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If It’s Tuesday…Revisiting Belgium

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The Atomium, Brussels, BelgiumAn old post popped into my feed recently and it reminded me of when I lived in Brussels. At the time I began a travelogue of sorts on a now defunct social media writing site. I’ve posted a few updated snippets here on Science Traveler. As I wrote in my introductory post:

In 1969 there was a movie by this title (“If it’s Tuesday, This Must be Belgium“) starring Suzanne Pleshette. It was a comedy about Americans experiencing Europe for the first time. Not long ago I had a chance to live out the idea behind the movie – the company I worked for at the time traded me from Washington DC to their office in Brussels (presumably for a scientist to be named later). I lived in Brussels for three years.

More posts covered my first visit to Brussels before the move, dealing with all my stuff (much of which was sold off, donated, or trashed because it would never fit), networking to get my bearings, and all the hoops I had to jump through to get a work permit.

In addition to offloading a lot of my accumulated personal debris for the move (the rest of which would be shipped to Brussels and then back three years later), I had to filter through years of file folders at work. I was staying with the same company so needed to bring current project work, but since I usually had dozens of projects running at any given time – and any number of old projects that might resurface – I had to bring several cabinets of paper. All of this got me thinking I need to streamline.

The day I moved was Earth Day, so I dutifully recycled what appears to be several trees worth of paper. This experience has taught me that I need to take advantage of my new presence in Europe to adopt the European tendency to minimize resource use.

So, upon my arrival I vowed the following:

1) To seek the ideal of a paperless office.  Okay, so I knew that ideal was unattainable. But I did reconsider all the emails I printed out (which thereby defeats the purpose of “electronic-mail”). I resolved not to print the huge documents that often sat unread on my desk…and when I did need to print them I did so double-sided to save paper.

2) To go car-less. My plan was to not own a car during my 3-year stay in Brussels. I walked to the office, about 3/4-mile from my office…or on lazy or lousy weather days, I took the tram that ran near my apartment. I also used public transportation to get around Brussels (luckily they had an excellent tram and subway system). I was able to walk to the grocery store and bicycled around town on errands whenever possible (though I occasionally begged rides from friends for longer trips). I took the train to visit locations out of town whenever possible (the train system in Europe is phenomenal).

3) To become more energy efficient. I adjusted my life style and habits to reduce my energy footprint. That included something as simple as using the sleep and hibernate modes on my computer wisely, as well as reducing lights, using energy efficient lamps, and not having a television. [I dumped my television in 2008 because it wouldn’t work in Europe; I haven’t had television service since then.]

4) To eat healthier. As long as I was being conscientious, I resolved to increase my natural and fresh food intake and reduce my use of processed and canned foods. [One could argue that I did accomplish the “eating more fresh food” part, but I also fell into the European trap of eating cheese and drinking wine. My net was anything but more healthy, but more on that in my memoirs.]

So with these resolutions in mind I went back to my Washington,DC office destruction program. I arrived in Brussels the following Monday morning, which meant the next “If It’s Tuesday…” piece was written from Belgium.  Woo hoo!

I enjoyed my three years in Brussels and learned a lot, both good and bad. The experience was something I have never regretted even though it was in Brussels where I realized my time with the firm that sent me would need to change, or end, after my return. But that’s a long story in itself.

P.S. The photo is me in front of The Atomium, built for the 1958 World’s Fair. In keeping with my Science Traveler theme, it represents an iron crystal.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Lincoln Receives First Transcontinental Telegraph Message

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Transcontinental telegraphIn October 1861, California Chief Justice Stephen Johnson Field reportedly sent a message to Abraham Lincoln via the newly completed transcontinental telegraph. The event was a milestone that predated the later transcontinental railroad.

By 1860 a network of telegraph lines covered much of the eastern United States. After the 1849 gold rush had spawned a rapid populating of the newly acquired California coast, telegraph lines quickly grew in that new state. But there was a huge gap in service through the central United States. The U.S. Congress authorized a transcontinental telegraph project in 1860, and like the transcontinental railroad that came after it, the telegraph system was built by separate crews that would meet in the middle. The Pacific Telegraph Company would start in Nebraska and head west while the Overland Telegraph Company would build east from Nevada, which was connected to the California network. Essentially the route followed that established by the Pony Express and the Overland stagecoach line.

It took just over three months to plant more than 27,000 poles carrying 2,000 miles of single-strand iron wire over prairies and mountains. The transcontinental telegraph was officially completed on October 24, 1861 in Salt Lake City and became a critical communication line for the Union. Justice Fields often gets credit for sending the first transcontinental telegraph to Lincoln; however, there is some uncertainty about this. In fact, documents show that on October 20, 1861 Lincoln replied by telegraph to Frank Fuller, the Governor of the Utah Territory reciprocating his congratulations for the telegraph achievement. Lincoln wrote:

Sir.

The completion of the Telegraph to Great Salt Lake City is auspicious of the Stability & Union of the Republic.

The Government reciprocates your Congratulations

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Fuller’s original telegraph message to Lincoln from earlier that day says:

`To the President of the United States:— Great Salt Lake City.

“Utah, whose citizens strenuously resist all imputations of disloyalty, congratulates the President upon the completion of an enterprise which spans the continent, unites two oceans and connects remote extremities of the body politic with the great government heart. May the whole system speedily thrill with quickened pulsations of that heart, the parricidal hand of political treason be punished, and the entire sisterhood of States join hands in glad reunion around the national fireside.

“FRANK FULLER,

“Acting Governor of Utah.”

So did Field send the first transcontinental telegraph message to Lincoln? Or did Fuller? Evidence suggests the latter. In either case, the telegraph played a hugely important role in the Civil War, and like many other technology-based advantages, helped the Union more than the Confederacy.

By the way, in May of 1863 Lincoln appointed Field as a U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice, thus becoming the first person to fill the newly created extra seat after Congress expanded the Supreme Court from 9 to10. But that’s a story for another time.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Lincoln in Peoria – The Speech Heard Round the World

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Abraham Lincoln PeoriaOn October 18, 1854 Lincoln rose to the forefront of the Republicans with a speech he gave first in Springfield, and then a dozen days later in Peoria. Newspapers published the second presentation, so it came to be known as the Peoria speech. It began when Stephen A. Douglas, the originator of the Kansas-Nebraska policy, spoke to a large crowd at the state fair in Springfield. Lincoln was in the audience and proclaimed that he would respond to Douglas’s arguments, saying “Douglas lied; he lied three times and I’ll prove it!” That evening he did so at the Illinois state house. While Lincoln sat quietly listening to Douglas’s speech, Douglas repeatedly interrupted Lincoln.

Lincoln vigorously condemned slavery. After giving a brief history of slavery in America, he forcefully denounced it. He reiterated his belief that slavery was morally and politically wrong, but also that the Constitution protected it in the areas where it already existed. Therefore, the federal government could not remove it from the South, but it could, and must, restrict its spread into the territories. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, he argued, violated those principles, and Douglas was contradicting himself with regard to his support for the Missouri Compromise, which the Act now voided. Lincoln made his views on the Kansas-Nebraska Act and slavery clear:

I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very principles of civil liberty—criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.

Lincoln further argued that slaves and free blacks were men, and as such had the same right to self-governance that white men did. Quoting from the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln asserted that the phrase “all men are created equal” included black men as well as white, and that “no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent.”

These were progressive words in 1854. Being anti-slavery in the North did not necessarily signify belief in equality between the races. Lincoln recognized that even if all slaves were free, society would not function given inherent inequalities, attitudes, and bigotries. Overlooking the fact that most slaves at this time had been born in America, he favored colonization as a means for free blacks to leave the United States and set up black-led countries of their own. Despite this inconsistency, by forcefully arguing for the moral wrong of slavery and the dangers of slavery spreading because of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln set the framework for a slavery debate that lasted the rest of the decade.

And thus, like the shot fired in Concord, Massachusetts on April 18, 1775 that started the Revolutionary War, Lincoln’s Peoria speech on October 16, 1854 began the intense debate on slavery that would lead to the Civil War. Peoria was indeed, the speech ’round the world.

[Adapted from Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Traveling the Sugar and Slave Trades of St. Kitts

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St. Kitts sugar factorySt. Kitts is the larger of two islands that make up the nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. Nevis is most famous for being the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton, the musical about whom I recently saw in Chicago. While St. Kitts is now a tourist mecca, the island is best known for its dominant position in the colonial sugar trade. Lesser known is that St. Kitts also was a major hub in the slave trade.

A few years ago I visited St. Kitts along with a few other Caribbean islands. Remnants of the past sugar industry stand mostly as ruins on the island landscape. Abandoned, but not that long ago – St. Kitts clung to sugar until recently, the last sugar factory closing only in 2005.

Today you can take a scenic railway around the island. With views of Nevis towering to southeast and Mount Liamuiga rising in the interior, the railway crawls the perimeter in search of sugar plantations. Sugar cane was the main source of sugar on the islands, and some remains for visitors to appreciate. Periodically the remains of cinderblock processing buildings and chimneys stick up out of the recovering natural vegetation. The railway itself is a remnant of the industry. Individual sugar cane growers would harvest the crop and do some initial processing, then wait for the train to stop on its daily circling of the island, stopping at each grower to pick up raw materials. Eventually the train would drop off the crops at the central factory the grew up in the early 20th century. It was this factory that finally closed its doors in 2005, turning over the island’s economy almost entirely to tourism.

A trio of local singers serenades us with old spirituals as a covey of school children in green-shirted uniforms keep pace with the train. The sugar ruins and spirituals remind us that St. Kitts was once a key cog in the slave trade triangulating between Europe, Africa, and America. Great Britain was the biggest purveyor of slave trading at that time. Bringing weapons and gunpowder from England to Africa, ships would cram as many kidnapped Africans as they could in the bowels of the ship, selling or trading the survivors for sugar and rum in Caribbean and South America, then bringing those commodities up to the slaveholding colonies – and then states – before heading back to England to start the process again. It was in St. Kitts that, supposedly but not fully confirmed, Thomas Jefferson’s ancestors got there start in the new world, and from here they became slaveowners that continued through Jefferson’s life.

Slavery was abolished in all the British Empire, including St. Kitts, on August 1, 1834. St. Kitts now celebrates August 1st as Emancipation Day, a public holiday.

As I soon head back to the Caribbean I remember my time on St. Kitts and its connection between sugar science and slavery. On this trip I’ll be seeing other islands that were focal points in the slave trade, hoping to learn more about the business that enslaved human beings for the profit of a few. More to come.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

 

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Galesburg – Chasing Lincoln’s 5th Lincoln-Douglas Debate

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One of the stops on my Chasing Abraham Lincoln tour was the campus of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, site of the 5th Lincoln-Douglas Debate. Drawing the largest crowd of any of the seven debates, Galesburg seems the natural place to host the Lincoln Studies Center led by Co-Directors Rodney O. Davis and Douglas L. Wilson.

Due to fierce winds and foreboding weather, the debate platform had to be moved into the shadow of “Old Main,” the largest building on the Knox College campus. To reach the platform Lincoln, Douglas, and other dignitaries needed to enter the building and crawl out a window. The self-taught Lincoln, according to tradition, noted that “At last I have gone through…college.”

The day of my visit mimicked the day of the debates. Overcast and windy, I dodged puddles and raindrops (and a few modern day students) to record the following report:

As with all of the debates, the primary issue debated was slavery. Douglas denied there was any wrong in slavery, and in fact, vociferously argued that the government was by and for white people. Lincoln strenuously disagreed:

I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social, and political evil [and] desire a policy that looks to the prevention of this wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may come to an end.

Two more debates would occur over the following week or so and due to the vagaries of the law at that time Lincoln would lose the election to Douglas despite Republicans gaining more votes [state legislatures still chose Senators; the 17th Amendment giving direct vote to the people wasn’t until 1913]. But these debates would firmly place Lincoln in the public’s eye for the forthcoming presidential election in 1860.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

 

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Nikola Tesla’s Views on Marriage and Celibacy

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Nikola TeslaNikola Tesla spent much time learning to exert self-control over his will. Once an addicted gambler, he worked hard to rid himself of that destructive desire. Not leaving a trace of desire apparently extended to his views on marriage and celibacy.

The late William H. Terbo (the son of Tesla’s sister’s son) once suggested that “womanizing” may have contributed in part to Tesla never completing his studies in Graz. Yet despite the opinion of a professional palmist, who opined that Tesla’s hand revealed “a flirtatious streak,” Tesla purposefully chose celibacy throughout his life. This did not stop the media of the time (even the technical journals) from urging him to get married—after all, “important people were expected to procreate for the good of the country.” As young science writer and close friend Kenneth Swezey later put it, “Tesla’s only marriage has been to his work and to the world…he believes…that the most enduring works of achievement have come from childless men…” Swezey described Tesla as “an absolute celibate.” Tesla himself claimed that to be a great inventor one must not allow himself to be distracted by love. When asked if he believed in marriage, he replied that:

“for an artist, yes; for a musician, yes; for a writer, yes; but for an inventor, no. The first three must gain inspiration from a woman’s influence and be led by their love to finer achievement, but an inventor has so intense a nature with so much in it of wild, passionate quality, that in giving himself to a woman he might love, he would give everything, and so take everything from his chosen field. I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.”

While rumors abounded over Tesla’s relationship with Katharine Johnson, wife of The Century editor (and Sierra Club co-founder) Robert Underwood Johnson, he never did marry, hence why his grandnephew William Terbo was so active in keeping Tesla’s name alive.

[Adapted from my book, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity]

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.

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

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

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Lincoln vs Slavery: The Mary Speed Letter

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Abraham Lincoln Joshua SpeedOn September 27, 1841, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to Mary Speed, the half-sister of his good friend Joshua Speed. He spoke up about slavery, knowing that the Speed’s had been raised as slaveowners and having just returned from a long visit to their home in Kentucky. On the trip home he contemplates the inequities of life:

A gentleman had purchased twelve negroes in different parts of Kentucky and was taking them to a farm in the South. They were chained six and six together. A small iron clevis was around the left wrist of each, and this fastened to the main chain by a shorter one at a convenient distance from, the others; so that the negroes were strung together precisely like so many fish upon a trot-line. In this condition they were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them, from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting than any other where; and yet amid all these distressing circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparently happy creatures on board. One, whose offence for which he had been sold was an over-fondness for his wife, played the fiddle almost continually; and the others danced, sung, cracked jokes, and played various games with cards from day to day. How true it is that “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,” or in other words, that He renders the worst of human conditions tolerable, while He permits the best, to be nothing better than tolerable.

Lincoln loathed slavery as far back as the late 1830s, but he rarely spoke out about the slavery question until the 1850s. There were several reasons for his silence, starting with his belief that the institution was dying out. In a response to Stephen A. Douglas in June 1858, he told a Chicago audience that the Republican Party was made up of people “who will hope for its ultimate extinction.” How could it not be so, he thought, given that slavery is morally wrong and politically unsustainable?

This belief proved to be naïve. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 had made it possible to separate cotton fibers from its seeds mechanically; previously this painstaking process was performed entirely by hand and involved hundreds of hours of manual, usually slave, labor. Most northern states had banned slavery, but most southern states saw an expansion of slavery correlated with the growth of “King Cotton.” With the separation (ginning) process speeding the rate of production, plantation owners could dramatically increase the acreage on which they grew cotton. As cotton acreage expanded, more and more slaves were needed for cultivation. Rather than being on the cusp of extinction, slavery was booming.

Once he recognized this reality, Lincoln focused on how to stop its expansion. I talked about some of the ways, in particular his long road to emancipation of enslaved people in the District of Columbia, during my recent keynote address  on Lincoln-Thomas Day at Fort Stevens in the District. I talked about other ways in my book, Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America. I’ll have more on this website in the future.

[Partially adapted from Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America]

[Note: Photo is of Joshua Speed and Abraham Lincoln]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Chasing Classic Art – Art Institute of Chicago

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We all grow up with some sort of art appreciation. Recently I was able to realize my dream of seeing some classic art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Building on my odd taste in art as a teen, I specifically wanted to visit the Art Institute because I knew they held several of the original paintings I cherished.

I’ve been lucky. My three years living in Brussels and widespread travel in the world has allowed me to see some of civilizations’ greatest art: Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in the Louvre, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus in Florence’s Uffizi, Da Vinci’s Last Supper in Milan, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, Raphael’s School of Athens in the Vatican, Munch’s The Scream in Oslo, Picasso’s Guernica at the Reina Sophia in Madrid, Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat in Brussels, and many others. But there were more classic paintings that I had never seen in person – and several were at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Picasso Guitarist Art Institute of Chicago

I’ve had a thing for Picasso’s The Old Guitarist since my undergraduate days. Ironically, it was hanging in the Carriage House, a just-off-campus BYOB hangout built in, you guessed it, an old carriage house. Gone were the horses and hay, replaced by a small kitchen and an even smaller stage where a variety of unknown acts would play for broke students. So while a singer crooned folk songs or the naked piano player (yes, there was such a thing) cracked jokes to music, a print of Picasso’s masterpiece from his blue period gazed down from the side wall. Perhaps the oddity of the situation was what locked the painting into my mind.

Wood American Gothic Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute is also the home of Grant Wood’s much parodied American Gothic. Posing his dentist and his sister in front of an old carpenter gothic style house, Wood created one of America’s most recognized paintings.

Hopper Nighthawks Art Institute of Chicago

Another American artist, Edward Hopper, is best known for Nighthawks, his ambiguous statement on late night life is his most famous painting and likely second only to American Gothic in being repurposed and parodied.

Van Gogh Bedroom Art Institute of Chicago

Heading back to Europe, The Bedroom is one of three versions of Van Gogh’s bedroom in the “yellow house” of Arles, in the south of France. Joined for several tension-filled months by fellow artist Paul Gauguin, it was here that Van Gogh, prone to periodic psychotic episodes, cut off part of his left year, an event that ended his friendship with Gauguin. The Art Institute also has a wonderful self portrait of Van Gogh.

Seurat Sunday Jatte Art Institute of Chicago

Another masterpiece I’ve always wanted to see was French painter Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (sometimes simply called A Sunday on La Grande Jatte). Seurat’s most famous painting, at nearly 7 feet high by over 10 feet wide it is also his largest, a size that is even more remarkable given it is painted using the pointillist technique. Think of pointillism as an early form of pixilation, where small dots of paint are applied to the canvas such that the eye blends them into perceived color patterns.

There were many other wonderful paintings and sculptures at the Art Institute. One thing in particular that struck me was the number of paintings that reflected on science. I’ll have more about that in a future science traveling of art post.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

 

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Keynote Speaker: Lincoln-Thomas Day

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Join me as I give the keynote address at the annual Lincoln-Thomas Day event to be held Saturday, September 21, 2019 from 12 noon to 2 pm at Fort Stevens, Washington, D.C. The event jointly honors Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on Sept. 22, 1862 and Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, the free African-American owner of the land that became Fort Stevens (where Lincoln was chastised with “Get down you fool” as he stood in enemy fire on the Fort’s wall).

This event is also free to the public so please come on down and support me, the National Park Service, and the Military Road School Preservation Trust. More information can be found on the flyer below and the Civil War Defenses of Washington Facebook page.

Lincoln-Thomas Day flyer

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Abraham Lincoln in Chicago

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In 1860 the city of Chicago hosted the Republican National Convention nominating Abraham Lincoln for President. But Lincoln’s presence is pervasive throughout the city today. Here are a few examples.

The Wigwam where Lincoln was nominated was a temporary structure, long since torn down to make room for skyscrapers and the “L” train overpasses. But recently they installed a marker stone with plaque at the location.

Wigwam marker Chicago

A seated Lincoln as “Head of State” graces Grant Park, not far from the Buckingham Fountain. Designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, this statue is “intended by the artist to evoke the loneliness and burden of command felt by Lincoln during his presidency.” It sits on a pedestal and a 150-foot wide exedra designed by famed architect Stanford White.

Abraham Lincoln Chicago

Another Saint-Gaudens design known by most as the “Standing Lincoln” (officially, “Lincoln: The Man”) can be found further up the lake in Lincoln Park. The sculpture shows a contemplating Lincoln, rising from a chair to give a speech. Copies of this statue stand in London’s Parliament Square and Mexico City’s Parque Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln Chicago

A lesser known statue is in Garfield Park, a short “L” ride west of downtown. Sculpted by Charles J. Mulligan, “Lincoln the Railsplitter” depicts a younger Lincoln, axe in hand, taking a break after splitting rails for fences on the farm.

Abraham Lincoln Chicago

These are the main statues of Lincoln in the windy city, but he appears in many other places as well. That’s him dominating the side of a building down the street from the Chicago History Museum. Inside the Museum itself you can find the actual bed that Lincoln died in after being carried across the street from Ford’s Theatre into the Petersen House in Washington, D.C. At the Art Institute of Chicago I also found miniature versions of two sculptures by Daniel Chester French. One was the familiar seated Lincoln known to all visitors of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The other is a lesser known standing Lincoln statue, the original of which can be found in Lincoln, Nebraska. The newest Lincoln in Chicago is a huge bust located in the lobby of the Palmer Hotel.

Even that wasn’t the last of the Lincoln connections. While in Chicago I also visited an obscure area called Canal Origins Park. Here was the beginnings of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, an internal improvement project that Abraham Lincoln was instrumental in creating, and which helped grow Chicago from a tiny lakeside village to the dominant powerhouse city it is today. The park and its bas-relief sculptures are, sadly, poorly maintained.

Canal Origins Park Chicago

I ran out of time before I could visit another statue of a young Lincoln located about an hour north of town, so perhaps I’ll be visiting Chicago again soon. For now, there are more Chasing Abraham Lincoln plans in the works. Stay tuned.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!