Tag Archives: abraham-lincoln

The Publishers’ Favorite President

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It’s Presidents’ Week, so what better time to learn about the 16th President? Regardless of your interest level, there’s something out there for you: This article says there are over 14000 books about Abraham Lincoln. (The 42000 on that Amazon link is inflated by double counts for new covers, hardback/paperback, etc.)  It also suggests that, if you wanted to add your own work to that enormous stack of books at the Lincoln Library, you’d have a good shot at getting it published!

“There are so many Lincoln geeks that buy everything new that comes out,” says Cathy Langer, the lead book buyer at the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver. She adds that in her years as a buyer, she has rarely turned down a title about the 16th president…

“The Lincoln canon is exhaustive, but it’s inexhaustible,” says Mr. Holzer. “And the amazing thing is that every important book inspires three more in the way of commentary or disagreement or embellishment.”

via Publishers’ Favorite President – WSJ.com.

Lincoln’s Pardons

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This Disunion piece talks about one case that Lincoln refused to pardon (rightfully so, in my opinion), but spends just as much time discussing his liberal application of the clemency right.  To me, this is one of Lincoln’s most endearingly humane qualities.

There were three areas in which Lincoln’s pardoning power could be applied. The first related to cases in the civil courts. During his tenure, Lincoln reviewed 456 civil cases; 375 of them – over 82 percent — received pardons. The second class had to do with those in rebellion against the government. This being the Civil War, more than half the country qualified.

The third category was in military cases. It was here that Lincoln received the most criticism for what was perceived as his interference in the flow of military justice and discipline. He made it clear from the beginning that he was “unwilling for any boy under 18 to be shot,” and he had a tendency to pardon youths who had fallen asleep on guard duty or had deserted. Gen. Joseph Hooker once sent an envelope to the president containing the cases of 55 convicted and doomed deserters; Lincoln merely wrote “Pardoned” on the envelope and returned it to Hooker.

via The Limits of Lincoln’s Mercy – NYTimes.com.

Podcast #6 – Rise With the Occasion

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Whew. That was a struggle. First in that condensing info to create a Lincoln podcast is more difficult than researching a long podcast. Second in that my computer decided to erase said podcast instead of converting it to MP3.  There’s nothing better, when you’re already overdue on the project and up past your bedtime, than to have to start over!  That said, it’s Lincoln’s birthday, and there’s a man who both started over many times and didn’t complain about it.  I’ll be doing many more Lincoln-themed podcasts, so with this instalment I tried to examine his early life and how he developed his political and moral philosophies.

To listen to this week’s podcast, visit the February page and click the link to download.

How did you celebrate Abe’s 204th?

Happy Birthday, Abe

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OK, OK, his birthday’s actually tomorrow. But if I can stretch a birthday celebration into a birthweek celebration, surely Lincoln deserves it too. I mean, check this out:

The mighty American star system has elevated and demoted thousands of people over the 236 years since the propagandistic arts were first torqued up in the Declaration of Independence. But the supreme champion of the American personality cult has been Abraham Lincoln. Given the hyperbole which frequently attaches to much-admired Americans, there is a temptation to assume that Lincoln could not possibly deserve the stratospheric elevation he has received. But he does.

Ignore the byline on this piece – Conrad Black is the anti-Lincoln, in so many ways – but read it if you don’t have time for Team of Rivals.  (That said, you should really make time for Team of Rivals.)

via How Lincoln Emerged in the Stratosphere of Greatness – The New York Sun.

Then, Thenceforth and Forever Acid Free

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I’m proclaiming this week Emancipation Proclamation week here at the CWP.  It’s just too big an anniversary for all the mainstream news outlets to ignore, and they’re proffering some fantastic articles I want to share.

The video here lets you see what the Proclamation actually looks like. As the article says, it’s wonderfully, revealingly banal.  I love the ribbons and the affixed seal.  As a history fanatic with ridiculously sweaty hands, though, I was sent to new depths of stress-sweats watching the curator touching the paper with her bare hands.  All the while talking about methods to keep the acid out of the paper.

But what’s pretty amazing about the juxtaposition here — the document that bears the phrase “forever free,” folded and be-ribboned — is how eloquently it expresses technological frailty as a symptom of human frailty. The Proclamation wasn’t written double-sided because people couldn’t afford paper back then, or because they thought paper was more enduring than parchment, or because, indeed, they made any strategic decision at all to write the Proclamation the way they did; it was written that way because that’s just how things were done at that particular moment in our history. I asked Archives representatives about the double-sided nature of the Proclamation; they replied that “writing on both sides of the document was the convention of the time. It was written on a folded folio so that they could have four writing surfaces.” That’s it: Folio was the convention, so that’s what they did. (The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation — the document that announced the Emancipation would take effect on January 1, 1863 — is written in the same format.) Technology isn’t just about tools; it’s about the assumptions and conventions that inform our use of those tools. And in the America of 1863, matters of national business were conducted with folded paper and punches and ribbons. Not for reasons that were transcendent, but for reasons that were wonderfully, revealingly banal. 

via The Emancipation Proclamation Was Written Double-Sided – Megan Garber – The Atlantic.

It’s Heeeeere!

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I’m in under the wire of my deadline, but I can proudly say I’ve checked a resolution off my list already: The first ever Civil War Podcast is ready to go! (Take that, 2013!)

To marvel at my lucid writing and dulcet tones (I know, I know – I am an admitted amateur!) click the Podcast tab in the menu bar, then the January link. Clicking on the “0101 the emancipation proclamation 1” link on the January page will download a copy of the audio file to your hard drive.*

The topic is, as you can no doubt guess, the Emancipation Proclamation, which was signed on this day in 1863. Much like Lincoln, I was slow to get moving on the topic, but as I’m sure Salmon Chase would say of me, “so you see, the woman moves.”

Sadly, I decided to scale back my podcasty undertaking from a daily podcast to a weekly one (frankly, it takes a lot longer to research, write and record a 6 minute podcast than you’d think) but I hope you enjoy the presentation, which includes a piano intro/outro of “We Are Coming Through the Cotton Fields”, performed by my good friend, Tom Nagy. Hopefully his lovely playing will offset my monotone.

*I need to find a solution for embedding the link without incurring hosting surcharges. Podcasting is not a cheap hobby!

“It’s Not You, It’s Me”

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Slate has titled this, “It’s Not You, It’s Me”, which I’m sure Lincoln would openly subtitle, “(It Was Totally Her)”.

Those who’ve read Team of Rivals will know about Lincoln’s sit-com worthy romantic entanglement with Mary Owens. (And those who haven’t, should!)  Here, Slate has provided a scanned copy of what Kearns Goodwin called one of the least romantic offers of marriage ever.

To her credit, Mary turned him down, and Lincoln was left to laugh with friends about how spurned he felt by the one he didn’t want in the first place.

Abraham Lincolns letter to Mary Owens: breaking off an engagement that wasnt.

A Terminal Case of the ‘Slows’

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Another good Disunion article, this one offering a neat take on Lincoln’s visit to the Army of the Potomac after Antietam: Where Lincoln arrived worried that the troops would follow McClellan into revolt against Republican policies (to wit, the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation), the support they showed him led him to believe he was both the de facto and de jure Commander-in-Chief.  McClellan’s ouster was assured from that point.

Hoping to bestir his inert commander, in early October Lincoln visited Antietam and the army he sarcastically referred to as “General McClellan’s bodyguard…”

After returning from Antietam, Lincoln was convinced that “I am now stronger with the Army of the Potomac than McClellan,” and he had Halleck order his general to “cross the Potomac and give battle to the enemy or drive him south.” But move the general would not. He bombarded Washington with excuses: exhausted troops; unknown terrain; a river too deep to cross or not deep enough to keep the Confederates from Washington; insufficient numbers of wagons; broken cannons; the enemy’s superior numbers; and too few boots and blankets. When he reported that his horses were “absolutely broken down from fatigue and want of flesh,” Lincoln displayed a rare flash of temper: “Will you pardon me for asking,” he telegraphed, “what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigue anything?”

In the words of his secretary John Nicolay, Lincoln kept “poking sharp sticks under little Mac’s ribs.”

via A Terminal Case of the ‘Slows’ – NYTimes.com.

The Abraham Lincoln Reading List

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In the wake of the Spielberg film, I’m trying to prevent the blog from becoming all-Lincoln-all-the-time, but there are some quality articles supporting the press tour.  Here’s a helpful reading list, suggested by Civil War scholars, as well as their favorite Lincoln anecdotes.  It’s capped by some bullet point facts, some of which I’d never heard nor realized before:

• Lincoln was never photographed with his wife Mary, or with his family.

• Abraham Lincoln died without a will. His estate, worth approximately $85,000, was divided into thirds: a third for his widow (Mary Todd), and a third for each of his sons.

• The Lincoln Penny was first issued in 1909 to commemorate Abraham Lincoln’s 100th birthday, making it the first coin to display a U.S. president.

via Bill Lucey: The Abraham Lincoln Reading List: Recommendations and Suggestions.

Abraham Lincoln: president … and wrestler?

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This is not a website I ever dreamed I’d be linking to, but the World Wrestling Entertainment blog has a feature on Lincoln’s wrestling history. With the accompanying photo, I couldn’t resist reposting it.

“It may have been under the rules that Lincoln would have won the match,” White explained. “But what really endeared Lincoln to this group of young men was that Lincoln didn’t want to win the match when he was obviously the stronger and better wrestler.” Instead, the two men agreed to simply shake hands out of respect. “It spoke volumes about the kind of person Lincoln became,” White said.

WWE.com: Abraham Lincoln: president … and wrestler?.