Tag: Fire of Genius

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Abraham Lincoln, Blacksmith?

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New Salem blacksmith shopAbraham Lincoln briefly considered apprenticing as a blacksmith. Most subsistence farmers also doubled as tradesmen, working as coopers (barrel makers), tanners (leather makers), distillers (whiskey), brickmakers, shoemakers, or blacksmiths. While still in Indiana he and Dennis Hanks had spent many evenings in the Gentryville general store and at Baldwin’s blacksmith shop trading stories and “yarns,” so Lincoln had seen many an hour of blacksmithing in action.

Blacksmiths were accorded an honored place in the village. They forged the plows, the tools, and the cookware needed to sustain life on the frontier. The village blacksmith was a “gunsmith, farrier, coppersmith, millwright, machinist, and surgeon general to all broken tools and implements,” one scholar put it. He could be called on to forge such a variety of implements as nails, horseshoes, chains, bullet molds, yoke rings, bear traps, bells, saws, and all the metal parts of looms, spinning wheels, and sausage grinders. Lincoln had been familiar with the cast iron plows he used when he was young. With its relatively high carbon content (over 2%), cast iron tends to be brittle, which caused problems for Lincoln back on the farm. On the other hand, iron could be cast into a variety of shapes using molds. As a blacksmith, Lincoln would have learned how to work with wrought iron, which has a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) and much tougher, easy to hammer into useful shapes, could be drawn out into thin wires, corrosion resistant, and more easily welded.

Later, during the Civil War, Lincoln would recall his short-lived experience with blacksmithing to describe his relationship with George B. McClellan, the man he would assign as General-in-Chief of the Union Army but later described as “having the slows” because of his lack of aggressiveness in battle. Lincoln described a blacksmith in his boyhood days that tried to put to a purposeful use a big piece of wrought-iron he had in the shop. Firing up the forge, the blacksmith put the iron on the anvil determined to make a sledgehammer out of it. Giving up on that after a while, he decided to draw it out and make a clevis (a U-shaped fastener). After a few whacks and pumping the bellows to heighten the fire he again stopped. “Okay, maybe a bolt.” Working it hard for a while longer it now was too thin even for a bolt. Frustrated with his lack of success trying to make something useful happen, he proclaimed, “darn you, I’m going to make a fizzle of you.” And with that he dunked it into the water and let if fizz. McClellan, Lincoln told his friend, is someone who should have been productive but no amount of working him hard could make him useful. McClellan’s career soon fizzled out.

Being a blacksmith was respectable work, but it was also hard work, Lincoln decided. The idea of toiling over a hot forge, slinging a heavy hammer for hours on end while sweat poured from his skin was unappealing. Given his distaste for the hard labor of subsistence farming, Lincoln chose not to pursue blacksmithing. He would find some other trade.

[Adapted from Lincoln: The Fire of Genius]

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius, now available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes and Noble (click on the respective links to pre-order). His previous books include Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity, 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 the Surveyor

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Lincoln the Surveyor by Lloyd OstendorfThe Sangamon County Deed Record on February 17, 1836 has this notation from Abraham Lincoln, the Surveyor.

“I hereby certify that the town of Petersburgh has been surveyed according to law, and that this is a correct plat of the same. A. Lincoln.”

“The Surveyor of Sangamon,” Lincoln later wrote in a third-person autobiography, “offered to depute to A[braham] that portion of his work which was within his part of the country. He accepted, procured a compass and chain, studied Flint, and Gibson a little, and went at it. This procured bread, and kept soul and body together.” Calhoun was a devout Democrat and the Whiggish Lincoln only took the job after he was assured his politics would not be held against him.

Over the three years he was deputy surveyor, he surveyed the towns of New Boston, Bath, Albany, Huron, and resurveyed the city of Petersburg. The city had been surveyed years before but Lincoln was asked to redo it when it began to grow more substantially, in part as New Salem began to fade away and its residents moved to nearby Petersburg. He also laid out the area that town fathers decided to name after its surveyor – Lincoln, Illinois. Lincoln christened the town with the juice from a watermelon. Beyond towns he also surveyed and laid out numerous roads and private properties, including a bridge over the Salt River at Musick Crossing. In one case, he found in resurveying some land that the seller had by error granted more land than he received payment for. Lincoln convinced his client, the descendant of the original buyer, to pay the cost of the additional land to the seller’s heirs. He was paid $2.50 for each quarter section of land, although as little as 25 cents for smaller lots.

Overall, Lincoln found surveying to be profitable both financially and in building relationships for his later political activities. “Mr. Lincoln was a good surveyor,” one investor noted, “he did it all himself, without help from anybody except chainmen.” The chainmen were men and boys would carry chains, drive stakes, and blaze trees for Lincoln, always with an ear out to hear Lincoln’s stories and jokes. Others were equally impressed with Lincoln’s honesty and industriousness. Whenever there was a dispute, both parties relied on Lincoln to settle the matter with his compass and chain.

[Adapted from my forthcoming book]

[Photo credit: Lincoln the Surveyor by Lloyd Ostendorf]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of 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.

Follow me for updates on my Facebook author page and Goodreads.

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Big News! New Book on the Way!

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David J Kent 2019If you follow my Facebook page (which you can do here if you don’t already), you may have already heard about my big news. For those who don’t (and why don’t you?), here is both the news and some additional info. Ready? BIG NEWS! I’m happy to announce that I have signed a contract with Rowman & Littlefield to publish my next Abraham Lincoln book.

There’s a long story behind the creation of this book, and no, I won’t bore you with it. Suffice to say I’ve been researching this topic for quite some time and that it blends my two career backgrounds – Science and Abraham Lincoln. I’ll have more updates, a title reveal, cover reveal, related content, and announcement of a special guest Foreword writer as the work progresses, but here’s some info to whet your appetite.

Rowman & Littlefield is a large, high-end independent publisher founded in 1949. Since that time it has acquired dozens of imprints and publishes everything from scholarly books for the academic market and trade books for the general market. My book is a trade book, written for a widely informed reader. Rowman, or sometimes just R&L, is based in nearby Maryland and has its own book distribution company to get books into Barnes and Noble and independent stores as well as Amazon and other online sales outlets. The plan is to produce hardcover, audio, and electronic (e.g., Kindle) books immediately, with a softcover book to follow in a year or two depending on sales.

Unlike the graphics heavy design of my three previous published books, the new Abraham Lincoln book will be more traditional in design. That means mostly text with a photo spray in the middle (or possibly interspersed throughout; final design is pending). The final word count will be between 80,000 and 90,000 words.

Oh, and there will be a special guest foreword by someone most people in both the political and Lincoln worlds will recognize. More on that in future updates.

My deadline for providing the manuscript is June 1st of this year, with a planned publication date in time for Lincoln’s birthday next year.

I’ll have more updates as time goes on, including the final title, cover, release date, and how to pre-order. And yes, before that I’ll let you know more about the topic and give a preview. You’ll get some hint by clicking around the articles I’ve posted on this website.

Back to writing!

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The Day Lincoln Met Louis Agassiz, Famous Scientist and Polygenist

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Louis AgassizLouis Agassiz arrived at the White House on January 15, 1865 with Massachusetts Congressman Samuel Hooper. The famous scientist would have his one and only meeting with Abraham Lincoln. While the two influential men had never met before, Hooper was well-known to Lincoln. It was Hooper’s home in Washington DC that George McClellan had used as headquarters when he commanded the Union army. Hooper was also briefly the father-in-law of Charles Sumner, who had married Hooper’s daughter but divorced after only a short marriage. Today, however, the focus was on Agassiz.

Lincoln had a penchant for science. He had given a series of lectures of “discoveries and inventions” shortly before being elected president. The expectation was that the two men would bond over their common interest. Journalist and Lincoln friend Noah Brooks, who was present during the meeting, later reported that the conversation “was not very learned.” The two men seemed unsure how to talk to each other. According to Brooks, Lincoln asked Agassiz for the correct pronunciation of his name, and then “prattled on about curious proper names in various languages, and odd correspondences between names of common things in different tongues.”

Agassiz did ask Lincoln if he had ever lectured, to which Lincoln outlined his previous “inventions” lecture, which he hoped to update so to prove there is nothing new under the sun. “I think I can show, at least in a fanciful way, that all the modern inventions were known centuries ago.” Agassiz encouraged him to finish the lecture. Agassiz departed shortly thereafter and Lincoln admitted to Brooks that he “wasn’t so badly scared, after all.” Lincoln had expected to be intimidated by the great scientist’s learning. Instead, he cross-examined Agassiz on things not in the books, which were readily available to him for reading.

This somewhat anti-climatic meeting belied both Lincoln’s inherent interests in science and Agassiz’s lifetime of scientific leadership. Perhaps the press of time and the drudges of a war finally running down after four years of horrendous conflict hung over the impromptu meeting. One would have liked the two of them to sit down and chat about science for hours on end. But the war took priority.

Born in Switzerland before becoming an American citizen, Agassiz is best known for his knowledge of natural history. He became a professor of zoology and geology at Harvard, from which he became a leading influencer on classification of the fishes, geological history, and the fossil record. He’s considered one of the founders of glaciology, although his views on the role of glaciers and ice on the formation of geological structures weren’t always correct. Agassiz damaged his scientific reputation by being a major advocate for polygenism, the idea that different “races” of humans were separately created, with all of the racist beliefs underpinning that idea.

The arguments over monogenism, polygenism, and “types of man” were entwined with the idea of “scientific racism,” more accurately, pseudoscience, used to rationalize the enslavement of African Americans. Lincoln became aware of these arguments as he read on science and tried to find a path toward removing slavery from the nation.

While they hadn’t personally met, Lincoln knew that Agassiz was one of the fifty charter members of the National Academy of Sciences, which Lincoln had signed into law in 1863. The meeting might have been less exciting than it could have been, but both men played significant roles as influencers of American views on race and slavery.

I’ll delve into this more in my forthcoming book, so stay tuned for more.

[Photo of Louis Agassiz: Wikimedia]

Follow me for updates on my Facebook author page and Goodreads.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of 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 Writer’s Life – 2020

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David J KentHeck of a year, wasn’t it? I’m sure I’m not alone in admitting that the year in a writer’s life didn’t go exactly as planned. And yet, looking back on what I wrote for 2019, I realize 2020 wasn’t that different, at least as far as the writing part goes. There was, however, one huge difference, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Royalties continue to trickle in for my three previous traditionally published books on Tesla, Edison, and Lincoln. Okay, maybe royalties have fallen to a drip. But my editor sent word in the spring that the Edison book would be coming out in a Chinese-language edition. Those licensing fees and royalties haven’t shown up yet, at least in part because of something called COVID.

Oh, you’ve heard of COVID? Of course you have. The rather unplanned pandemic did what pandemics tend to do, completely mess with everything previously considered normal in the world. Publishing was no exception. With stores closing temporarily in the spring and only partially reopening (and in some cases, reclosing) over the rest of the year, it was a tough time for actual bookstores. Barnes & Noble was already reworking its business model before being hit with guards standing outside the doors metering potential shoppers to a few at a time. Independent bookstores were especially hard hit. That said, Amazon and big box stores that also sell groceries (e.g., Target) had increasing book sales as the year progressed. With people sequestered at home, more people read more books. Like Amazon, publishers also did well as books replaced lost restaurant, movie, and bowling nights. Overall, print sales were up about 8% for the year and some publishers were reporting their best year ever. So I should see those Edison royalties eventually, maybe even in the spring. My two e-books also occasionally send royalties my way.

The writing life itself kept me incredibly busy in 2020. With my travel schedule reduced to zero, I spent more time reading and writing. Here’s some writing highlights:

  • Began a series of posts on whether Confederate monuments should be removed. I’m hoping to turn this into a book.
  • Wrote and delivered three presentations on Zoom (not counting my participation in dozens of additional Zoom meetings). I’ll moderate a panel in two weeks.
  • Three book reviews for the Lincoln Herald, an academic journal.
  • Produced eight book reviews for the Lincolnian, the newsletter of the Lincoln Group of DC.
  • Wrote an article for the Lincolnian on Lincoln’s Long Road to Emancipation.
  • Wrote an article for The Lincoln Forum Bulletin.
  • Had three separate contributions in the “From Our Readers” section of Writer’s Digest magazine.
  • Was interviewed on Facebook Live by filmmaker Annabel Park on Lincoln’s views of the current election.
  • Entered nine writing contests. Of these, seven are still under review (two didn’t win, although for one I received very helpful feedback).
  • Collaborated with Ru on a planned travel book.

And that isn’t even the BIG NEWS!

[For those with good hearing, that’s a drum roll in the background]

On December 31, 2020, the very last day in the year of the corona, I signed a formal contract with a well known publisher, who will publish and distribute my new book on Lincoln’s interest in science and technology. 

This is the culmination of years of research and toil. There’s a long story behind the production of this book, but I finally got around to putting forth a proposal this year. My agent shopped it around and two publishers expressed interest. Negotiations were to be had, and on the final day of 2020 I carefully scrawled my official signature at the bottom of the fifth page of micro-print. That’s just the beginning, of course. My deadline to provide the full manuscript is July 1st, and the projected date of release is February 2022. I’ll provide more details as the project progresses, but suffice to say I’m very happy to be proceeding…and will be exceedingly busy writing for the next several months. I can’t travel anyway so I might as well be writing.

So what is the plan for 2021?

In case you skipped over the big news right above this paragraph, the first six months will be consumed with writing my Lincoln book. I will live and breathe the book during that time.

In my spare moments I’ll continue posting essays related to Confederate monuments with a goal of compiling them into book format at some point. I’ll also squeeze in essays for the travel book collaboration, although realistically that will have to wait until the summer. There are three other book projects that will sit in some level of dormancy until the second half of the year. I’ve cut my intended reading goal from my usual 75 books down to 50 books to free up some time for writing. I’ll also squeeze in some book reviews for the Lincolnian and possibly the Lincoln Herald. In the latter stages of the year I’ll pick up my previous goals of producing articles for journals and magazines, at least part of which will be marketing-related for the new book. Finally, I’ll likely increase my speaking schedule, especially as the book release date gets closer (and into 2022 once it hits stores).

Needless to say, I’ll be spending a lot of time at my computer in 2021.

Happy New Year to all!

Follow me for updates on my Facebook author page and Goodreads.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of 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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What Killed Abraham Lincoln’s Mother?

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Nancy Hanks LincolnNancy Hanks Lincoln died October 5, 1818 of “the milk sick.” Or did she? While Abraham Lincoln biographers generally attribute her death to milk sickness, a possibility exists that it might have actually been something else. The story goes like this:

Early in October, Thomas and Elizabeth Sparrow, relatives of Nancy who had joined them in Indiana the previous year, died of the milk sickness. Within two weeks, Nancy began showing symptoms and after a week of agony, died. While the Lincolns and others knew vaguely it was associated with milk, no one had yet connected the disease with the ultimate source. Some had noticed the seasonality of the disease and that it seemed to occur more often in years in which natural forage vegetation was in short supply. Less than normal rain in 1818 had resulted in dusty conditions and low crop yields. As a result, the Lincolns’ livestock instinctively foraged for food wherever they could find it, often into the underbrush of the neighboring forest. What they found was a weedy plant now known to be white snakeroot (current scientific name Ageratina altissima).

While early observations suggesting plants as a source occurred before Nancy’s death, it was not until 1834 that a physician and scientist named Anna Pierce Hobbs Bixby learned the connection to white snakeroot and led a campaign to eradicate the weed from her Rock Creek, Illinois community. Ohio farmer William J. Vermilya independently implicated white snakeroot in 1837. Given the lack of scientific infrastructure, these early discoveries were insufficient to settle the issue and as late as 1841 the Kentucky legislature was offering $2,000 to anyone “who shall, within five years after the passage of this act” succeed in discovering “the true cause of the disease, now known to be caused by the poisonous effects of the wild, flowering white snakeroot transmitted by the milk, butter, and flesh of cattle consuming the plant.”

That “true cause” was a natural toxin called tremetone that remains active even after the plant was dried for hay. Sometimes farmers noticed listlessness, trembling, and peculiar odors found in the breath of cattle, sheep, and horses. The tremetone easily passes into the milk, which was how most humans were exposed to the toxin. Milk sickness was not a pleasant disease. One of the symptoms is a scent similar to acetone (similar to today’s nail polish remover). Persistent vomiting, abdominal pains, muscle stiffness, and eventually tremors, respiratory distress, and agonizing pain were obvious to the Lincoln family. Not seen was the intense inflammation of Nancy’s gastrointestinal tract, enlarged liver and kidneys, and swelling of her heart. Milk sickness was a painful death.

The definitive conclusion that milk sickness was caused by tremetone was not determined until the early twentieth century. In 1818, all the preadolescent Abe could do was helplessly watch his mother die. Death from the lack of scientific knowledge was one reason Lincoln later supported the greater use of science in agriculture—and the broad dissemination of information to farms of all sizes throughout the nation.

But wait. Tremetone? Virtually everyone that mentions milk sickness says the toxic is called tremetol, not tremetone. For those who are into organic chemistry, the “-ol” means it is the alcohol version of the chemical; the “-one” means it is the ketone version. [Since this isn’t a chemistry lesson, you can look up the difference.] Tremetone is found in tremetol, which is actually a toxin mixture from the aforementioned white snakeroot plant. While most sources say the tremetol is the toxic component, biomedical researcher and Lincoln historian Edward Steers, Jr. argues that tremetone is the actual toxic chemical. Like Steers, I’m also both a scientist and Lincoln historian, so I think I’ll go along with him on this one.

But wait, there’s more.

Steers also suggests that Nancy may not have died of milk sickness at all. When you think about it, the circumstances seem suspect, not the least of which is the fact that no one else in the Lincoln family died despite all of them drinking the same milk and eating the same food. Steers suggests that Nancy may possibly died of brucellosis, a bacterial disease associated with unpasteurized milk or undercooked meat, especially from goats but also from cows and pigs. Symptoms are similar to milk sickness, including fever, sweating, vomiting, weight loss, and muscle pain. Because it is contagious, Nancy may have gotten it when she was nursing the Sparrow family.

So was it milk sickness, brucellosis, or something completely different? In truth, we don’t really know. The series of symptoms and deaths were attributed to milk sickness at the time, but as we’ve seen, they didn’t really understand what was causing the disease, just that it had some vague connection to milk. Or so they thought. Since it’s impossible to accurately diagnose from the limited anecdotal hearsay available from family and friends, biographers stick to the generally accepted story that Lincoln’s mother died from milk sickness. But maybe she didn’t. This is an important reminder that historians need to be careful when they simply report old sources without fully researching the details. And perhaps, that more scientists need to be historians.

[Adapted from my forthcoming book]

David J. Kent is an avid traveler, scientist, and Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World as well as 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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Isaac Newton Becomes Abraham Lincoln’s First Commissioner of the Department of Agriculture

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Lincoln Department AgricultureOn June 30, 1862, the Senate confirmed Isaac Newton as Abraham Lincoln’s first Commissioner of the Department of Agriculture, which Lincoln had signed into existence a month earlier. Having come to despise the hard labor of his early years on subsistence farms, Lincoln had always favored government intervention to help people better their condition and looked for ways to bring science to agriculture.

In his first annual message to Congress on December 3, 1861, Lincoln wrote:

Agriculture, confessedly the largest interest of the nation, has not a department nor a bureau, but a clerkship only, assigned to it in the Government. While it is fortunate that this great interest is so independent in its nature as to not have demanded and extorted more from the Government, I respectfully ask Congress to consider whether something more can not be given voluntarily with general advantage…While I make no suggestions as to details, I venture the opinion that an agricultural and statistical bureau might profitably be organized.

Congress took the hint. With his Republican Party in control and uncooperative Southern representatives no longer an impediment to action, Congress passed a bill creating the Department of Agriculture. Its goal was to institutionalize science in agriculture and thus put farming on the path to the future.

The bill stipulated that the goal of the new independent department, sent to the President by the aptly named Galusha Grow, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Solomon Foot, President of the Senate pro tem, stipulated that the role of the new independent Department was:

to acquire and to diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word, and to procure, propagate, and distribute among the people new and valuable seeds and plants.

In his next annual message to Congress, Lincoln eagerly reported that he had “caused the Department of Agriculture of the United States to be organized.” The new Department would develop scientific experiments, collect statistics, test new seeds and plants, and disseminate any knowledge gained to agriculturists. [cite From the bill] As innovative variations were developed, seeds, cereals, and cuttings would be distributed to farmers for widespread propagation. New knowledge on nutrition, soil management, tilling strategies, and crop rotation would also be relayed to the farmers so they could improve crop yields for a growing nation. Lincoln’s vision of bringing scientific benefits to the people would begin.

Lincoln called Agriculture his “people’s department.” Isaac Newton—no relation to the famed English astronomer, mathematician, and physicist—was an agriculturist who had made acquaintance with Lincoln while selling farm products to the White House. Derided early on for his lack of formal education, Lincoln took a liking to him, perhaps because he could relate to his initiative and self-schooling. Newton turned out to be well suited for the job.

Near the end of 1862, Newton sent a 54-page handwritten account to Lincoln, the first annual report from the Department. After describing the history of agriculture through the ages, Newton reported excellent harvests of crops across the northern states even with the loss of many men serving the war effort. He noted that the North, with its free labor, was faring better than the South, whose slave labor system harmed fertility and agricultural yield.

Newton went on to tout agricultural science advancements made by inventor Jethro Tull (horse drawn hoe, mechanical seed drill, improved plow), chemist Sir Humphrey Davy (Elements of Agricultural Chemistry), agricultural writer Arthur Young (Annals of Agriculture), and the reapers of John Henry Manny and Cyrus McCormick, with which Lincoln was already familiar from his legal career. Reiterating Lincoln’s Wisconsin speech, Newton noted that agricultural progress requires “a more thorough Knowledge and practice…as a Science and an Art.”

All of this would eventually lead to a more thorough education of the farmer in physical science and political economy. In too much of the nation, Newton wrote, farmers continued to cultivate depleted soil, thus necessitating the application of manure as fertilizer in an unwinnable battle against soil nutrient exhaustion. Using science, including proper tilling practices, crop rotation, and nutrient preservation, he argued, agriculture could provide greater consistency and magnitude of production for decades to come.

Lincoln had successfully turned his much-maligned farming drudgery into a department that would transform American agriculture.

[Adapted from a work in progress]

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!