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Win a Free Signed Copy of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius!

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You can win one of five free signed copies of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius on Goodreads.

Click here for more information and to enter now through March 30, 2024.

Goodreads Giveaway March 2024

 

 

 

Click here to get more information and to enter. Giveaway ends on March 30th.

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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On Leap Year Day, After Cooper Union, Lincoln Visits Robert in Exeter, New Hampshire

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Lincoln at Cooper Union, Mathew Brady photographWith Leap Year Day, February graced the nation with an extra twenty-four hours on February 29, 1860. Abraham Lincoln was already feeling weary by the time he clambered onto the 10:40 am train from Providence, Rhode Island, to Exeter, New Hampshire. It was nearly two in the morning the day before by the time he finished his grand lecture at Cooper Union in New York City, joined the organizers for dinner, and spent several hours after midnight proofreading the text of the speech to be printed that day in the New York Tribune. A brief forty winks of sleep, then up again and on a train to Providence to give yet another long lecture that night. Having that speech gone well, and another late dinner, now he was on another train to finally see his son, Robert, in Exeter, the original rationale for this excursion into New England after New York.

Robert was at Phillips Exeter Academy cramming to retake his Harvard entrance exams, which he had failed miserably the previous summer. While he waited for his father to arrive, Robert fielded queries from political leaders in New Hampshire asking if Lincoln could speak to them as well. By the time Lincoln arrived in Exeter that evening, he had committed to speaking in the New Hampshire cities of Concord, Manchester, Dover, and then finally in Exeter. So much for a relaxing visit with the son he hadn’t seen in over six months. Lincoln would go on to do a dozen speeches on this two-week visit, including several in Connecticut, Hartford and New Haven among them, and back to Rhode Island for one more in Woonsocket before a couple more in Connecticut and a slow, winding railroad home to Illinois.

Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech, which many claim as “the speech that made Lincoln president,” had been an extraordinary effort. He had spent months researching the voting patterns of the “fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question [slavery expansion] just as well, and even better, than we do now.” His old nemesis, Stephen A. Douglas, had used this line to suggest the Founders of the country has intentionally chosen to have a nation permanently “half slave and half free.” Lincoln painstakingly demonstrated that, in fact, the opposite was true. The Founders, through the voting patterns of each that Lincoln documented, had clearly intended to restrict the expansion of slavery and put it on a path toward its ultimate extinction.

In a letter written to his wife Mary impatiently waiting back in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln tells her about the unexpectedly added speeches he had been asked to give in New England.

I have been unable to escape this toil — If I had foreseen it I think I would not have come East at all. The speech at New-York [Cooper Union], being within my calculation before I started, went off passably well, and gave me know trouble whatever. 

But he added,

The difficulty was to make nine others, before reading audiences, who have already seen all my ideas in print-

The speech at Cooper Union had not only been widely covered and printed in the several large New York papers with broad distribution, it had been picked up and reprinted in virtually every significant newspaper in the country. That was especially true in New England once the public – and political operatives – knew that the westerner Lincoln was in the area giving a series of speeches. At Cooper Union he spoke for an hour and half. At his various stops in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut, newspapers noted that he spoke at least that amount of time, even up to two hours, as he gave essentially the same speech, sometimes with added flourishes (the ones involving snakes and “wens” were particularly colorful). By all reports, notwithstanding the usual partisan paper gamesmanship, these speeches were important contributors to his eventual election to the presidency.

Lincoln would finally arrive home in the early morning of Wednesday, March 14th. In May, he became the surprise Republican nominee over the party standard bearer, William Seward.

Meanwhile, Robert had taken is studies in Exeter seriously, at least enough to pass the entrance exams and enter Harvard College in the fall of 1860. Of course, by then his father had been chosen as the Republican Party nominee for president, with his election in November almost assured by the splitting of the Northern and Southern wings of the Democratic party (both were pro-slavery, but the South wanted disunion in order to protect and expand slavery across the nation).

By December, Southern states started seceding from the Union, initiating the Civil War.

[Photo Credit: Mathew Brady taken the day of the Cooper Union speech, via Wikimedia]

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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John Quincy Adams Dies with Abraham Lincoln in the House

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John Quincy AdamsOn February 21, 1848, Abraham Lincoln was attending proceedings in the House of Representatives, when suddenly, the Speaker of the House, Robert Charles Winthrop, was interrupted “by several gentlemen, who sprang from their seats to the assistance of the venerable John Quincy Adams, who was observed to be sinking from his seat in what appeared to be the agonies of death.” Adams was carried to the rotunda, and from there to the speaker’s room, where he remained until his last breath two days later. Lincoln would serve on the official House funeral arrangements committee for Adams, the former president and his House colleague during Lincoln’s sole term in Congress.

Lincoln had more in common with our sixth president then most people know. Like Lincoln, Adams was not a scientist himself but encouraged it, including writing a treatise on the reform of weights and measures. His nearly religious promotion of astronomical observatories helped create the study of astronomy in America, pushing in an 1843 oration the practical value of astronomy. He reminded humanity to look “heavenward” as if “the special purpose of their creation” was “observation of the stars.” During his tenure as a congressman following his presidency, Adams fought against both anti-British and antifederalist biases to get the Smithson bequest devoted to scientific research. Like Adams, Lincoln saw science and technology as something that could improve the lives of all Americans. He saw a mechanism by which all men could better their condition.

While Henry Clay, Lincoln’s “beau ideal of a statesman,” is best known as promoting the Whig’s “American System” of economic development that Lincoln spent most of his career espousing, it was Alexander Hamilton and John Quincy Adams who originally developed and drove the idea. They believed in modernizing the nation through government-supported “internal improvements,” as well as the establishment of a national bank to help finance these improvements, and high tariffs to protect American investment from cheap foreign goods.

Lincoln would later take up the mantle of John Quincy Adams, the man who had worked so hard to accept the money that made the Smithsonian Institution possible. Lincoln clearly came to rely on Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry’s expertise and made every effort to protect the Smithsonian during the war. Funding was always a problem, and in a November 11, 1862, letter to William Seward, Henry anxiously begged for Lincoln to grant power of attorney to a London law firm attempting to recover a part of the original bequest of James Smithson not yet received. Lincoln granted Henry’s request, and the remaining funds, approximately $25,000 in gold, were transferred. The Smithsonian would continue to exist.

Several months after John Quincy Adams’s death, Lincoln would make his way to Adams’s home turf in Massachusetts to give a series of stump speeches for the Whig presidential nominee, Zachary Taylor. Adams had lived a long public life beyond his presidency, dying at 80 years old. Lincoln would not survive six weeks beyond his second inauguration, his life taken by an assassin’s bullet at the age of 56.

[Photo Credit: Mathew Brady via Wikimedia]

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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Celebrate Lincoln’s Birthday at the Lincoln Memorial (I’ll Be There)

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On Monday, February 12, 2024, Abraham Lincoln turns 215 years old! And all are invited to join in the celebration.

The National Park Service only sanctions one event per year inside the Lincoln Memorial, and this is it. The Lincoln Birthday National Commemorative Committee (LBNCC), which includes the Lincoln Group of DC, will present a program and oversee the laying of wreaths at the feet of the Lincoln statue by sculptor Daniel Chester French. This year, I have the distinct honor of presenting the Gettysburg Address as part of the program. Here’s the news release from the National Park Service:
NPS Release Lincoln Birthday at Lincoln Memorial 2024
 
The program includes laying of wreaths by about fifteen or more Lincoln and Civil War organizations, plus a wreath by the President of the United States. There will be music, speakers, and awards. This year, I’ll both be on the program and will lay the wreath for the Lincoln Group of DC. More info can be read here.
As always, parking is limited in the vicinity of the Lincoln Memorial, so be there early to grab a space. Better yet, take the Metro and get off either at the Smithsonian or the Foggy Bottom stations. Since the ceremony is inside the Memorial, the event is rain or shine.

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 Calls Out the President for an “Illegal” War

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Abraham Lincoln photoOn February 1, 1848, Congressman Abraham Lincoln wrote his law partner, William Herndon, in response to a critical letter Herndon had written him. Herndon had complained that Lincoln’s “spot” resolutions of the previous December calling out President James K. Polk for starting an “illegal” war with Mexico as a pretense for taking massive amounts of land so that the United States could expand slavery. The resolutions called for Polk to explain the exact “spot” on which he claimed Mexico had “invaded” the United States. Polk and virtually everyone else ignored Lincoln and nothing happened with the bill. Herndon noted that there was a danger that Lincoln’s resolutions could paint him as not being supportive of the troops. Lincoln sought to set him straight – being against the war did not mean he didn’t support the troops, for whom he had repeatedly voted to provision.

In Lincoln’s response he tells Herndon:

That vote affirms that the war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President; and I will stake my life, that if you had been in my place, you would have voted just as I did. Would you have voted what you felt you knew to be a lie? I know you would not…Richardson’s resolutions, introduced before I made any move, or gave any vote upon the subject, make the direct question of the justice of the war; so that no man can be silent if he would. You are compelled to speak; and your only alternative is to tell the truth or tell a lie. I can not doubt which you would do.

Lincoln adds that:

This vote, has nothing to do, in determining my votes on the questions of supplies. I have always intended, and still intend, to vote supplies…

He also claims that he is not alone in calling out the unconstitutionality of President Polk’s actions:

As to the Whig men who have participated in the war, so far as they have spoken to my hearing, they do not hesitate to denounce, as unjust, the Presidents conduct in the beginning of the war. 

The spot resolutions did create a negative view of Lincoln back in Illinois. He hadn’t planned on running for a second term anyway (there had been an agreement to rotate the position among Whig hopefuls), but the blowback from the resolutions and a poorly run campaign by his proposed successor led to the Whigs losing the seat in the next election. Lincoln would be out of political office for the next dozen years before being elected President of the United States.

Lincoln was a freshman congressman, who normally are expected to sit in the back of the room, keep their mouths shut, and vote the way the party tells them to vote. Lincoln felt he could not remain silent and was compelled to speak out against the decisions of a sitting president whose actions he believed to be unjust and unconstitutional.

Our representatives must speak out against injustice. Lincoln did.

[Photo of Abraham Lincoln at the time he was in 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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Abraham Lincoln and China

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Gerat Wall of China, David J. Kent, 2000On January 23, 1864, Lincoln sent to the U.S. Senate papers relative to the modification of our treaty with China. China had been an important, but sometimes difficult, relationship during the Civil War. While he didn’t spend that much time on it, Lincoln did have several interactions and official duties. In this 1864 letter, he writes:

To the Senate of the United States: January 23, 1864

I transmit to the Senate a copy of a dispatch of the 12th. of April, last, addressed by Anson Burlingame, Esquire, the Minister of the United States to China, to the Secretary of State, relative to a modification of the 21st. article of the Treaty between the United States and China of the 18th. of June 1858, a printed copy of which is also herewith transmitted. These papers are submitted to the consideration of the Senate with a view to their advice and consent being given to the modification of the said Twenty-first article as explained in the said dispatch and its accompaniments.

Washington, 23d. January, 1864. ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Burlingame had previously notified Lincoln that the existing agreement signed in 1858 needed to be modified “as to permit duties to be paid when goods are re-exported from any one of the free ports of China….” The U.S. Senate consented to the modification in February 1864. Lincoln had reported in his annual addresses to Congress in December 1861, 1862, and 1863 that “very favorable relations also continue to be maintained with Turkey, Morocco, China, and Japan.” However, by 1864, Lincoln was reporting that a rebellion in China was causing some level of concern. “The judicial consular establishment there has become very difficult and onerous, and it will need legislative revision to adapt it to the extension of our commerce, and to the more intimate intercourse which has been instituted with the government and people of that vast empire. China seems to be accepting with hearty good-will the conventional laws which regulate commercial and social intercourse among the western nations.

Burlingame served as Minister to China from 1862 to 1867. He had originally been assigned by Lincoln to Austria but the government there rejected him because of his opinions on Hungary and Sardinia, then at odds with Austria, and so was appointed to China instead.

Back in the 1850s, Burlingame had become embroiled in the infamous caning of Charles Sumner incident. A former Know Nothing, he had joined the newly formed Republican Party along with Lincoln. After South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks brutally beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner nearly to death, Massachusetts Representative Burlingame delivered his “most celebrated speech,” a scathing denunciation of Brooks, who he denounced as “the vilest sort of coward.” Not surprisingly, the violent Brooks challenged Burlingame to a duel, which Burlingame eagerly accepted. As the challenged party, and an expert marksman, he chose rifles and the Canadian side of Niagara Falls (dueling was illegal in the United States). Brooks chickened out. The non-duel, along with his defense of a fellow Bostonian, greatly raised Burlingame’s stature in the North. Lincoln recognized this and thus sought to appoint him to an important ambassadorship. Hence his move to China.

The last apparent mention of Lincoln’s interactions with China was on February 17, 1865, when he approved an act to authorize the establishment of ocean mail service between the U.S. and China.

[Photo of the Great Wall of China by David J. Kent, December 2000]

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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MLK and ABE – Linked Forever

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Martin Luther KingAs we celebrate the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, MLK, it’s impossible not to reminisce on the connection with Abraham Lincoln, ABE. The two men are linked forever because of Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation and King’s reference to it in his “I have a dream” speech.

Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Announced as a necessary war measure in dry legal language because that was the authority Lincoln had for such a dramatic step, the Proclamation had ramifications far beyond the effect it had on the United States’ ability to win the Civil War. It continued, and hastened, the process of ending slavery in America, the slavery that the slaveholding Southern states had gone to war to protect and expand. The Proclamation, other acts of Congress, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution ensured that slavery would end as an institution. It didn’t, however, end the forces of racism, discrimination, and the physical intimidation that to this day have blocked creation of a society of equality. Lincoln understood there was more to do but was assassinated by those forces to keep him from working toward a new birth of freedom.

Martin Luther King understood this as well. In 1963, MLK recognized the importance of the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King referenced the significance as he began his speech with:

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

King linked the continuing struggle for equal rights to the unfinished business of Lincoln’s proclamation. Again, forces had bludgeoned human rights through physical intimidation, discriminatory laws, and racial gerrymandering.

We are now three score and one years from King’s iconic speech. And still, we have the same forces using violence and law to restrict the rights of fellow Americans.

We have work still to do.

As Lincoln noted in his December 1862 message to Congress: “Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We…will be remembered in spite of ourselves….The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.”

The choices we make today will be remembered by our children and our grandchildren, just as the choices of our grandparents during Jim Crow, the rise of Naziism and Fascism, and the civil rights struggles of Dr. King and others are remembered by us. In Lincoln’s time, there were those who fought to save the Union and those who fought to destroy it. To which group do we now identify?

The answer, for each of us individually and as a nation, will determine if in another four score or five score or ten score years we are seeking another ABE, another MLK, to determine if we “shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.”

Martin Luther King had a dream. He now has his own monument on the National Mall, not far from the monument to Lincoln we call the Lincoln Memorial. It behooves us on this Martin Luther King Day to take the time to visit and think about both men, their contributions, and how each of us can emulate them to save us from ourselves. We must all have a dream.

[Photo of Martin Luther King in WikiCommons, public domain]

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, Science, and the Sand Bar Case

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Lincoln at Cooper Union, Mathew Brady photographOn January 5, 1858, Abraham Lincoln wrote to Robert A. Kinzie of Chicago regarding the case of Johnston v. Jones and Marsh, commonly called the Sand Bar Case. The case was revealing because, in an age where trial transcripts were almost never kept, journalist Robert Hitt was paid to sit through the entire trial and create a comprehensive 482-page trial transcript, although he omitted the closing arguments.

The case revolved around the accretion of new land created by various efforts to turn Lake Michigan’s shoreline at Chicago into a practical harbor, something nature had not designed it to do. Channels were dug, piers were built, and a great deal of sand was dredged. Eventually, Chicago had a harbor. In 1833, the government cut a channel across lakefront lots owned separately by William Johnston and William Jones. A newly erected pier caused the accretion of nearly 1,200 feet of new land, roughly six acres, which both Johnston and Jones claimed as their own. After four trials, the last of which found for Johnston, Jones appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed the judgment and sent it back to the lower courts. At this point, Jones retained Lincoln while Johnston had retained Kinzie.

A legal colleague, while not specifically talking about the Sand Bar Case, seemed to capture the flavor of it when he called Lincoln “an admirable tactician” who “steered this jury from the bayous and eddies of side issues and kept them clear of the snags and sand bars, if any were put in the real channel of his case.” Fellow lawyer Leonard Swett also suggested Lincoln had a knack for focusing the juror on the key question while minimizing the rest. “By giving away six points and carrying the seventh, he carried the case.”

Lincoln demonstrated this Euclidean logic and technical expertise in a letter to Johnson’s attorney Robert Kinzie before the trial, querying him on such technical matters as the intersection of the pier, the accreted new lakeshore, and the properties in question, as well as the timing of the land formation and any changes since the initial pier was erected. Specifically, he asked:

1. Could you now certainly designate the point where the North side of the North pier, and the Lake shore met, before the new land began to form?

2. How long was it after the pier had reached that point, and continued Eastward, into the Lake, before the made land had formed, and filled in Eastward, on the North side of the pier, as much as sixty feet?

3. Do you remember whether any new land had formed at the time you sold and gave a bond to Hubbard? and if any had then formed, how much?

4. Do you remember whether any new land had formed at the time you deeded to Johnson & if any, how much?

5. At the time you laid out the addition, how far was it from where the South side of Water-Street struck the Lake Shore, down Southward along the Lake shore to where the East line of Lot 35 struck it?

I shall be greatly obliged, if you will answer these questions.

During the trial, Lincoln’s background in surveying helped him cross-examine the surveyor George Snow, catching that there were two maps created, each one alternatively benefiting the claims of the two litigants. The trial lasted eleven days, after which the jury sided with Jones. Lincoln’s questioning of the land surveys was key to winning the case.

He was paid $350 for his services (about $11,600 today).

[Adapted from Lincoln: The Fire of Genius]

[Photo by Mathew Brady, public domain]

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 Year in a Traveler’s Life – 2023

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Samarkand, UzbekistanAnother year has passed at the speed of travel, which if my time sense is correct is somewhere between the speed of sound and the speed of light. I’m always shocked to reach December only to wonder what happened to the first eleven months of the year. At least this year, travel-wise, was back to some sense of normality. To quote my old TV psycho-complement, Monk, “Here’s what happened.”

In what seems to have become a trend, my travel year started slowly. January through March are always intensely busy, both with catching up on everything I didn’t finish the previous year and with Abraham Lincoln-related events. This year I was especially busy giving presentations, doing radio and podcast interviews, and fielding questions from reporters related to my book, Lincoln: The Fire of Genius. More on that in my annual writing post coming soon. The bottom line is that I didn’t travel much in the first quarter.

All that changed in April as the proverbial (not literal) dam burst. Of the thirty days in April, I was home for only six of them. Early in the month I took a road trip up through New England to investigate many of the stops Lincoln made on his two visits to the region. He had given a dozen lectures in Massachusetts in 1848 between sessions of his single term as a U.S. Congressman, mostly stumping for the Whig nominee for president, Zachary Taylor (Spoiler: Taylor won). Lincoln returned in February of 1860 immediately after his Cooper Union speech in New York City. While originally planned solely to visit his son Robert doing time at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire (after failing his Harvard entrance exams), the success of Cooper Union led to high demand for him to speak in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. I visited many of the sites and conducted research for a future project. I also stopped at Hildene – Robert Lincoln’s home in Vermont – and got a VIP tour, then stopped in Peekskill, NY to keynote an annual meeting and pick up an award.

After two days home, which included a webinar one day and hosting a Lincoln Group dinner meeting the next, I was on a plane to Lisbon, Portugal. We had a few days there before boarding a Windstar luxury yacht to Gibraltar, Morocco, many cities in Spain, Barcelona, and a day trip to Andorra. I wrote a bit more about that trip here. It was May 6th before we got home. June was a busy work month, but it was on the road again for the week of July 4th back to New England for family visits and stops at Chesterwood (the studio of Daniel Chester French, sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial Lincoln), The Mount (the writer Edith Wharton’s home), and the Norman Rockwell Museum (to see his portrait of Lincoln, of course).

September had me back on a plane to “The Stans,” more specifically Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. I met up with a group of people traveling under the Eurocircle moniker, whose leader I had first met a decade ago when my book, Tesla, first came out. This was my fourth trip with her and was happy to see another four people I had met last year on the Tanzania trip. There were eleven of us total who jumped around three major cities in Uzbekistan before spending shorter times in the other three countries. It was an eye-opening experience, as was the single day I had in Istanbul on the way there. [Hint: Turkish Airlines offers free tours if you’re on certain flights with long layovers]

November included the annual Lincoln Forum symposium in Gettysburg, PA, a 3-day collection of a record 350 Lincoln attendees to listen to a collection of some of the greatest Lincoln scholars in the country. Last year (i.e., 2022) I picked up the Wendy Allen Award for the Lincoln Group of DC and gave a presentation on my Fire of Genius book, so this year was slightly less hectic. That said, I did spend time chatting up key leaders of other Lincoln organizations about plans for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. I joined a group of colleagues on the first day out at the Gettysburg National Cemetery examining the camera angles from all the extant photos of the event, including pinpointing the actual location of where Lincoln spoke. That night was headlined by Steve Inskeep of NPR fame. The middle night gave us a concert by Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, whose music you would recognize from the Ken Burns mini-series on the Civil War. The final night featured a great rendition of the Gettysburg Address by actor Graham Sibley and a conversation with the incomparable Pulitzer Prize-winning Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals and many others). Two days after returning from Gettysburg, it was on the road again to New England for the third time in 2023, this time for a more relaxed Thanksgiving with family.

Which gets us to December. I do have one more short trip, a few days in Pennsylvania with family, but otherwise the year is done for traveling.

But 2024 is only ten days away. And I have plenty of plans.

Two big trips have already been booked. March will find us on Windstar again, this time on a small sailing ship (140 passengers) in the Caribbean. We’ll start in Panama and spend some time in Colombia before dropping in on the ABC islands, Grenada, the Grenadines, and ending in Barbados. July will find us in Botswana (birding), Zimbabwe (Victoria Falls), and South Africa (Cape Town). After not having been to Africa ever until 2021, this will make the third year in a row seeing a new country (or three) on that continent. The earlier trip to Colombia will be the first time in South America since the amazing Argentina trip of 2014. South America and Antarctica are in future plans starting in 2025.

Of course, there will be “shorter” trips closer to home. I plan another road trip to New England, likely in April, in addition to at least two, and likely three, other trips to various places there in 2023. There will be the Lincoln Forum in November, possibly an upstate New York road trip, a visit to NYC for both work and pleasure, and shorter visits (if I haven’t run out of days in the year) to Richmond and West Virginia. There may be more, or slightly less as circumstances warrant, but it promises to be a very busy travel year.

I’ll have my annual Year in the Writer’s Life post up shortly after Christmas.

Photo: David J. Kent, Samarkand, Uzbekistan

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, Faust, and Depression

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By Anton Kaulbach - This file was derived from: Anton Kaulbach Faust und Mephisto.jpg:, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74580425On December 5, 1864, President Lincoln, with Mrs. Lincoln, Secretary of State Seward, and Secretaries Nicolay and Hay, attends Grover’s Theatre for a performance of Charles Gounod’s Faust performed by the Grand German Opera Company.

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

Hardly a light day at the office.

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

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

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

Nikola Tesla, the famed Serbian-American inventor, on the other hand, read Goethe’s Faust in its original language; he could speak eight languages fluently. More on that in my e-book, Abraham Lincoln & Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

[Photo: By Anton Kaulbach – This file was derived from: Anton Kaulbach Faust und Mephisto.jpg:, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74580425]

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.