Category: Abraham Lincoln

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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.

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The One Year Anniversary of the Lincoln Memorial Centennial Program

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David J Kent at the Lincoln MemorialOne year ago today I was the master of ceremonies for the centennial anniversary of the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial. What an experience it was.

Two recent posts on Lincolnian.org (the website of the Lincoln Group of DC, of which I am president) recounted highlights from the program. My reminiscences noted that the program was a year in the making, with me as the lead organizer but several others in the Lincoln Group using their contacts to help get some of the key participants. We were able to get the services of some of well-known Lincoln scholars, historically important speakers, a fantastic singer to highlight the evolving role of the Memorial from one of reconciliation to a symbol of the rights of all Americans, a famous actor to recite the dedicatory poem and Lincoln’s two most famous speeches, and even “The President’s Own” Marine Band.

Wendy Swanson’s newest post recalls the Lincoln Memorial Centennial as “A Shining Moment,” both for the Memorial and the Lincoln Group of DC. Whereas the sole African American participant’s speech was censored at the Jim Crow-era dedication in 1922…:

“the theme of the 2022 offering – “Building on Lincoln’s Vision of Unity and Equality” – clearly proclaimed that this event would be different. In 2022 Lincoln would be celebrated both as a unifier and as an emancipator. It was fitting and proper to do so – after all, over the years Lincoln’s Memorial has become not only a tribute to the man himself but also a symbol of social justice and equality for all.”

She noted that:

“The program executed that theme beautifully – a mixture of history, music, and inspiration but also of “calls to action.” Moreover, unlike in 1922, those gathered that morning – both the speakers and the attendees – reflected the face and diversity of America.”

In my reminiscences, I noted that:

“By all metrics, the Lincoln Memorial Centennial event was a wonderful success. We managed to pay homage to the original dedication while also correcting some of the deficiencies of that day. We also captured the continuing evolution and growth of the Memorial’s meaning to all Americans. I believe we honored Abraham Lincoln with our program and demonstrated how the Memorial will continue to be a focal point for both memory and change. It seemed altogether fitting and proper that at the end of the formal ceremonies, we invited all of those present – speakers, organizers, park rangers, audience members, and random visitors – to join us on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for a grand photo, which can be seen on our website.”

Lincoln Memorial

Looking back, the Centennial program was a lot of work on the part of many people. But it was a program that I’ll forever be proud of for how we captured the continuing and evolving meaning of the Memorial both for Lincoln’s memory and the future of all Americans.

[All photos: Bruce Guthrie]

 

Fire of Genius

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

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

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[All photos by David J. Kent]

Fire of Genius

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

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

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

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

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

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Abraham Lincoln Goes to Harvard and Yale

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

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

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

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

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

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

[All photos by David J. Kent]

Fire of Genius

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

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

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

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

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

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Road Tripping Lincoln in New England

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

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

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

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

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

Fire of Genius

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

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

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

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

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