Lincoln immediately accepted. He was not alone; Mary insisted on joining him, so a party including Tad Lincoln, a maid, a bodyguard, and a military aide boarded the River Queen on March 23 for the trip. Son Robert, now an adjunct to Grant’s army, met them on their arrival the next evening. Lincoln took time to visit the troops and confer with Generals Grant and Sherman and Admiral David Porter. Overall it was a restful but productive visit. That changed when Mary Lincoln flew into a jealous rage at seeing General Ord’s wife riding “too close” to her husband, after which Lincoln sent Mary back to Washington. Soon after her departure, however, the Union captured Richmond, which the Confederate leadership had abandoned. She insisted on returning, this time bringing a large entourage that included her ex-slave dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckley, who had been born in nearby Petersburg.

During Mary’s absence, Lincoln took Tad into Richmond. After landing at the docks, Lincoln and Tad walked the mile or so to the Confederate White House that had served until a few days earlier as Jefferson Davis’s office. Surrounding him along the way were hundreds of ex-slaves who wanted to see the “Great Emancipator,” while anxious white southerners stared suspiciously from their windows.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet had fled the city on April 2nd, boarding the last open railroad line further south. Retreating soldiers set fire to bridges, the Richmond armory, and various supply warehouses. Untended, the fires grew out of control and large parts of Richmond were destroyed. The city was surrendered to Union officers the next day. Since Lincoln was relatively nearby, he chose to visit the former Confederate capital, bringing along Tad. For Tad, this was a best birthday celebration ever, as he enjoyed wearing military uniforms and “playing soldier,” much to the chagrin of the White House staff and cabinet.

A statue of Lincoln and Tad was erected in modern times at the site of Tredegar Iron Works.

Lincoln and Tad in Richmond

Before heading back to Washington, Lincoln visited the Depot Field Hospital at City Point. Over the course of a full day he shook the hands of more than 6,000 patients, including a few sick and wounded Confederate soldiers. Feeling the pressure of business, Lincoln left City Point to return to Washington on the evening of April 8. The next day, Lee surrendered his army to General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the war.

A week later Lincoln would die from an assassin’s bullet.

Tad survived the trauma of his father’s assassination and his mother’s near-insanity only to die at 18 years old when a common cold developed into severe damage to his lungs. Of Abraham and Mary’s four children, only the oldest, Robert, would live to adulthood.

[Adapted in part from my book, Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America]

[Photo Credit of Lincoln and Tad statue: Riverfront.com]

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 (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two 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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Traveling Travails – It Isn’t All the Good Life

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Queenstown, New ZealandIn over five years of science traveling I’ve experienced some fantastic locations, but it isn’t all the good life. Sometimes there are traveling travails. I’ve been injured traveling more times than I care to admit, and getting lost is not an uncommon occurrence. The following gives a hint of how sometimes even getting from one place to another can be a bit of a trial.

The scene: We’re part of a small group of six new friends.

The place: Starting in Cairns, Australia, with an ultimate destination of Queenstown, New Zealand.

Okay, that sounds easy enough, right? Except there is no direct flight, which means a day of flying and multiple airports in two countries. I anticipated a long day, but reality turned out to be even more complicated than I imagined. The first leg took us from Cairns to Sydney, where we were to connect with a plane to Auckland. From Auckland (on the north island of New Zealand) we connected again to Queenstown (on the south island).

Pickup at the hotel in Cairns was on time – at 3:40 a.m. Luckily there was no traffic but we cut it close, as in arriving at the gate five minutes before boarding time. The attendant at the check-in counter was efficient enough, though one wouldn’t call her the warmest personality. On boarding, the six of us were spread out in different parts of the plane. Three of us were in the very back and, unlike U.S. planes, they opened up the rear doors for us to enter and depart. Only a few rows from the tail, the three of us disembarked and made our way into the terminal. Given the short connection time, Ru and I immediately headed for the assigned transfer gate to catch our other plane. Our companion told us not to wait for him; he would hit the loo and then wait for the other members of our group. That would be the last we saw of him, or them, until the next day.

Now just two, we found the gate specified by the instructions given to us on check-in, which to our surprise meant loading into a bus that brought us to another terminal for the international flight. This took longer than we expected and dumped us outside a packed security area, which meant long lines going through passport control and baggage checks again, then a long walk to get to our actual departure gate. The gate itself required getting through a rugby scrum of people going downstairs to a series of gates, which meant being careful not to get carried along with the crowd heading to Shanghai instead of Auckland. Another passport check and boarding pass scan got us onto yet another bus to take us out to the plane, which as far as I can tell was not far from where we originally got off our plane from Cairns. As Ru and I walked up the gangway steps into the plane we desperately texted our companions to tell them to hurry. I even begged the head flight attendant not to close the door because they hadn’t arrived yet, even after a second shuttle bus came and went. He shut the door anyway and we were left with three empty seats staring at us from across the aisle, and a fourth between us.

Empty seats

The second connecting flight wasn’t much easier. Despite what the check-in attendant told me in Cairns (that we didn’t have to pick up our bags until Queenstown, which she repeated three times at my doubtful questioning), the flight attendant informed us we did, in fact, have to reclaim our luggage again in Auckland. Here we go again. Passport control, luggage claim, wait in line. The first line looked like the exit after a drive-in movie finished. After an anxious hour and a half, we passed through the “biosecurity screening” checkpoint and were sent out to a counter to re-check our bags. But wait, the woman in the “Drop Bags” area tells us we are now less than 60 minutes before the flight and there is no guarantee that they will get the bags on the next plane. Instead, she tells us, we must go outside the terminal, hike 15-20 minutes with our luggage to the completely separate domestic terminal to check our bags again. But hey, we had a helpful green line to follow down the sidewalk, across the streets (twice), and around the airport to get to the other entrance. Not surprisingly, we had to wait there for the attendant to re-check our luggage before we could walk down an increasingly long terminal, through yet another security check-in and x-ray line, then more walking to finally reach the gate where our plane was revving its engines.

Keep in mind we thought we had something like 3 hours of transfer time. We made it to the gate with only minutes to spare before boarding. But the view was amazing.

New Zealand

The empty seats next to us was a reminder that our travel mates were still somewhere in Sydney. But after our successful arrival in Queenstown we found the Super Shuttle waiting to take six – now two – of us to the hotel. When we arrived he tried to scam $26 each from us before I reminded him it was prepaid. It seems taxi drivers scamming customers is a global thing.

Eventually we found out that our four companions had been able to get a later flight from Sydney to Auckland to Queenstown that night, which was good because we were all scheduled for a tour early the next morning. They were, however, sans luggage, which didn’t arrive until the following night. That didn’t stop all of us from enjoying the next two days trailing in the steps of hobbits and cruising in the fjords of Milford Sound.

These weren’t the only complications on this particular trip, or on other trips I’ve taken. In fact, I’ve come to expect the unexpected when I travel. Sometimes it’s a missed flight or train, sometimes a lack of coordination with local accommodations, sometimes a gravel road where the map says “highway.” I even had one travel agent book my flight to Rome for the night before a flight from the U.S. to Brussels she booked in the same session. That cost me several hundred Euros and a lot of grief. But I made it. And so far I’ve survived, and enjoyed all my travel, despite the travails.

So…Where to next?

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 (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two 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 Meets Joshua Speed…and Mary Todd

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Abe and MaryAfter an unfortunate breakup with a woman named Mary Owens, and with negotiations over moving the capital from Vandalia to Springfield under way, Abraham Lincoln decided to leave New Salem for the big city. The move was advantageous.

But he was broke. Even with his full pay for the last session of the state legislature in hand, Lincoln rode his old horse to Springfield deep in debt. Upon arrival, one of his companions on the trip, William Butler, sold Lincoln’s horse without telling him, paid off his debts, and moved his saddlebags into the Butler household about fourteen miles out of town. Lincoln continued taking his meals at the Butlers without charge for the next five years. After a while Lincoln decided he needed to find a place in town, and he rode in on a borrowed horse with his saddlebags, a few law books, and the clothes on his back seeking residence. His first stop was Joshua Speed’s store. According to Speed, Lincoln asked “what the furniture for a single bedstead would cost.” Putting pencil to paper, Speed told him the sum would be seventeen dollars. Taken aback, Lincoln agreed it was probably a fair price but replied, “If you will credit me to Christmas, and my experiment here as a lawyer is a success, I will pay you then. If I fail in that I will probably never be able to pay you at all.” Seeing his forlorn look, Speed offered:

I think I can suggest a plan by which you will be able to attain your end, without incurring any debt. I have a very large room, and a very large double-bed in it; which you are perfectly welcome to share with me if you choose.

“Where is your room?” asked Lincoln. Speed pointed to the stairs leading from the store to his room. Saying nothing, Lincoln took his saddlebags, went up the stairs, tossed them on the floor, and returned “beaming with pleasure” to say:

“Well, Speed, I’m moved.”

Lincoln shared the room with Speed for the next three-and-a-half years, often with other store clerks and assistants. One such clerk was a very young William Herndon, who later went into partnership with Lincoln. The atmosphere was jovial, and Lincoln was his usual story-telling self. Speed became Lincoln’s closest friend and confidant for the rest of his life, even though Speed eventually returned to his slave-holding family in Kentucky. As was common between men of those days, the two shared their most intimate vulnerabilities, a relationship that rivaled any of Lincoln’s romantic loves. When Speed questioned his affection for the woman he was about to marry, Lincoln helped him through the doubts. Later, when Lincoln was going through the same process, he turned to the happily married Speed for advice. He was seeking counsel regarding his relationship with Mary Todd.

On March 27, 1842, after an on-again, off-again courting of Mary Todd, Lincoln wrote to his friend, Joshua F. Speed, who had by that time moved back to his plantation in Louisville, Kentucky. Lincoln had abruptly broken off the engagement over a year before and it was eating at him.

“Since then, it seems to me, I should have been entirely happy, but for the never-absent idea, that there is one still unhappy whom I have contributed to make so. That still kills my soul. I can not but reproach myself, for even wishing to be happy while she is otherwise.”

Speed managed to counsel his old friend and sometime in 1842 Mary and Lincoln began secretly courting again. Despite her sister Elizabeth’s opposition, the two often met at the Edwards house and sat on the low couch for hours, talking about life and love. Likely they also discussed politics, as by this time Lincoln was actively involved in Whig party activities and Mary was as ambitious as he, perhaps even more so. Their romance bloomed again, enough that Mary flirtatiously and anonymously wrote a letter backing up Lincoln’s own anonymous letter to the local paper mocking James Shields, a political rival. Shields, feeling his honor had been attacked, challenged Lincoln to a duel. Lincoln tried to back out of it, but when Shields insisted, the tall and muscular Lincoln offered up heavy broadswords as weapon of choice. Faced with a severe disadvantage, the short-armed Shields allowed himself to be talked out of the fight.

To the astonishment of the Springfield social set, Lincoln and Mary suddenly decided they would get married—that night. Elizabeth Edwards claimed the wedding occurred with only two hours’ notice, and indeed the marriage license was issued that very day. Lincoln had a “deer in the highlights” look as he approached the hurried ceremony in the Edwards parlor. According to friends, when Lincoln was dressing for ceremony he was asked where he was going, to which he replied, “I guess I’m going to hell.” At least one Lincoln scholar believes Mary may have seduced Lincoln the night before into doing something that obligated him to marriage. Whatever the reason, they were married on November 4, 1842. A week later he seemed resigned to the fact, closing a business letter with:

“Nothing new here except my marrying, which to me, is matter of profound wonder.”

[Adapted from Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America]

[Photo Credit: Photo of print by Lloyd Ostendorf]

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 (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two 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!