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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Abraham Lincoln and the Spencer Repeating Rifle

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Spencer carbineOn August 17, 1863, Christopher M. Spencer, inventor of Spencer rifle, presents his new repeating rifle to President Abraham Lincoln and demonstrates how to assemble it. Lincoln was always keen on implementing new military technology during the Civil War, although his generals were not always so eager to follow his lead. Chief of Ordnance James Wolfe Ripley argued that more advanced weaponry was not self-evidently better in the field. Complicated weapons in the hands of untested soldiers and poor weather conditions led to vast inefficiencies in his mind, so Ripley denied the use of some of the new-fangled ideas Lincoln liked.

Lincoln did understand this concept and rarely overruled Ripley and officers in the field if they felt they knew better. John Hay acknowledged that “Lincoln had a quick comprehension of mechanical principles and often detected a flaw in an invention which the contriver had overlooked.” But just as keenly he understood how some mechanics could be useful, so Lincoln continued to push the idea of advancing weaponry as much as was practical. When something of particular value in his mind came along, he was more assertive in telling Ripley and others to put it into circulation. One example was the Spencer repeating rifle.

Spencer was born in Manchester, Connecticut, just east of the capital, Hartford. Only thirty years old when he first walked into the White House without challenge carrying one of his rifles and a supply of cartridges, Spencer was already an avid inventor. He would later go on to invent a steam-powered horseless carriage. He had previously worked for Samuel Colt’s firearms factory. This new rifle featured breech-loading repeating rounds capability, a huge step forward from the standard issue musket.

Most breech-loading rifles were still single-shot weapons. The Spencer had a seven-round tube magazine that loaded from the butt of the rifle, feeding each shell into the breech with a lever that expelled the spent shell. Experienced users could fire twenty rounds per minute, compared to only two or three with a muzzleloader. The short barrel made it perfect for cavalry, which was its main use both during and after the Civil War. Lincoln personally tested the rifle. Spencer had a private meeting with the president, who found the mechanism fascinating. Spencer later suggested, perhaps a bit hyperbolically, that Lincoln put the rifle back together after watching Spencer take it apart and lay the parts on the table. The next day, Lincoln and Spencer went out to the field behind the White House, set up a board “about six inches wide and three feet high, with a black spot on either end, about forty yards away.” Six of Lincoln’s seven shots hit close to the bull’s-eye. John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary, admitted that “the President made some pretty good shots.”

Finding the Spencer repeating rifle to be a sufficient advancement, Lincoln overruled Ripley’s reticence and ordered the military to purchase ten thousand units for distribution. By the end of the war, nearly one hundred thousand Spencer rifles and carbines were in service. Various breechloaders, rifles, carbines, and repeaters by Spencer, Enfield, Sharps, Whitworth, Springfield, and others played important roles in the war, including Berdan’s sharpshooters at Gettysburg and the critical Battle of Chickamauga.

[Adapted from Lincoln: The Fire of Genius, available from all booksellers now]

[Photo credit: Hmaag, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons]

Fire of Genius

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

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

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

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

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Robert Lincoln’s Observatory at Hildene

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Hildene observatoryRobert Lincoln got his initial interest in astronomy from his father. Abraham Lincoln was fascinated by astronomy, as I discuss in my book, Lincoln: The Fire of Genius, and in a previous post. Robert did him one better – he built his own observatory at Hildene, which I saw on a recent visit to Robert’s Vermont summer home.

As I crested the hill walking from Hildene’s welcome center to house, my eyes immediately gravitated to the odd-looking domed structure standing at the edge of the woods. Robert’s observatory. About 12 feet in diameter and maybe 20 feet tall, the observatory was much smaller than I expected. Whereas his father had a fascination with astronomy, Robert had made it into a deep hobby. Robert had a habit of diving into his avocations – he surveyed all of Hildene as it was being built and did math problems in the evenings “to relax” – and astronomy was no exception. It was Robert who selected and surveyed the site for the observatory not far from the main house.

In addition to his father’s influence, Robert’s interest was likely expanded by his mentor and benefactor Jonathan Young Scammon, who besides being a lawyer, banker, and newspaper publisher was a dedicated amateur astronomer. Robert frequently used the large telescope at Dearborn Observatory on the campus of Chicago University (now Northwestern), often accompanied by close friend, and later renowned astronomer Shelbourne Wesley Burnham. According to Robert Lincoln biographer, Jason Emerson, Robert became a voracious reader of books on astronomy, about thirty of which still remain in his library at Hildene. “I belong to the class of old-young amateurs in astronomy, but I enjoy my study of it very much,” Emerson says Robert wrote to the director of the Lick Observatory in California. Before building the observatory, he used his telescope on a tripod, and would synchronize his stopwatch every day at the Manchester telegraph office to ensure the precision of his astronomical calculations. Later, he installed a relay at Hildene so he could get exact noontime readings via telegraph without having to go into town.

Hildene Observatory

Originally, Robert’s telescope was a four-inch diameter Bardon, which in the observatory on a high point overlooking the “dene” gave a wonderfully unobstructed view of the sky. As his expertise and interest grew, however, the Bardon proved inadequate, so in 1909 he commissioned construction of a six-inch refracting telescope as a replacement. He became quite proud of the observatory and often bragged about it to his friends.

Being a scientist myself, I lingered at the observatory for a while, fascinated by the existing telescope. Whether it still worked or not was somewhat moot, as it was locked behind a metal gate to protect it from tourists. It was also time to go inside the main building to meet the archivist. More on that soon. As fascinating as it was inside the mansion, I couldn’t help but look back at the mini-dome as I strolled back down the hill. I would have loved to hang out with Robert gazing at the stars.

[Photos by David J. Kent]

Fire of Genius

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

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

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

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

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Happy Anniversary Lincoln Papers!

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Lincoln PapersToday, July 26, marks the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress.

A year ago, Lincolnian editor and longtime Lincoln Group of DC member Wendy Swanson wrote a post on Lincolnian.org about the anniversary. It was a huge event, drawing historians from across the country to the Library of Congress to examine for the first time all the papers Robert Lincoln had held back until then. As Wendy wrote:

Robert Todd Lincoln had deposited the Lincoln Papers with the Library of Congress in 1919 and on January 23, 1923, he deeded them to the Library. The deed stipulated that the Lincoln Papers remain sealed until 21 years after his own death. He died July 26, 1926, a week before his 83rd birthday. On July 26, 1947, the Lincoln Papers were officially opened to the public.

The younger Lincoln had arranged for the organization and care of the papers shortly after his father’s assassination. At that time, he had the Lincoln Papers removed to Illinois, where Judge David Davis of Bloomington, Ill., Abraham Lincoln’s longtime associate, directed the first organization of the documents. Later, Lincoln’s presidential secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, assisted in the project. In 1874, most of the Lincoln Papers returned to Washington, D.C., and Nicolay and Hay used them in the research and writing of their 10-volume biography, Abraham Lincoln: A History (New York, 1890).

The papers encompassed over 40,000 documents detailing the life and presidency of Abraham Lincoln. They included both state papers like the drafts of the Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address, as well as correspondence Lincoln had with some of the most important figures of the day. To that collection the Library of Congress has added other documents from other sources, making it a place where all Lincoln scholars have made a pilgrimage (or ten) to see original manuscripts for their research. I’ve spent quite some time there myself. For those who live far away, much of the collection has been digitized and is available online. As Wendy notes:

The Library of Congress website contains extensive information about the Lincoln Papers and Lincoln Research Resources. If you haven’t already, take time to explore these historic treasures.

Take a hop over to Lincolnian.org to read Wendy’s full article on the topic.

Before you leave, today, July 26, 2023, is also the anniversary of Robert’s death, which is what triggered the release of the Papers. I’ll have more shortly on Robert and Hildene, his summer home in Vermont, where I recently visited and toured.

[Photo from Library of Congress]

Fire of Genius

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

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

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

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

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

 

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A Controversial Abraham Lincoln Statue – No, Not That One

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Lincoln Trilogy close upAbraham Lincoln is the most memorialized president in American history, in terms of the number of monuments and statues in all fifty states and the U.S. territories. According to the National Monument Audit completed in 2021, there were 193 Lincoln monuments in America, followed by George Washington at 171, Christopher Columbus at 149, and Martin Luther King Jr. with 86. Those numbers keep changing – several new Lincoln statues have gone up in 2023 alone, and statues to Columbus and Confederate General Robet E. Lee are being removed. But Lincoln is likely to continue to have the most statues. That said, not all of them are great. Some of them are downright controversial.

Among the controversial ones are Thomas Ball’s Emancipation Memorial, aka the Freedman’s Memorial, in Lincoln Park, Washington, DC. From its dedication in 1876, its visual depiction of a standing Lincoln and a kneeling African American man beginning to rise from enslavement, the statue has been problematic. A copy of it was removed from its pedestal in Boston during the protests of 2020, while activists attempted to have it taken down in Washington (a bill to have it removed has been introduced by DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton). The fact that it was paid for entirely from funds raised by the formerly enslaved and that Frederick Douglass keynoted the dedication has not kept the discomfort at bay. Meanwhile, the so-called “belly-ache” statue by George Grey Barnard was vehemently attacked by none other than Robert T. Lincoln, the only living son of Lincoln. Robert successfully kept a copy of that statue from being placed in London. The original did get placed in Lytle Park in Cincinnati, with the copy going off to Manchester, England while a copy of Chicago’s Augustus Saint-Gaudens statue is now featured prominently in Parliament Square, London.

Which gets us back to Vermont. Yes, Vermont.

During my recent travels in New England I stopped at Hildene, which I’ll have more about later. Down the road in Bennington, Vermont is the Bennington Museum, in front of which stands a Lincoln grouping called “The Lincoln Trilogy,” although it is also known by a reimagined name, “The American Spirit.” At first glance you can see why the statue is controversial.

Lincoln Trilogy, Bennington Museum, Vermont

Lincoln stands fully clothed, complete with a heavy cape and top hat. Sitting at his feet is a barely covered female figure looking up to him from his waist. He has his hand on her head. His other hand grasps the head of a small boy, unclothed and standing below him. The juxtaposition of the three figures is jarring, at best, even after taking a while to examine it. What could the artist have been thinking?

For one, the artist was not originally thinking the three figures were designed to be placed together.

The standing figure of the boy is called Fils de France, designed independently in 1918 to reflect a young boy gazing intently into the distance symbolizing rebirth of France following the devastation of World War I. The female figure was also produced in 1918 and in response to the War. Called Nirvana, the statue was originally completely nude, the woman’s attitude of tranquility personified the Buddhist concept of nirvana as a spiritual emancipation from passion, hatred, and delusion. Both individual statues are inside the Museum. They follow the stylistic tradition of idealized nude figures developed by the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Lincoln statue provides a stark contrast. One of many Lincoln statues the artist, Clyde du Vernet Hunt, created in his lifetime, it reflects a tribute to Lincoln as an actual historical figure. Hunt revered Lincoln as an idealist, humanitarian, and emancipator, which he tried to capture in the powerfully majestic pose of the statue. Each statue was designed to stand on its own merits and meanings.

Clyde du Vernet Hunt was born in Scotland to American parents traveling in Europe. His grandfather had been a U.S. Congressman and his father served in the adjutant-general’s department during the Civil War. Clyde Hunt studied engineering and art and maintained a studio in Paris and home in Vermont. Hunt was invited to exhibit his work at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1918, a remarkable achievement for an American artist. He submitted his bronze Fils de France (the boy sculpture) and the marble Nirvana (the woman sculpture), both of which received favorable reviews. A decade later, the Societe des Artistes Francais asked him to participate in the exclusive Paris Salon. He created a large plaster group combining the Lincoln statue with the figures of Nirvana and Fils de France. Lincoln and the boy are exact duplicates of the original versions, but Hunt enlarged the female figure of Nirvana and discretely draped the nude female for inclusion in the grouping. [How discrete the draping is a matter of opinion]. Hunt entitled the grouping simply “Lincoln” for the Paris Salon but envisioned it as representing the ideals of Faith (Nirvana), Hope (Fils de France), and Charity (Lincoln, from his “charity for all and malice toward none”). Within this context back in the states, the Fils de France was reinterpreted as “young America.”

The Museum admits that the intellectual concept behind the Lincoln Trilogy was more successful than the visual relationship of the three figures. Even they admit the combination of three distinctly individual sculptures of differing scale and spatial orientation is “somewhat awkward.” After returning to the US in 1938, Hunt cast the trilogy in bronze for display at the New York World’s Fair. Hunt’s heirs presented the bronze trilogy to the Bennington Museum in 1949, where the director of the museum appended the title “The American Spirit” to the statues, an interpretation influenced by the nationalism of the 1940s. So whereas one of the statues depicts a Civil War president, and two of the statues were influenced by World War I, the reinterpretation and retitling came about due to World War II.

Despite the controversy, the statue grouping is worth a visit. The Bennington Museum is a short drive from Robert T. Lincoln’s summer home at Hildene, so definitely put it on your agenda if you’re in the area.

[Photos by David J. Kent]

 

Fire of Genius

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

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

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

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

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

 

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Climate Influenced Abraham Lincoln’s Move From Kentucky to Indiana

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Lincoln at JonesboroEl Nino is officially here, which usually means warmer temperatures across much of the United States and Canada. But did you know that changes in the climate in 1816 influenced Abraham Lincoln’s move from Kentucky to Indiana?

The Lincoln family was living on the Knob Creek farm in northern Kentucky in 1816. The farm contained only three small fields in a valley surrounded by high hills, thus subject to repeated flooding after heavy rain. Abe remembered a time that summer in which his father was planting corn while Abe dropped pumpkin seeds into nearby furrows. A week later: “there came a big rain in the hills, it did not rain a drop in the valley, but the water coming down through the gorges washed ground, corn, pumpkin seeds and all clear off the field.” This incident taught Abe a brutal lesson in farming: one poorly timed deluge could disrupt an entire summer’s crop. Of course, drought could have similarly devastating effects, as could insect infestation or poor soil quality. Rarely was there a year without calamity.

Not long after this, Thomas lost three-quarters of his land, “partly on account of slavery,” but mostly because of Kentucky’s inadequate surveying and land title system. Although only seven years old at the time, Lincoln could sense the importance of skilled surveyors, a lesson he carried into manhood. He likely also noticed another scientific factor influencing the Lincoln family’s decision to move to greener pastures—climatic extremes.

That summer of 1816 brought unusually severe cold to the Lincolns’ drafty log cabin. Deep freezes, each lasting a week in June, July, and August, stunted crops. The end of summer brought two killer frosts that killed off much of what was left of the year’s growth. Crop failures led to hoarding and hunger. Prices for agricultural commodities such as wheat, vegetables, meat, butter, milk, and flour soared. Animals, both wild and domesticated, scraped by on inadequate forage. It was a terrible year for farmers.

The “year without a summer” was so extensive that widespread cold and famine spread across the United States, Asia, and Europe, with history-changing effects. Farmers in New England gave up and moved west, beginning a process of westward migration that altered the course of the growing nation. Loss of crops in the Yunnan province of China led family farms to switch to the more durable and profitable opium crop, giving rise to the “Golden Triangle” of opium production. In Switzerland, the damp dreariness of Lake Geneva kept nineteen-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft inside a chalet with future husband Percy Shelley and prominent poet Lord Byron. Challenged to while away the bleakness by writing ghost stories, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley brought to life a creation called Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus.

No one understood it at the time, but modern scientists now know the disruption was caused by a geological phenomenon half a world away. Mount Tambora, a massive volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, erupted in early April 1815, reducing the volcanic peak’s height from over 14,000 feet to less than 10,000 in seconds. The colossal eruption destroyed local villages, killing over 10,000 people, while spewing 100 cubic kilometers of molten rock, ash, and pumice over 800 miles away. Ten times the explosive power of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa (made more famous by the invention of the telegraph), Tambora sent toxic clouds into the atmosphere that affected global climate patterns for several years. By the spring and summer of 1816, a persistent sulfate aerosol veil often described as a “dry fog” settled in over the eastern United States.

Tambora’s climate-altering effect on top of the recent crop losses solidified Thomas’s tentative deliberations, and the Lincolns moved to Indiana in December. After the rough year, November and December proved mercifully warmer than normal, again a lingering effect of the Mount Tambora eruption.

[Adapted from Lincoln: The Fire of Genius]

[Photo by David J. Kent, Jonesboro, IL]

 

Fire of Genius

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

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

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

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

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

 

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Lincoln’s Discoveries and Inventions – Bringing the Power of Science to Agriculture

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National Academy of SciencesIn Abraham Lincoln’s lecture on Discoveries and Inventions, he discussed how the ingenuity of man had made life easier for the growing millions of Americans. Early in the lecture he used biblical language to relate how the need for clothing led to technological advances, as was also true for communication. At one point he turned to transportation. As with clothing, he stressed the advantages of inventive, productive labor that improves the human condition. Here the goal was to advance beyond human motive power to get from place to place. Inventive thought led to development of the wheel, then wagons on land and boats on water. These were powered by animals such as horses, mules, and oxen on land, or wind and paddles on the water.

Lincoln thought back to his own invention for a system to float boats over obstructions. He reminded his audience of “the philosophical principle upon which the use of the boat primarily depends—to wit, the principle, that anything will float, which cannot sink without displacing more than its own weight of water,” although he admitted it was unlikely that principle of physics was known when the first boats were made. Rather, it was by observation of floating objects that the self-evident principle was discovered where objects heavier than water could remain on the surface of water.

Lincoln explored another topic on which he was eminently conversive—agriculture. Describing food as man’s “first necessity,” he explained that after the fall, “labor was imposed on the race, as a penalty—a curse.” He lamented that while agriculture was perhaps the most important science, it had derived less direct advantage from discovery and invention than almost any other. The plow was one example of invention put to work in the field, but only after man had conceived of substituting other forces for man’s muscular power. These forces, Lincoln indicated, were “the strength of animals, and the power of the wind, of running streams, and of steam.” Lincoln would revisit agriculture as president, but his foresight in seeing the advantages of wind showed that he was ahead of scientists of the time. “Of all the forces of nature, I should think the wind contains the largest amount of motive power—that is, power to move things.”

“Take any given space on the earth’s surface,” Lincoln said, and all the power exerted by men, beasts, running water, and steam “shall not equal the one hundredth part of what is exerted by the blowing of the wind over and upon the same space.” Here was the man who opened with man’s digging out his destiny in an extractive economy now turning to renewable energy innovations. He acknowledged that the intermittent nature of wind had so far limited controlling and directing it, which was why it was yet “an untamed, and unharnessed force,” but argued that one of the greatest discoveries to be made was how to put the unsurpassed energy of the wind to work for man.

Lincoln also spoke of running streams as a motive power, in particular its application to mills and other machinery by means of the waterwheel. Again, referring to its use in the Bible, Lincoln reflected on his own personal experience working the grist and saw mills in New Salem. He introduced the idea of steam power, which was a modern discovery but not yet fully put toward useful work.

He was just getting started on his road to discoveries and inventions, but I’ll leave that for another post. Check out my earlier post about Lincoln discusses the forces of nature.

[Adapted from Lincoln: The Fire of Genius]

[Photo from Wiki, National Academy of Sciences founders and Lincoln]

 

Fire of Genius

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

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

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

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

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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OTD 1848 – Congressman Lincoln Pushes for Internal Improvements

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Canal boat LaSalle ILOn June 20, 1848, Congressman Abraham Lincoln so strongly believed in the long-term economic benefit of improvements that he used some of the limited time allotted to freshmen congressmen to argue for internal improvements on the floor of the House. He began by rebutting the recent Democratic platform written for the 1848 nomination of Lewis Cass, which concluded the Constitution did not confer upon the federal government the power to carry on a system of internal improvements. Lincoln disagreed and systematically dismantled each of the positions offered to support that conclusion.

Lincoln provided concrete examples of the argument he previewed at the River and Harbor Convention. On the position that the burdens of improvements “would be general, while their benefits would be local and partial,” Lincoln did not deny that there was some degree of truth. He then pointed out the logical axiom that “no commercial object of government patronage can be so exclusively general, as to not be of some peculiar local advantage; but on the other hand, nothing is so local, as to not be of some general advantage.” As an example of the former, he reminded members that while a navy that protects shipping offers benefits to the nation as a whole, it also provides a specific local advantage to the port cities of Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston well beyond any benefit to interior towns in Illinois.

Then he noted the converse is also true, that projects seemingly local can provide general benefit. Using the newly opened Illinois and Michigan Canal as an example, Lincoln acknowledged that “considered apart from its effects, it is perfectly local. Every inch of it is within the state of Illinois.” But the effects are widespread. “In a very few days” after its opening, he explained, “sugar had been carried from New-Orleans through this canal to Buffalo in New-York.” Having selected that route for its reduced cost of transport, a savings that seller and buyer presumably shared, “the result is, that the New Orleans merchant sold his sugar a little dearer; and the people of Buffalo sweetened their coffee a little cheaper.” This benefit resulted “from the canal, not to Illinois where the canal is, but to Louisiana and New-York where it is not.” This example “shows that the benefits of an improvement are by no means confined to the particular locality of the improvement itself.”

Lincoln warned that if the nation refuses to make improvements of a general kind because it might provide benefits locally, then by using the same logic, states could refuse to make an improvement of a local kind because its benefits might be more general. In essence, the “if you do nothing for me, I will do nothing for you” mentality would inhibit both local and national economic development. He hoped instead that both the nation and the states would “in good faith” do what they could in the way of improvements such that inequality perceived in one place might be compensated in another, “and that the sum of the whole might not be very unequal.”

He also argued that “The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.”

Lincoln would continue to press for government support of internal improvements. His lifelong obsession with internal improvements as a means of economic and personal growth was demonstrated by his support for progressive legislation, the inclusion of which he encouraged in the 1860 Republican platform. It was the North’s emphasis on internal improvements, and the South’s disdain for it, that made the difference during the Civil War.

A side note: June 20, 2023 is the 160th anniversary of West Virginia becoming a state, another important development during the Civil War.

More on internal improvements in Lincoln: The Fire of Genius.

[Photo by David J. Kent]

 

Fire of Genius

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

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

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

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

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Abraham Lincoln and the Portrait Painter

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On June 13, 1860, the newly selected Republican nominee for president, Abraham Lincoln fidgeted as he attempted to sit still for a portrait artist. The painting by Thomas Hicks is considered the first portrait oil painting ever of the man who would soon become our sixteenth president. Hicks had come to Springfield to capture the likeness of the rough, western lawyer that would preside over America’s greatest trial. It would be one of many portraits, both in painting and in the still new technology of photography, that Lincoln would sit for in his life.

While he sat, Illinois attorney Orville Hickman Browning “spent a portion of the day with Lincoln talking to him whilst Mr Hicks worked upon his portrait.” Browning recalled, “[Hicks] completed it this P. M. In my judgment it is an exact, life like likeness, and a beautiful work of art. It is deeply imbued with the intellectual and spiritual, and I doubt whether any one ever succeeds in getting a better picture of the man.”

Thomas Hicks was born in Newtown, Pennsylvania, a rural enclave closer to Trenton, New Jersey than it is to Philadelphia. He quickly showed his talent, moving to New York when he was fifteen to study at the National Academy of Design, where his first major painting, “The Death of Abel,” was exhibited in 1841. A few years later he moved to Europe and studied in London, Paris, Florence, and Rome, before returning to New York four years later and beginning a successful career as a portrait painter. He would go on to paint some of the most iconic figures of the period, including Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Cullen Bryant, Margaret Fuller, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and perhaps most ironically, Edwin Booth. But his most famous portrait is his painting of Abraham Lincoln.

Made more famous by its wide distribution as an engraving, the original painting is now exhibited at the Chicago Historical Society. I visited there several years ago and took the below photo. Unfortunately, the painting has a glass cover and it’s impossible to get a photograph of it without glare from the exhibit lighting.

 

Hicks became a philanthropist during his highly successful painting career, although he has been largely forgotten since his death in 1890. Mostly this is because his portraiture style had become out-of-date and photography had become so popular that painted portraits were being obsolete, except by the very wealthy.

Lincoln, of course, has been the subject of many paintings, at least 131 photographs of various styles, and hundreds (or thousands) of statues and busts around the world. Hicks may have faded from memory, but his post-nomination portrait helped get Lincoln’s face known to a curious general public ahead of the 1860 election.

[Photo by David J. Kent]

 

Fire of Genius

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

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

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

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

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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The Fire of Genius in the Civil War Monitor Magazine

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Lincoln: The Fire of Genius has been reviewed several times, including in Civil War Times, but there was recently a new one in the Civil War Monitor magazine. Written by Jonathan Tracey, co-editor of Civil War Monuments and Memory with Chris Mackowski, the review is very positive.

Civil War Monitor screenshot

Tracey notes:

“Kent, who has authored books on Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, applies his technological history lens to Abraham Lincoln in this book. Part biography and part history of innovation, Kent moves chronologically through Lincoln’s life following the threads of technology and science.”

And,

“Throughout the book, Kent repeatedly supplies strong evidence that Lincoln was a thoughtful and curious man who defied stereotypes. He was aware of advancement in fields as diverse as soil sciences, ship design, railroads, and military weapons, and he used this information in his professional and political careers.”

You can read the entire review online.

The Civil War Times review can be found in the Spring 2023 issue (page 67).

This week also featured comments from me in a Salon article written by Matt Rozsa. He explored the incident in which Lincoln says he sewed the eyes of hogs shut to get them on the flatboat (which didn’t work). Rozsa quoted me substantively, along with Harold Holzer and the president of PETA. You can read that article online at: https://www.salon.com/2023/06/04/abraham-lincoln-pig-torture-animal-cruelty-compassion/

Rozsa had quoted me last year in an article about Lincoln’s patent: https://www.salon.com/2022/08/27/abraham-lincoln-master-inventor-the-true-story-of-the-only-to-ever-patent-an-invention/

More past events and media mentions can be found on my media page.

[Screenshot of Civil War Monitor review online]

 

Fire of Genius

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

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

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

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

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Lincoln Memorial Dedication, Daniel Chester French, and Many, Many Cemeteries

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The original Memorial Day, then called Decoration Day because gravestones of fallen soldiers would be decorated with American flags, was May 30, 1868. It remained the 30th until 1970, the first year it was officially designated as the last Monday in May. May 30th was also the date on which the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922. Robert Lincoln, Abraham and Mary’s oldest son and the only one of the four boys to reach maturity, was present at the dedication. I had the privilege of emceeing the Lincoln Memorial Centennial program in 2022. If you missed it, you can watch the entire program on C-SPAN.

Memorial Day was celebrated yesterday, May 29, 2023. President Biden Vice President Harris laid the traditional wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington was created in the Civil War on the property belonging at the time by Robert E. Lee, whose defection to the confederacy led the United States government to take possession of the land and dedicate it as a resting place for soldiers. It also holds the graves of presidents (e.g., John F. Kennedy) and Robert Lincoln, who was buried in Arlington at the request of his wife rather than in the Lincoln Tomb in Springfield, Illinois with his parents and brothers.

The Memorial Day observances reminded me how many cemeteries I’ve visited in recent years. I had grown up across the street from the Old Burying Ground, one of the oldest cemeteries in the country, having been established in 1634. I’ve visited many cemeteries over the years during my various road trips to examine Lincoln sites. In addition to the Lincoln Tomb, I’ve seen the gravestones of Lincoln’s sister Sarah, his parents, and many other relatives and others associated at one time or another with Lincoln. And of course, I usually end up in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania each year where Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the cemetery with his unforgettable Gettysburg Address.

On my most recent road trip that took me to New England, I made sure to stop at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. Concord had been a hotbed of transcendentalism in the 1800s, which attracted authors such as poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer Louisa May Alcott (Little Women), Nathaniel Hawthorne (Scarlet Letter, House of Seven Gables), and Henry David Thoreau (Walden, Civil Disobedience). Gravestones for these authors are conveniently placed near each other in an area called “Authors’ Ridge.” One of the more famous memorials at Sleepy Hollow is from the team that brought us the Lincoln Memorial. Daniel Chester French was commissioned by Boston businessman James Melvin to create a funerary monument to honor his three brothers who died in the Civil War. Asa, John, and Samuel Melvin had all served in Company K of the First Massachusetts Heavy Artillery. French designed the central figure of Mourning Victory emerging from a block of marble and overlooking bronze memorial tablets for each of the three brothers. The exedra that surrounds the monument was designed by Henry Bacon, just as Bacon designed the Lincoln Memorial that surrounds French’s massive seated Lincoln sculpture that dominates the Memorial’s interior.

French’s original design was to have the image of “Victory” with her right arm outstretched and the left raised. After seeing the location of the monument in Sleepy Hollow, French decided to switch the positioning, putting the left arm outstretched so that people coming up the path would not have the face of “Victory” covered by her upraised elbow. But when a copy of the monument was created for the Metropolitan Museum of Art a few years later, French had it carved according to the original design, with the right arm outstretched.

Other stops on the New England road trip took me to Hildreth Cemetery in Lowell, Massachusetts to see the massive gravestone of General Benjamin Franklin Butler, a key figure in the Civil War and later a Massachusetts congressman and governor. I also stopped at the Grove Street Cemetery not far from the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, to see the graves of Eli Whitney and his family. Whitney played a major role in my book Lincoln: The Fire of Genius because in 1794 he patented the cotton gin, which made it easier to remove the seeds from cotton bolls, thus making cotton more profitable and inadvertently leading to the expansion of slavery.

All this talk about my time visiting cemeteries reminds me that last September I had the honor of being one of the dedicatory speakers for a new monument in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC that honors famed Civil War photographer Mathew Brady (whose photograph of Lincoln on the day of his Cooper Union speech may have made him president), Abraham Lincoln himself, and Frederick Douglass. I also had the privilege each of the last several years of laying a wreath at the feet of Daniel Chester French’s seated Lincoln in Henry Bacon’s Lincoln Memorial as part of the annual Lincoln’s birthday program.

I do feel as if I live a privileged life, even if it seems I spend an inordinate time in cemeteries.

[Photo by David J. Kent, 2023]

 

Fire of Genius

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

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

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

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

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.