Tag: Abraham Lincoln

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Abraham Lincoln Book Acquisitions For 2024

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Books 2019How time flies. The year 2024 is almost over and I think I’ve finished accumulated new books for the year, to it’s time for my annual Abraham Lincoln book acquisitions post. As you’ll quickly see, my goal to reduce the number of books I buy has been relatively successful-the total number of books acquired is definitely fewer-coming in at 25 new acquisitions. Reducing the total number of books? Not so successful. You can read about past years acquisitions by scrolling through this link.

I did manage to acquire fewer Lincoln books this year despite some great new books hitting the shelves. The 25 “new” books in 2024 compares to 37 in 2023 and 34 in 22, so that’s a plus. I also received fewer books as gifts or from publishers. My grand total is split pretty evenly between 11 new hardcover books and 12 new softcover books, plus there are 2 books as PDF files only. Both PDFs, which are the two older books acquired, were downloaded because they provide source material for my current work in progress (which I’ll discuss soon in my “Year in a Writer’s Life” post). The hardcover versus softcover split is interesting. I definitely prefer hardcover books, but it seems publishers are shifting to producing more softcover books. This seems especially true for some academic publishers, who either don’t produce a hardcover version of the book or price it at some astronomically ridiculous price point in order to push the softcover version. As just one example, one book that is expected to come out in June is listed on Amazon as $90 for the hardcover and $25 for the softcover. Another book I recently bought was $65 for the hardcover and $28 for the softcover. At a recent conference, the on-site bookstore didn’t even bother trying to sell the hardcover, stocking only the softcover even for a receptive audience. Like the 18/20/22% tip suggestions they now put on restaurant bills, this is clearly a case of what Dan Ariely called “predictably irrational.”

Meanwhile, about half the books I acquired were actually published in 2024 (another is to be published in January 2025, but I received an ARC; more on that in a moment). That’s a shift from my previous habits where I focused more on collectible books from the early 20th and even 19th centuries. This year, the two oldest books by publication date are the two PDFs (publication dates of 1909 and 1910). The oldest physical book is 1963, but then they jump up to 1996 and again to 2001 before settling most into the last decade. I’m a bit surprised by this, but not completely given that I’ve made an attempt to collect less. I even read more Lincoln books I borrow from the local library since my bookshelves are already full, but somehow a dozen books published this year found their way into my home.

The most recognizable author from this year is almost certainly Erik Larson, whose Demon of Unrest dives into the period between Lincoln’s election and the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, the event usually pegged as the beginning of the Civil War. Larson is a guaranteed bestseller since his Devil in the White City and other books hit the shelves, although I was less impressed with this particular volume. Maybe I knew too much to read it as simply a good story and found myself either bored or critiquing details too much. Beyond Larson, the rest are either relatively obscure or are considered exceptional scholars in the Lincoln studies world but not so much to the general publish. Looking at my list, I realize that I know several of them fairly well, including Allen Guelzo, Harold Holzer, Jonathan W. White, Walter Stahr, and Jeffrey Boutwell, and then this year met Jon Grinspan, Mark Neels, and others because of the topic of their books.

I also had a back-cover blurb published on one book that come out this year. In January I received a request from Southern Illinois University Press to review a PDF manuscript by Leonne Hudson, and when that book, Black Americans in Mourning, came out this fall, my blurb praising the book was there along with those from Civil War experts James M. McPherson and Hilary N. Green. This is actually the second blurb I’ve had published on books, the first was on Nancy Bradeen Spannous’s Defeating Slavery from 2023. Perhaps it’s a trend.

I have to admit that I haven’t yet read all of the books I acquired this year despite reading over 100 books in 2024. I’m currently reading Boutwell, a book about George Boutwell, Lincoln’s first commissioner of internal revenue and later Grant’s secretary of the treasury. The book is written by Jeffrey Boutwell, a distant descendant. The publisher sent me the book to review. Other books I liked this year included Harold Holzer’s Brought Forth on this Continent, about immigration in Lincoln’s time; Allen Guelzo’s Our Ancient Faith, about democracy; Robert W. Merry’s Decade of Disunion, about the volatile 1850s; and I especially liked Jon Grinspan’s Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War.

The year 2025 will continue my plan to acquire fewer books and, perhaps more importantly, try to offload some of the books to make room. My proximal reading list includes Nigel Hamilton’s Lincoln vs. Davis, about the two presidents serving during the Civil War; Manisha Sinha’s The Rise and Fall of the Second American Revolution, which is quickly becoming the definitive treatise on reconstruction; and Doug MacDougall’s The Agitator and the Politician, about the difficult relationship between abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and Abraham Lincoln. I’m sure there will be more great books coming out in 2025 that I’ll also find myself reading, and perhaps also acquiring.

See the 2024 list showing author/title/publication date below my signature blurb below.

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.

 

Here is the 2024 list! [Author, Title, Date of Publication]

Achorn, Edward The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention that Changed History 2023
Ayers, Carol Dark Lincoln and Kansas: A Partnership for Freedom 2001
Boutwell, Jeffrey Boutwell: Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy 2025
Current, Richard N. Lincoln and the First Shot 1963
Derber, Jesse Abraham Lincoln: Statesman Historian 2024
Grinspan, Jon Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War 2024
Guelzo, Allen C. Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and The American Experiment 2024
Hamilton, Nigel Lincoln vs. Davis: The War of the Presidents 2024
Hanna, William F. Abraham Among the Yankees: Abraham Lincoln’s 1848 Visit to Massachusetts 2020
Holzer, Harold Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration 2024
Hudson, Leonne M. Black Americans in Mourning: Reactions to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln 2024
Jansen, Axel Alexander Dallas Bache: Building the American Nation Through Science and Education in the Nineteenth Century 2011
Larson, Erik The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War 2024
Learned, Marion Dexter Abraham Lincoln: An American Migration 1909
MacDougall, Doug The Agitator and the Politician: William Lloyd Garrison, Abraham Lincoln, and the Emcipation of the Slaves 2020
Masur, Kate and Clarke, Liz Freedom Was in Sight!: A Graphic History of Reconstruction in the Washington, DC, Region 2024
Merry, Robert W. Decade of Disunion: How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849-1861 2024
Neels, Mark A. Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates 2024
Newton, Joseph Fort Lincoln and Herndon 1910
Pearsall, Alan American Town: The History of Ipswich, Massachusetts 2009
Schwalm, Leslie A. Medicine, Science & Making Race in Civil War America 2023
Sinha, Manisha The Rise and Fall of the Second American Revolution: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 2024
Stahr, Walter Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln’s Vital Rival 2022
White, Jonathan W. and Griffing, William J. (Eds) A Great and Good Man: Rare, First-Hand Accounts and Observations of Abraham Lincoln 2024
Williams, Frank J. and Pederson, William D., eds. Abraham Lincoln: Contemporary 1996
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Lincoln and the Dakota

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On this date, December 11, 1862, Abraham Lincoln transmitted to the U.S. Senate his response to their request that he “furnish the Senate with all information in his possession touching the late Indian barbarities in the State of Minnesota, and also the evidence in his possession upon which some of the principal actors and head men were tried and condemned to death.”

In today’s news, we hear the phrase “largest mass hanging in U.S. history.” This past October 14, which has traditionally been known as “Columbus Day” but more recently referred to by some as “Indigenous Peoples Day,” saw a recurrence of vandalism to the iconic Lincoln statue in Chicago and elsewhere. Usually, this vandalism includes red paint with the words “Dakota 38” defacing the statue itself and the accompanying exedra, the high-backed bench that forms a semicircular platform around the statue.

I have discussed the misunderstanding around Lincoln’s role in the “Dakota 38” in a previous post, so please read that as well.

There is also a video available here that digs further into why we honor Lincoln, including my portion discussing the Dakota 38.

In his letter to Congress of December 11, 1862, Lincoln notes:

I further state, that on the 8th. day of November last I received a long telegraphic dispatch from Major General Pope, at St. Paul, Minnesota, simply announcing the names of the persons sentenced to be hanged. I immediately telegraphed to have transcripts of the records in all the cases forwarded to me, which transcripts, however, did not reach me until two or three days before the present meeting of Congress. Meantime I received, through telegraphic dispatches and otherwise, appeals in behalf of the condemned, appeals for their execution, and expressions of opinion as to proper policy in regard to them, and to the Indians generally in that vicinity, none of which, as I understand, falls within the scope of your inquiry. After the arrival of the transcripts of records, but before I had sufficient opportunity to examine them, I received a joint letter from one of the Senators and two of the Representatives from Minnesota, which contains some statements of fact not found in the records of the trials, and for which reason I herewith transmit a copy, marked “C.” I also, for the same reason, inclose a printed memorial of the citizens of St Paul, addressed to me, and forwarded with the letter aforesaid.

As I detailed in my previous post, Lincoln carefully examined all of the records of the trials, separating out those who participated in rapes or murders from those merely participating in battles. The result was 38 who were found demonstrably guilty of heinous crimes to be executed as per the previous trials, but also Lincoln stopped the executions of 264 Dakota men where he believed the trial records did not support the sentence. Each of the men executed were found guilty of violating women (rape) or participating in a massacre (murder).

The previous post and the video links above provide more detailed information.

 

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 Immediate Past 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 andEdison: 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 Brown Hanged Today

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John BrownBack in the days when inciting an insurrection against the government was considered disqualifying, on December 2, 1859, abolitionist John Brown was hanged.

Brown, of course, was an evangelical Christian of strong religious convictions. He believed he was an “instrument of God,” destined to eradicate the evils of slavery through direct violence. Considered by some a prophet, by others delusional, Brown saw the culmination of his life to bring equality to all Americans. His use of violence to “persuade” went back several years to the Kansas territory, where he and his followers responded to the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas (by pro-slavery mobs bent on murdering free-state settlers) by singling out five pro-slavery men and summarily hacking them to death with broadswords. Escaping punishment for that action, in 1859 he worked to start a slave revolt at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia).

This was not a sudden act of vengeance but a pre-planned attack. Brown had lobbied many eastern abolitionists to support and fund the stockpiling of weapons, persuasively arguing that “a few men in the right, and knowing that they are right, can overturn a mighty king. Fifty men, twenty men, in the Alleghenies would break slavery to pieces in two years.” To the Sharps rifles provided by his backers he added 1,000 pikes specially made for him and intended to be supplied to the combatants. On October 16, 1859, Brown led his armed band to Harpers Ferry, where their objective was to take the armory, the arsenal, the town, and the rifle factory. The expectation was that he would be joined by masses of enslaved men once the attack began. That never happened. 

In short, Brown and his men killed four townspeople and one Marine. Most of his men were killed, escaped, or were captured. United States Marines led by First Lieutenant Israel Greene under the overall command of Colonel Robert E. Lee and including First Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart, quickly subdued Brown. After a quick trial, Brown and others were executed by hanging on December 2.

A few months later, Abraham Lincoln traveled to New York City to give his famous Cooper Union address. In it he tackles the Southern conservative Democrat charge that somehow the new progressive Republican Party was to blame for John Brown’s actions. Lincoln denied it:

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper’s Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper’s Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper’s Ferry affair but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with “our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live,” declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us, in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood and thunder among the slaves.

Lincoln went on to argue that Brown’s use of violence necessarily failed:

John Brown’s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution.

Lincoln would go on to become president of the United States and, in the course of secession and a brutal Civil War started by the South to preserve and expand slavery, found himself in a position to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and push through the 13th Amendment forever banning slavery.

Lincoln acknowledges that inciting an insurrection was wrong and that Brown was held accountable for his actions. Perhaps we need to revisit that accountability today.

[Photo of John Brown By Ole Peter Hansen Balling – 6wGTA-pgdPr_9w at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21870468]

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 Immediate Past 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 andEdison: 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 Gets Smallpox at Gettysburg

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SmallpoxAbraham Lincoln’s “few appropriate remarks” at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, which we now know as the Gettysburg Address (i.e., “Four score and seven years ago today…”) is a major milestone in Lincoln’s historical legacy. Less remembered is that Lincoln was weak and dizzy as he rose to speak, with the symptoms intensifying on the train back to Washington. Back pains developed, and by the fourth day of being bedridden he experienced a scarlet rash, which soon became vesicular. Lincoln had virus-induced smallpox, or at least a less virulent form called variola or varioloid. Over the next three weeks, lesions appeared and worsened, finally drying and peeling. He remained in bed recovering for weeks.

Lincoln likely had never received a vaccination for smallpox. The vaccine had limited availability and effectiveness at that time but was given to the Army of the Potomac to protect them from the epidemic that was plaguing major cities in the United States. Lincoln recovered, and to this day there is speculation that his case was more severe than his staff admitted. His free African American valet, William Johnson, was not so lucky. Contracting smallpox soon after Lincoln, Johnson passed away in late January. He had come with Lincoln from Springfield to Washington, and Lincoln had found him jobs in the White House and the Treasury Department. Lincoln arranged for Johnson’s family to receive his pay and for his burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Two days after giving his famous Address, Lincoln continued the best he could to deal with pressing concerns (the Civil War waits for no illness). Illinois Representative Elihu Washburne related that “Old Abe has a well-developed case of varioloid. I was with him an hour and a half the other day, and we went over many things.” Lincoln also managed to converse with Indiana congressman Schuyler Colfax for more than an hour the evening of the 21st Postmaster General Mongomery Blair.

At one point, Lincoln, thinking about all the office seekers that constantly barraged him for jobs, he quips: “Now I have something I can give everybody.”

Back in the midst of the 2020 beginnings of the COVID pandemic, I wrote a post on this site that dug into the details of Lincoln’s case, which said in part:

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains, smallpox, like coronavirus, is an infectious disease. Caused by two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor, initial symptoms of smallpox include fever and vomiting, followed in extreme cases by sores in the mouth and a skin rash. As it worsens, large fluid-filled bumps appear on the skin, which result in characteristic and deforming scars. Like coronavirus, the smallpox virus was spread as people coughed or sneezed and droplets from their infected nose or mouth spread to other people. The smallpox scabs forming on the skin remained contagious until the last scab fell off. Coronavirus doesn’t form the scabs – it attacks the lung tissue rather than the skin – but both smallpox and coronavirus can be spread by residues left on surfaces from bedding and clothes to handrails and elevator buttons. Which is why it is so important during this coronavirus pandemic to practice social distancing, wash your hands often, and avoid touching your face.

Most scholars treated Lincoln’s case of variola as a mild case of smallpox, but some recent researchers suggest it was much more serious and that he could have died. In 2007, for example, two researchers reported that:

When Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, he was weak and dizzy; his face had a ghastly colour. That evening on the train to Washington, DC, he was febrile and weak, and suffered severe headaches. The symptoms continued; back pains developed. On the fourth day of the illness, a widespread scarlet rash appeared that soon became vesicular. By the tenth day, the lesions itched and peeled. The illness lasted three weeks. The final diagnosis, a touch of varioloid, was an old name for smallpox that was later used in the 20th century to denote mild smallpox in a partially immune individual. It was unclear whether Lincoln had been immunized against smallpox. In that regard, this review suggests that Lincoln had unmodified smallpox and that Lincoln’s physicians tried to reassure the public that Lincoln was not seriously ill. Indeed, the successful conclusion of the Civil War and reunification of the country were dependent upon Lincoln’s presidency.

So perhaps Lincoln’s case was full-blown smallpox and not simply the milder variola. We’ll never know for sure, but at least we know he managed to not only keep his sense of humor while bedridden but also carry on the business of saving the Union.

[Photo Courtesy of Library of Congress, Reference Number: LC-USZC2-1913]

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 Immediate Past 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 andEdison: 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 Big Blind Memorandum Reveal Party

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Emancipation ProclamationNo doubt everyone in the Lincoln world has heard repeatedly about the document we’ve all come to know as the “blind memorandum.” But what about the “reveal party” when Lincoln showed his cabinet what he had written? That event happened on November 11, 1864.

As a quick reminder, on August 23, Lincoln had asked each of his cabinet secretaries to sign the outside of a sealed envelope. He didn’t show them what was inside, only promised to reveal it to them at a later date – after the November 8 presidential election. While this document is so familiar to us today, it turns out that it went unremarked at the time. Allen Guelzo, writing in Lincoln Lore, noted that neither Gideon Welles or Edward Bates – from whose contemporaneous diaries we have gained great insights – nor either of Lincoln’s personal secretaries, made any mention of it. In fact, it wasn’t until 1877 that any mention of the “blind memorandum” was made by anyone. That is when Gideon Welles, whose diary seemed to grow over time, wrote an article in Galaxy magazine in which he described an anxious Lincoln initiated:

a request that I would write my name across the back of it. One or two members of the Cabinet had already done so. In handing it to me he remarked that he would not then inform me of the contents of the paper enclosed, had no explanation to make, but that he had a purpose, and at some future day I should be informed of it, and be present when the seal was broken.

As Guelzo notes, the reverse of the “blind memorandum” does in fact contain the signatures of all seven cabinet secretaries, with “Welles fourth in order after Seward, Fessenden and Stanton, and dated in Lincoln’s hand again.”

Flash forward to November 11. Three days after his surprisingly easy reelection, Lincoln had a big blind memorandum reveal party. While no one bothered to mention the earlier signing requests, this time John Hay captured the moment in his diary:

At the meeting of the Cabinet today, the President took out a paper from his desk and said, “Gentlemen do you remember last summer I asked you all to sign your names on the back of a paper of which I did not show you the inside? This is it. Now, Mr Hay, see if you can get this open without tearing it!”: He had pasted it up in so singular [a] style that it required some cutting to get it open.

Lincoln then read the memorandum:

Executive Mansion

         Washington, Aug. 23, 1864.

    This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly

probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it

will be my duty to so cooperate with the Government President-elect,

as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he

will have secured his election on such ground that he can not

possibly save it afterwards.

The immediate reaction of the cabinet was somewhat confused. Why would Lincoln have written this, then gotten their endorsements without showing it to them? Lincoln, without explaining the secrecy, did explain that he would attempt to work with presumed President-Elect McClellan to raise as many troops as he could for a final trial to win the war, and Lincoln would use his power of office to aid in saving the Union. The cabinet was skeptical that McClellan would have held up his part of such a bargain, as was Lincoln. According to Hay’s diary entry, Seward noted that McClellan would simply respond to Lincoln’s offer with “Yes, Yes,” and the next day also “’Yes-Yes’ & so on forever and would have done nothing at all.”

Lincoln, who had fired McClellan earlier in the war for “having the slows,” knew that Seward was right. “At least,” Lincoln said, according to Hay, “I should have done my duty and have stood clear before my own conscience.”

After the big reveal, the “blind memorandum” took on a celebrity status of its own. Bates asked for a copy, then Welles wanted one too, “then everybody” wanted one, according to a letter Hay wrote Nicolay years later.

[Photo from Wikimedia Commons, “First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation” by Francis Bicknell Carpenter]

 

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 Immediate Past 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 andEdison: 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 Mentors Law Students

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Abraham Lincoln photo“I am not an accomplished lawyer,” Lincoln wrote in 1850 notes for a law lecture. Continuing in this unpretentious vein, he noted, “I find quite as much material for a lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I have been moderately successful.”

Contrary to his routine use of self-deprecating language when referring to himself, Lincoln unquestionably became a successful lawyer, and as such, potential law students reached out to him for counseling. In the western frontier of Illinois in the first half of the nineteenth century, most students were not attending formal law schools, but rather, “reading” the law with an established lawyer. That included Lincoln. William Herndon, for example, had studied the law in Lincoln’s office long before Lincoln took him on as a junior partner.

Lincoln responded to a letter received in late 1855 from Isham Reavis, who had been a student at Illinois College but decided to study the law after his lawyer father died. Lincoln begged off, saying that he was away from home much of the time riding the 8th circuit and thus it would not be advantageous for anyone to read the law with him. He was encouraging, however, telling young Reavis that “If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is mor than half done already.” Lincoln went on to tell Reavis did not need to read with anyone, but it would be sufficient to “get the books, and read and study them till, you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing.” He then referred him to a fellow lawyer who could loan him the books.

He was more specific in a response to J.M. Brockman in September 1860, four months after receiving the Republican nomination for president. After telling him that the best mode for studying the law, though laborious and tedious, “is only to get the books, and read, and study them carefully,” he recommended Brockman:

“Begin with Blackstone’s Commentaries, and after reading it carefully through, say twice, take up Chitty’s Pleading, Greenleaf’s Evidence, & Story’s Equity &c. in succession.”

He added for emphasis: “Work, work, work, is the main thing.”

In his notes for a law lecture, Lincoln had stressed that “the leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence.” He also emphasized personal integrity, saying that “if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer.” In his letter to Isham Reavis, Lincoln reiterated the idea of hard work but added a dose of encouragement, ending with “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.”

He signed off, “Very truly Your friend. A. Lincoln.”

 

[Photo from LOC, Wikimedia Commons. All quotes from Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Originally posted on Lincolnian.org]

 

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 Immediate Past 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 andEdison: 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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We cannot have free government without elections – A. Lincoln

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Abraham LincolnDuring the U.S. Civil War, there were some who advised Abraham Lincoln to postpone the 1864 election. He refused to do so, saying:

We cannot have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.

Lincoln forged ahead in 1864 despite his belief that he would lose the upcoming presidential election in November; he insisted the democratic process was what they were fighting for, and that the election would continue as planned.

Lincoln was so convinced he would lose reelection that on August 23, 1864, he wrote what has become known as the “blind memorandum:”

This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward.

He folded the memorandum in half, asked each member of his perplexed cabinet to sign the back without reading it, then put it away for safekeeping.

The election went ahead as planned. Thousands of troops were able to vote, some by being allowed to return to their home states to cast a ballot, while some were able to vote for the first time in the field (in a sense, the first “mail-in” ballots). In the end, Lincoln won 55 percent of the popular vote (with only northern states voting, of course) to 45 percent for McClellan. The electoral vote was even more decisive: 212 for Lincoln and 21 for McClellan. Lincoln won 22 of the 25 northern states and was reelected in a landslide.

And yet, consider the fact that 45% of the Union voted for the party that was calling the war a failure, would immediately declare “peace,” dismember the Union, and perpetuate slavery. In short, a party treasonous to the Constitution and to the people of the nation. Nearly half the country voted against the country.

As I write this, the United States is only a few days from election day in the 2024 presidential election. Early voting has started and over 60 million people have cast their ballots. On Tuesday, millions more will vote. Voting is a responsibility that all Americans must take seriously. Everyone has both the right and the obligation to vote. We must vote.

As in 1864, the 2024 election again pits those who would protect the Constitution and the Union versus those who promise to violate the Constitution and have done so repeatedly in the past. This election is for those who believe the Constitution applies to ALL Americans, against those who believe it only applies to some of us. One party works to address issues through policy discussion, the other denies reality and spews falsehoods, insults, and violence. The choice is clear. Americanism or Fascism.

We don’t all have to agree on policy proposals. Real parties – and real Americans – acknowledge realities and work to find solutions. If we don’t like a proposal, we counter-propose and work toward solving the problem. Voting for saving democracy gives us the opportunity to negotiate the path forward. Voting to save democracy ensures the freedoms of all Americans. Conversely, voting to elevate authoritarianism and government of, by, and for a handful of billionaires is destroying democracy. It’s destroying America.

I voted early for Kamala Harris. It is the only choice to ensure the continuation of what Abraham Lincoln – and George Washington – fought so hard to create and defend.

Lincoln reminded us that:

“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.”

Vote for honor. Vote for Democracy.

 

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 Immediate Past 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 andEdison: 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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Was the 1864 Election Stolen? Lincoln, McClellan, and the Eight States Whose Results are Not What They Seem

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Election of 1864, Stolen?Abraham Lincoln won reelection in 1864. Or so we remember. But the results may not be what they seem, and some of the states had questionable legitimacy. I’ll be discussing this topic in a new presentation scheduled for Tuesday, October 29, 2024.

RSVP for the Zoom-only event here.

A week ago, I presented information on the incredible political upheaval that led to the 1864 election. The upheaval was so substantial that many voices were calling for the election to be postponed. Lincoln refused to postpone it, noting that:

We cannot have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.

While the conservative party (the Democrats at that time) ran a “peace” platform calling the war a failure and for breaking up the Union, the progressive party (the Republicans at the time) ran Lincoln for reelection with a War Democrat (the side of that party that also wanted to win the war) on a platform that called for winning the Civil War, restoring the Union, and calling for a Constitutional Amendment to end slavery. After I presented on those topics, my colleague, Ed Epstein, presented on the critical soldier vote, including whether they were enthusiastic Lincoln supporters or were coerced into voting for him? There is a great video of the earlier program you can watch on YouTube here.

In the new program on October 29, I’ll dig into the results of the election itself. After considerable concern that Lincoln could not win reelection, he took a second term in a landslide. But all was not what it seemed. Eight states in particular present significant insight into what was happening in the United States at the time. Three went to McClellan, two were invalidated, and three more only existed under questionable circumstances. Seriously, was Nevada even a state? And did Robert E. Lee try to disrupt the whole thing? I’ll take a look at each and what they say about the nation as a whole.

This should be a fascinating presentation and all accessible by Zoom. RSVP here for the October 29 program so we can get an approximate head count and so you can receive the Zoom link. The program begins at 6 pm Eastern Time.

[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 Immediate Past 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 andEdison: 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-Douglas – The Final debates – Quincy and Alton

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It is the final stretch before the fall elections. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas have had joint debates in Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, and Charleston, and Galesburg, plus each have given many dozens of individual speeches across Illinois. The final two joint debates occurred in quick succession in Quincy and Alton, two towns on the banks of the Mississippi River.

Lincoln-Douglas debates Quincy

Quincy

On October 13, the two men took the stage in Quincy in what was then called John’s Square but today is Washington Park. Approximately 10,000 to 15,000 people crowded into the square, many of whom claimed to be “Old Whigs” like Lincoln, who considered Henry Clay – a long-time leader of the Whig party – his “beau ideal of a statesman.” Because they were alternating who spoke first in a format that gave each of them plenty of time to present their views (as opposed to today’s “debates” in which each is given a scripted 2-minutes to answer a moderated question), it was Lincoln’s turn to begin. He reiterated what he had said in previous debates, reminding everyone that Douglas kept lying about Lincoln’s views and the party platform. Lincoln also reiterated his belief, and the belief of the Republican party at the time, that slavery was a moral wrong that should not be spread.

“We [the Republican Party] also oppose it as an evil so far as it seeks to spread itself. We insist on the policy that shall restrict it to its present limits.”

Republicans would focus on blocking the expansion of slavery into the western territories but abide by constitutional constraints that did not authorize federal abolition of slavery in the states where it already existed.

When Douglas’s turn came to speak, he said that:

“I will not argue the question whether slavery is right or wrong. I tell you why I will not do it. I hold that under the Constitution of the United States, each State of this Union has a right to do as it pleases on the subject of slavery.”

Douglas also denied Lincoln’s insinuation that Douglas has conspired with others to make slavery permanent. This denial stemmed from the first debate in Ottawa, where Lincoln implied that “Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James” (i.e., Douglas, Pierce, Taney, and Buchanan) had secretly worked together to nationalize slavery. Having said it in Ottawa, Lincoln dropped the line from future debates because it was too conspiratorial and without evidentiary support (although clearly Buchanan and Taney had so conspired). That didn’t stop Douglas from denying it at every debate thereafter.

Today, a bas-relief frieze sculpture depicts the event, while a low wall on either side of the sculpture features six pairs of “Point/Counterpoint” quotes take from the debate.

Lincoln-Douglas debates Alton

Alton

After Quincy, the two candidates hopped onto the same steamboat to travel to the next debate site in Alton. About 5,000 people gathered in front of the new city hall to hear the two men battle it out for one last joint debate. Many came from St. Louis, across the river from Alton, paying one dollar for each round-trip ticket. The Chicago and Alton Railroad offered half price fare from Springfield and elsewhere for those who wanted to attend the debate. Still, by this time most people had read about the debates in the newspapers, who had shorthand stenographers recording (more or less) verbatim what the two men were saying. The day was cloudy and fall weather was starting to settle in, which contributed to the lower turnout.

Douglas declared that the founders knew that the country had sectional differences and that they had deliberately left open the question of slavery for the states to decide.

“If they want slavery let them have it; if they do not want it, allow them to refuse to encourage it.”

Lincoln reiterated his “wish is that the further spread of it may be arrested, and that it may be placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction.”

The Alton city hall burned down in 1923, but life-size statues of Lincoln and Douglas stand on a platform of the site in commemoration.

Aftermath

The seven joint debates were critically important, although they didn’t change the almost certain outcome of the senate election. At the time, state legislatures chose senators [the 17th Amendment giving direct vote to the people wasn’t until 1913], and although Lincoln’s Republican party gained more votes, Democrats still dominated the Illinois legislature and thus selected the incumbent Douglas for another senate term. Unquestionably, Lincoln the vote counter knew his chances of winning the election under such a system was unlikely, but the debates made him a national figure. Lincoln made sure to collect the newspaper transcripts of all seven debates, which he had published in book form in the spring of 1860, thus reminding everyone of his and Douglas’s views on slavery. Because of the Freeport Doctrine – Douglas saying that any territory becoming a state could block slavery if it so wanted – the slave powers of the South would never support Douglas as the Democratic presidential nominee. That led to a split Democratic party in 1860, allowing Lincoln as the Republican nominee to win the election and become president.

And the war came.

[Photos of Quincy (top) and Alton (bottom) 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 Immediate Past 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 andEdison: 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-Douglas Debates: Galesburg

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Lincoln-Douglas Debates GalesburgWith the Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, and Charleston locations in the books, the Lincoln-Douglas Debates took a nearly three-week break before the two men met again for the fifth debate in Galesburg, about 120 miles north Springfield. Galesburg was, and is, the home of Knox College, a private liberal arts college founded in 1837. Originally called Knox Manual Labor College, the school had been organized by George Washington Gale for a colony of Presbyterians and Congregationalists. The name was changed to Knox College only a year before the famed debates, in 1837, presumably to broaden its outreach and because the country was already known as Knox County. Because of its role in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, the college seemed a natural place to host the Lincoln Studies Center led by Co-Directors Rodney O. Davis and Douglas L. Wilson, whose series of books documenting William Herndon’s sources of Lincoln’s early life have become essential tools in Lincoln scholarship.

With more than 15,000 people jammed onto the Knox campus, Galesburg welcomed the largest crowd for any of the seven debates. Perhaps appropriate for the town’s name, near-gale force winds had battered the area, and a heavy rain had fallen the day before and continued as the stage was being erected. To help protect both speakers and audience, the organizers moved the stage into the shadow of “Old Main,” the largest building on campus. Old Main still exists today and carries two plaques honoring Lincoln and Douglas on its outer walls. To reach the platform that day, Lincoln, Douglas, and other dignitaries needed to enter the front door of the building and crawl out a window. The self-taught Lincoln, according to tradition, joked that “At last I have gone through…college.”

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. He attacked Lincoln’s argument that the Declaration of Independence’s “all men are created equal” applied to all men, including Black men. Douglas vehemently reiterated his contrary view that, given the existence of slavery at the time and the fact that Thomas Jefferson and others were slaveholders, clearly the Declaration only applied to white men and that whites were superior to Blacks in all ways. Douglas postulated that given this “natural” disparity (as opposed to forced condition), slavery was not only right, but it was also the natural order and good for all involved.

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 about a week later, in the Mississippi River towns of Quincy and Alton. More on those in the next post.

[Photos of Old Main and the Lincoln-Douglas plaques 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 Immediate Past 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 andEdison: 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.