O Captains, My Captains

The Washington Post has offered a comparison of Lincoln’s speeches with Trump’s. It’s depressing reading – as one commenter puts it, “We’re comparing apples and feces, here.” – but maybe skip the Trump parts and revel in the beautiful humanity of Lincoln’s words. I particularly liked this quote about immigrants. As a Canadian living in one of the world’s most diverse cities, it rings true. Happy Canada Day!

I esteem foreigners no better than other people, nor any worse. They are all of the great family of men, and if there is one shackle upon any of them, it would be far better to lift the load from them than to pile additional loads upon them . . . If they can better their condition by leaving their old homes, there is nothing in my heart to forbid them coming, and I bid them all Godspeed.

Source: O Captains, My Captains – The Washington Post

Bible underscores Lincoln’s belief he was to end slavery

As with a few of their other holdings, the Lincoln Presidential Library’s new Bible acquisition is of dubious connection to the man. He may have thumbed through it once or two, but an eighteen pound Bible is not really a book that lends itself to light reading. (Pun intended. Also, eighteen pounds?!)

A Bible given to Abraham Lincoln in the final months of the Civil War ties together the 16th president’s budding views on spirituality and his belief that God was calling him to end slavery as well as his widow’s labors to solidify his religious standing, historians say. The King James Bible was eventually given by Mary Lincoln to Noyes W. Miner, a beloved Springfield neighbor and a Baptist minister whose descendants donated it to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, which unveiled it to th

Source: Bible underscores Lincoln’s belief he was to end slavery – News – The Repository – Canton, OH

The Lincoln Memorial as a pyramid?

The WaPo looks at the discussions (and arguments) that marked the Lincoln Memorial planning. We forget that the now beloved monument was once an edgy and divisive design. Included in this article are some of the designs that were rejected. It’s interesting to wonder if they’d have been accepted as the Greek temple eventually was.

Bacon’s design drew wide praise, but also criticism. The Illinois chapter of the American Institute of Architects passed a resolution calling Bacon’s design “purely Greek and entirely un-American.” Sculptor Gutzon Borglum complained, “We are about to spend $2 million upon a … cold, classical meaningless temple” with no mark outside about the humble man it memorializes. “Into the middle of that,” he said, “we are going to drop a statue of Lincoln” and “upon the doormat we are going to put ‘Lincoln Memorial.’ ”

 

Source: The Lincoln Memorial as a pyramid? The crazy designs Congress considered. – The Washington Post

Courting Mr. Lincoln

I gave up on fiction a few years ago, but I’m curious about this new book. Lincoln’s live-in friendship with Joshua Speed is a topic I find endearing, and a great novelist can often make fiction feel like real history. (See also: Gore Vidal’s Lincoln.)

Abraham Lincoln is irresistible to writers. Historians have delved into Lincoln’s depression, his team of rivals and the hunt for his killer. Now, more than 150 years after Lincoln’s assassination, novelist Louis Bayard weighs in with “Courting Mr. Lincoln,” a rich, fascinating and romantic union of fact and imagination about young Lincoln, the woman he would marry and his beloved best friend.

Source: Book review | Abraham Lincoln, his suitors give heart to warm tale – Entertainment & Life – The Columbus Dispatch – Columbus, OH

Montana’s reaction to news of Lincoln’s death

I was on the fence about this link, as the article it leads to is rife with ads, and won’t let anyone with an adblocker access it before the adblocker is disabled. But it’s beautifully designed, and I like that the newspaper is making use of its archives to give citizens a glimpse of their state’s past.

The accounts of the assassination hit The Montana Post in its Saturday, April 29, 1865 edition…

The Montana Post, squarely Republican in its leaning, was doleful and respectful in tone, chronicling the reaction of the community. Yet, the Post and its politics were almost certainly in the minority. Virginia City had originally been named “Varina” after Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ wife. Vigilante, tax assessor and first superintendent of Yellowstone National Park Nathaniel Pitt Langford recalled that most people around Virginia City were secessionists, “more disloyal as a whole than Tennessee or Kentucky ever was.”

Source: ‘Our hearts bleed as we write’: Montana’s reaction to news of Abraham Lincoln’s death | State & Regional | billingsgazette.com

Marx to Lincoln

I did a cursory search a few years ago when I heard Karl Marx had authored… something on the US Civil War. A book? Essays? Opinions? I wasn’t able to unearth the results on Archive.org. But it seems from this article that he also wrote letters – this not-particularly-stirring one was sent to Lincoln, to congratulate him on his 1864 election win.

To mark the May 5, 1818 birthday of Karl Marx, Fight Back News Service is circulating a work he authored in 1864, a statement of congratulations to President Lincoln upon his reelection.

To mark the May 5, 1818 birthday of Karl Marx, Fight Back News Service is circulating a work he authored in 1864, a statement of congratulations to President Lincoln upon his reelection.

Source: It’s Karl Marx’s birthday, read his letter to Abraham Lincoln | Fight Back!

How Abraham Lincoln helped rig the Senate for Republicans 

The modern conclusions drawn here are very questionable, but the Civil War history was pretty edifying: I knew that Lincoln had pushed through the statehood for a couple of states, but the political impact had never been fully clear until reading this.

This largely forgotten act of line-drawing enabled one of the most consequential gerrymanders in American history. Because the virtually unpopulated Nevada became its own territory, Republicans could admit it as a state just four years later. That gave the Party of Lincoln two extra seats in the Senate — helping prevent Democrats from simultaneously controlling the White House and both houses of Congress until 1893.

Nor was this selective admission of the Republican state of Nevada an isolated case. Among other things, the reason why there are two Dakotas — despite the fact that both states are so underpopulated that they each only rate a single member of the House of Representatives to this day — is because Republicans won the 1888 election and decided to celebrate by giving themselves four senators instead of just two.

Source: The forgotten history of how Abraham Lincoln helped rig the Senate for Republicans – ThinkProgress

The end of the party of Lincoln

The Washington Post offers an opinion piece on how Trump’s attack on the 14th Amendment severs the modern GOP’s connection to “The Party of Lincoln”.

Republicans intended for the birthright citizenship provision to ensure that African Americans’ citizenship rights could not be abridged by racist Southerners. It was meant to protect the rights of former slaves who had just recently been liberated from bondage, as well as their children. In this way, both the current generation and the next would be the inheritors of freedom.

Now the leader of that same party has proposed to destroy the essence of the 14th Amendment. Trump’s comments underscore how far the Republican Party has drifted from its roots. Ending birthright citizenship would create two separate classes of people: those with federally protected rights and those without.

Source: The end of the party of Lincoln

Tony Kushner and Sarah Vowell

Kudos to Andrea Simakis for providing this very extensive recounting of a recent talk by two unusual Lincoln biographers: The Lincoln screenwriter Tony Kushner, and the hipster historian Sarah Vowell, author of the hilarious and weird, Assassination Vacation. I’m hoping to find some video from this event, but if that fails at least I have this wonderful little anecdote in which to revel:

“Listen,” Goodwin told a still-wobbling Kushner. “When I started ‘Team of Rivals’ 10 years ago, I felt the same way you’re feeling now – I had no idea if I could pull this off, and it seemed impossible to contribute anything new about Lincoln.”

And, she added, to try to understand Lincoln “seemed hubristic.”

“But I can promise you one thing,” he remembers her saying. “Whether you succeed or if you fail, you will never regret the time you spend in his company.”

Source: Playwright Tony Kushner, public radio’s Sarah Vowell to talk Abraham Lincoln at CWRU (photos) | cleveland.com