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The Spin on History | |
| An editorial columnist asked, "Harding or Truman? Will our President develop a decisive foreign policy like Truman, who stumbled at the beginning, only to become known as the president responsible for the Marshall Plan? Or will Clinton end up like the hapless Warren G. Harding, who set in motion a policy of retreat and isolation? Why this hunger for corollaries, this need to "compare and contrast"? Analogy is the hoary device beloved of political commentators and journalists. | 1 |
| The trouble is that history, like an individual genius, resists analogy. One lesson of Lincoln's administration is the degree to which contingency rules human events. Lincoln was a believer in the parts played by luck and personality. As David McCullough said of Truman, "It was luck, good and bad, and the large influence of personality, that determined the course of events time and again." The same stubborn tenacity that enabled Lincoln to triumph over George McClellan in 1864 made him fire the same general two years earlier—an act that propelled McClellan to be Lincoln's opponent. | 2 |
| The truth is, no one had a clue what kind of president Lincoln would be when he was elected, what problems he would confront— or when. That is why it tickles when people ask what Lincoln would do if he were around today. The world our current presidents inherit isn't the world Lincoln inherited, even though the hot spots are similar—racism, multiculturalism, and political correctness— leading to division, divisiveness, and "civil war." The difference is that the country is moving in a direction opposite from the pluralistic society for which Lincoln strove. In other words, Lincoln helped make us a pluralistic society ("the United States 'is' rather than the United States 'are'"). We are returning to the United States of many. | 3 |
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The Spoken Word: Lincoln Group Activities | |
| The Lincoln Memorial Association of the Lincoln Shrine in Redlands, California, heard Charles Strozier discuss "God, Lincoln, and the [End Page 33] Civil War" at the sixty-second annual Watchorn Lincoln Dinner on February 12. Strozier focused on the causal relationship between the idea of the apocalypse and slavery in regard to figures such as Lincoln. | 4 |
| The twenty-first annual Abraham Lincoln Symposium was held February 12 in the Old State Capitol, Springfield. "New Directions in Lincoln Studies" included papers by Edward M. Bruner ("New Salem as a Contested Site"), Glen W. Davidson ("Abraham Lincoln and the DNA Controversy"), and James Gilreath ("Guilt, Innocence, Forensic Science, Faith and the Lincoln Forgers"). Comments were by Richard S. Taylor. The association banquet was held that evening, with several Lincoln speeches performed by actor Sam Waterston, who portrayed Lincoln in the 1993 revival of the play Abe Lincoln in Illinois in New York. In describing his interest in Lincoln, Waterston used quantum theory as a metaphor because it "describes something that is real" and thus "relates to the character and nature of Abraham Lincoln, which are equally as elusive and equally as real." | 5 |
| The sixtieth annual Pilgrimage of the American Legion to the Lincoln Tomb was also held February 12 in Springfield; the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars pilgrimage was February 13. | 6 |
| The Lincoln Club of Delaware heard James W. Symington, a descendant of John Hay, deliver "A Hayride with Abraham Lincoln" at the annual Lincoln Dinner on February 10. Eric Rise presented "Abraham Lincoln and Civil Rights during the Civil War" on November 13. | 7 |
| In his weekly radio broadcast to the nation on February 12, President Bill Clinton discussed Lincoln in the context of the Los Angeles earthquake twenty-six days before. To Clinton, we satisfy Lincoln's call to "the better angels of our nature" when we respond to others in need. Clinton called Lincoln "The Great Conciliator" and asked the recurring Lincoln question, "Can we do better?" | 8 |
| On April 14 John Lattimer delivered the tenth annual Lloyd Ostendorf Lecture at Lincoln Memorial University. His presentation covered "medical and ballistic details of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln." President Scott D. Miller and Museum Director Stephen G. Hague were speakers at the May 5 dedication of the Abraham Lincoln Museum Library Reading Room. | 9 |
| Phillip C. Stone's annual pilgrimage to the Lincoln Cemetery (north of Harrisonburg, Virginia, where Lincoln's father Thomas was born in 1778) took place on February 12. Pat Murphy described the gathering for the January 14 Harrisonburg Daily News-Record. | 10 |
| On February 21, I presented the slide lecture "Abraham Lincoln" [End Page 34] at Washington's Headquarters State Historic Site in Newburgh, New York. | 11 |
| The ninetieth Lincoln Day luncheon of the Illinois Republican party was held in Springfield on February 11 and honored Congressman Robert Michel. | 12 |
| The annual dinner of the New Salem Lincoln League on February 19 featured an address by Norman Hellmers, superintendent of the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. | 13 |
| The Lincoln Group of Florida heard Gabor Boritt on March 12. His "And the War Came: Lincoln and the Question of Individual Responsibility" was preceded by the fourth annual Basler Memorial Lincoln Symposium featuring Arlyn Katims's "The New York City Draft Riots" and Stephen Hague's "Treasures of the Abraham Lincoln Museum." The first ten years of records of that Lincoln group were placed in the Abraham Lincoln Museum of Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee. Gary R. Planck's useful directory of Lincoln organizations and publications appeared in the September Newsletter. | 14 |
| The seventh annual Harmon Memorial Lincoln Lecture, James A. Rawley's "Lincoln and His War Generals," was held March 4 at Washburn University, along with the monthly meeting of the Lincoln Club of Topeka. Rawley concluded that Lincoln quickly learned the nuisance of leading a nation in war, especially the handling of the arrogant McClellan, bad-tempered Hooker, and tentative Meade. On May 5, members heard Dale Jirik discuss Mentor Graham. The April 10 minutes carried "Remembering Judge Harman" by James R. James. On September 8, Bill Stumpff started the new club year with "Lincoln and the Press." The club also compiled a directory of members. | 15 |
| John Hennessey spoke to the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia on February 12 about "Lincoln and the Common Soldier: The Diverse Motivations of the Ordinary Soldier in Taking Up Arms for the Union." I spoke on "Abraham Lincoln: Our Ever-Present Contemporary" at the April 19 meeting. "Valiant Woman: Clara Barton's Role in the Civil War" was the title of Stephen B. Oates's address at the May 17 annual banquet. On September 20, Kerry Childress spoke on Lincoln's summer White House and its restoration. Ann Wilson discussed the relationship between Lincoln and "Smiler" Colfax on October 18. The annual Landes Lecture was held November 15, entitled the "Hoffman Daguerreotype." The group has compiled a new member directory. | 16 |
| "'The Whole Family of Man': Lincoln and the Last Best Hope Abroad" was presented by James M. McPherson on March 23 to [End Page 35] the Lincoln Group of New York. On May 4, the group heard Grant Romer and Joseph Buberger discuss one of the Lincoln field's hottest controversies, whether the Buberger daguerreotype was the very first camera portrait of Lincoln. On November 17, Lloyd Ostendorf discussed the authenticity of a document he believes to be the surviving second page of Lincoln's reading copy of the Gettysburg Address. | 17 |
| Harold Holzer and Mark E. Neely, Jr., presented "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: The Civil War in Art" at the January 14 meeting of the Civil War Round Table (Chicago). The February 11 meeting was Robert V. Remini's "Henry Clay, Slavery, and the Coming of the Civil War"; the September 9 meeting heard my "Abraham Lincoln—Our Ever-Present Contemporary"; and the December 9 meeting was David E. Long's "'I Shall Never Recall a Word': Emancipation and the Race Issue in the 1864 Presidential Election Campaign." | 18 |
| Stephen B. Oates addressed the Northern Illinois Civil War Round Table on June 3 with "John Brown." | 19 |
| The fifty-fourth annual meeting of the Lincoln Fellowship of Wisconsin was held April 16; Michael Burlingame presented "Honest Abe, Dishonest Mary." A special fellowship bookplate for Burlingame's The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln was distributed at the meeting. Burlingame delivered his paper on the true authorship of the famous letter to the Widow Bixby at the April 9 meeting of the Lincoln Group of Boston. Edmund Hands presented "Glory and the Man Who Wasn't There" on October 22. | 20 |
| The thirty-eighth annual Lincoln Tomb ceremony commemorating the 129th anniversary of Lincoln's death was conducted by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War at Oak Ridge Cemetery on April 15. | 21 |
| John Y. Simon's "Lincoln, Grant, and Unconditional Surrender" was the second E. B. "Pete" Long Memorial Lecture at the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, on April 29. It was preceded by a luncheon roundtable discussion by the Department of History. | 22 |
| The Chicago Bar Association sponsored a reenactment of one of Lincoln's murder trials on May 5 at the Dirksen Federal Court Building. Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz and other prominent attorneys reenacted People v. Harrison. Cullom Davis, senior editor of the Lincoln Legal Papers, participated in a panel discussion. | 23 |
| The Montgomery County, Maryland, Civil War Round Table heard "A Man Called Lincoln" by James I. Robertson, Jr., on May 12. | 24 |
| The annual meeting of the Lincoln Group of Illinois was held [End Page 36] June 11 at Illinois Benedictine College. The Thomas J. Dyba Lecture was given by Wayne Weslowski, creator of a model of the Lincoln funeral train. | 25 |
| On June 30, the Gettysburg Civil War Institute heard Howard Jones's "To Preserve a Nation: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt as Wartime Diplomatists" and also saw Gary Kersey's play A Quaker Family Visits Abraham Lincoln. | 26 |
| The Sangamon County Historical Society held a downtown Lincoln walk on July 3 to nine historic sites connected with Lincoln's Springfield. | 27 |
| Richard Blake, Lincoln impersonator and newly elected president of the International Lincoln Association, presented his inaugural address "The Art of Presenting Abraham Lincoln" on July 2 at the Idyllwild (California) School. | 28 |
| I delivered the keynote address for the launching of the Louisiana Lincoln Group on February 26 at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. | 29 |
| The Association of Lincoln Presenters' latest membership roster lists eighty-six who portray Abraham Lincoln, forty-five of whom are members of the association. | 30 |
| On October 5, Cullom Davis presented "A. Lincoln, Esq., Prairie Lawyer" before the Wisconsin History Foundation in Madison. | 31 |
| On November 19, the Lincoln Fellowship of Pennsylvania heard Richard Marius, author of a forthcoming book on Civil War poetry. The speaker at the Gettysburg Soldiers' National Cemetery was Henry Cisneros, secretary of housing and urban development. "The Moral Problem of Slavery" by Robert William Fogel was the thirty-third annual Robert Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture at Gettysburg College. | 32 |
| Harold Holzer presented "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: The Civil War in Art" at the second annual dinner meeting of the Rhode Island Civil War Round Table on November 1. | 33 |
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The Lincoln Legal Papers | |
| According to the February issue of the American Bar Association's ABA Journal, Lincoln was not the folksy lawyer many have imagined. Janet Key's profile dispels the popular view of "Honest Abe" as the politician who practiced a little law on the side. Lincoln instead was a shrewd, sophisticated, and aggressive trial attorney who cared about making money and winning. Key's portrait of Lincoln over a twenty-four-year legal practice indicates that he was one of the [End Page 37] most well-respected trial and appellate lawyers of his era in Illinois as well as in the forefront of developing corporate law in the West. | 34 |
| The February 13 Providence Journal-Bulletin reported that Lincoln remained very much the lawyer during his presidency, when he wrote a telling one-line sentence demonstrating his deft ability to intervene and yet detach himself from a judicial proceeding. The cautiously worded sentence reads, "In this case, not as a precedent for any other case, the District Attorney will be justified by me, if in his discretion, he will enter a Nolle Prossequi. April 2, 1864. A. Lincoln." This involved a request by the Maryland district attorney and the defense lawyer to dismiss a criminal complaint in a federal treason case from 1861 that was to go to trial when victory for the Union was imminent. Joseph A. Kirby's syndicated article "Abe Lincoln Was an Outstanding Lawyer" appeared in the July 31 Journal. | 35 |
| A profile of the Lincoln Legal Papers by James L. Tyson appeared in the March 22 Christian Science Monitor. But Jerome J. Shestack in "Abe Lincoln as a Lawyer" for the April Florida Bar Journal believes that "Lincoln's place in history derives not from his abilities as a lawyer, but from his qualities as a human being." | 36 |
| S. L. Carson's "Lincoln Legal Discoveries Highlight Early Proxy and Authentication Questions" appeared in the winter 1994 Manuscript Society News. Carson discussed the thirty-four newly discovered legal documents in Lincoln's handwriting found in the basement of the Tazewell County Courthouse, Pekin, Illinois. The documents show Lincoln signing the name of the state's attorney four times on bills of indictment, but neither his own name nor signature appears. Covering the years 1842 to 1845, the documents show the wide range of Lincoln's practice and the shift from a subsistence to market economy where, in the absence of a national currency, individuals and businesses freely used promissory notes as a medium of exchange. | 37 |
| At the February 12 meeting of the Lincoln Legal Papers Advisory Board, it was reported that the number of legal cases in which Lincoln was involved totaled 5,456, with 79,481 documents accessed. After a national search, attorney and historian Mark Steiner was appointed associate editor for the project and given adjunct faculty appointment in the Department of History at Sangamon State University. | 38 |
| On March 29, Senior Editor Cullom Davis announced that the National Historical Publications and Records Commission renewed its 1994–95 grant for the sum of $50,000. The National Endowment for the Humanities approved a two-year grant for a total of $150,000, [End Page 38] of which $50,000 must be in the form of matching support. As a result, the Abraham Lincoln Association, cosponsor of the project, is seeking donations. Such donations are tax deductible. Inquiries and gifts should be sent to Richard E. Hart, Suite 501, One North Old State Capitol Plaza, Springfield, IL 62701. Donors of $100 or more will receive a portfolio of reproductions of some of the recently discovered Lincoln documents from Tazewell County. | 39 |
| The CD-ROM Abraham Lincoln Legal Papers: The Complete Facsimile Edition is now scheduled for release in 1997. The 100,000 documents in the collection (representing more than 250,000 pages) will be scanned into electronic format as digital images and then made available on CD-ROM. A comprehensive electronic index will accompany the set. Michael Merschel described the "new technology being used on old records" for the August 28 Dallas Morning News. | 40 |
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Conferences | |
| On February 4 and 5 the Greater Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Chamber of Commerce sponsored "Lincoln and His Era," with papers by Edwin C. Bearss ("Lincoln and His Generals"), William Adams ("Lincoln and Curtin"), Roy Frampton ("Lincoln in Gettysburg"), John Schildt ("Four Days in October: Lincoln's Antietam Visit"), Kenton Broyles ("Campaign Memorabilia of the Lincoln Era"), Clark Evans ("Lincoln and the Theater"), Mike Kauffman ("The Escape and Capture of John Wilkes Booth"), and Joan Chaconas ("The Guilt or Innocence of Mary Surratt"). | 41 |
| "A Day with Mr. Lincoln," a symposium at the Huntington Library, was held February 19. Presented were Larry Burgess's "Seeing through Hindsight's Eyes: Lincoln and Fame," Cullom Davis's "The 'Engine That Knew No Rest': Lincoln's Career in Law," Ronald D. Rietveld's "Lincoln Triumphant: From Crisis to Victory, 1864–65," and William Hanchett's "Persistent Myths of the Lincoln Assassination." | 42 |
| On March 9, the Supreme Court Historical Society and Friends of the Law Library of Congress commenced a six-part lecture series, "The Supreme Court in the Civil War." The first, on that date, included a panel discussion introduced by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, with Herman Belz, Ludwell Johnson, and Larry Kramer discussing "Antebellum Constitutional Crises." On March 30, Phillip Shaw Paludan spoke on "Taney, Lincoln, and the Constitutional Conversation." Edward White challenged two aspects of the "conventional wisdom" on Salmon P. Chase and the Chase Court [End Page 39] on April 6. Mark E. Neely, Jr., talked about "Justice Embattled" at his lecture on April 26, in which he pointed out that the Confederacy never got around to organizing a supreme court and that Jefferson Davis's record on civil liberties was not as spotless as his apologists maintained after the war. Harold Hyman explored how remarkable it was that the Supreme Court remained in operation and continued to hear cases throughout the war, a testimony not only to the strength of the Union constitutional system but also to the fragility of its "unsystematic legal system." | 43 |
| The thirteenth annual Midwest Civil War Round Table Conference, with the theme "Abraham Lincoln: An Anthology," was held April 29–30 in Indianapolis. Speakers included Alan T. Nolan ("Abraham Lincoln—Lawyer"), David E. Long ("Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties"), John Hennessy ("Year of Trial: Abraham Lincoln" and "The Virginia Front in 1862"), Theodore P. Savas ("Lincoln and Davis on Ordinance and War: A Comparison"), Mark E. Neely, Jr. ("The Triumph of the Two-Party System?"), Gerald Prokopowicz ("Lincoln's Early Years: Routes of Strategy"), and Jerry L. Russell ("Preservation Today and Tomorrow"). | 44 |
| The American Blue and Gray Association held its annual meeting in Springfield from July 27 to 30. "The Last Year of the War, 1864–65" included Cullom Davis's "Lincoln's Law Practice," George L. Painter's "Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery," Wayne C. Temple's "The Gettysburg Address," John Y. Simon's "Grant, Lincoln and Unconditional Surrender," and William C. "Jack" Davis's "The Last Days of the Presidency of Jefferson Davis." Max and Donna Daniels performed "An Evening with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln" on July 30. | 45 |
| Todd Volker's third conference at Ottawa, Illinois, coincided with the broadcast by C-SPAN of the first Lincoln-Douglas debates reenactment on August 20. The theme was "The Anti-Lincoln Tradition." Commentators included Harold Holzer, Robert Bray, Justin Walsh, Richard N. Current, Thomas Landess, and Michael Burlingame. | 46 |
| The sixtieth annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association, held in Louisville, offered a session on November 10 by the Society of Civil War Historians. The theme was "Civil War: Modern War or Not." Grady McWhiney presided; Herman M. Hattaway, Mark E. Neely, Jr., and Brooks D. Simpson were panelists. "Lincoln Scholarship: Past, Present, Future" was the session held November 12, with Frank J. Wetta presiding. Papers included Joseph G. Dawson's "Lincoln and the Generals: Historiography, 1980–1993," Thomas R. Turner's "Lincoln Scholarship: The Assassination," William [End Page 40] E. Gienapp's "Politics during the Civil War," and Mark E. Neely, Jr.'s "Fate of Lincoln Scholarship." | 47 |
| The Smithsonian Institution offered the weekly series "Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War" from July 11 to August 8. Gabor Boritt presented "The Real Lincoln," and Harold Holzer delivered "Popular Art and Fine Art: Lincoln as His Contemporaries Saw Him." | 48 |
| The fifteenth annual Illinois History Symposium, December 2–3, sponsored by the Illinois State Historical Society, Springfield, included Lloyd H. Efflandt's "Lincoln, Illinois Militiaman." | 49 |
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Editorials | |
| Paul Greenberg's annual syndicated Lincoln editorial appeared in the February 11 Shreveport Times. "Americans could benefit by becoming more Lincolnesque," wrote Greenberg, pointing to the many who were fooled by Lincoln's apparent lack of force. Americans failed to appreciate the depth of Lincoln's will and perseverance and the extent of his cunning and simplicity, although those qualities would later be known as "Lincolnesque." Now that power is in the hands of the professionals, people believe that all is supposed to be right, but Americans will always have need of those certain qualities that "for want of any better of word, might be called Lincolnesque." How did this rough-hewn man "manage to save the Union," and what made him so confident that freedom would not only survive but also prevail? To that commentator, Lincoln had "thought this thing through." While others saw the past, he saw the future and understood the underlying issues of his time. | 50 |
| Dale Turner's "Honesty, Humor, a Belief in God Elevated Lincoln," which appeared in the February 12 Seattle Times, pointed out that although Lincoln was not a member of any organized religious sect, he was one of the most profoundly religious presidents. To Turner, "No leader in American history quoted from the Bible more often or applied its truth in daily life more than Lincoln." | 51 |
| David Lehman's "Deconstructing Abe: Fashionable Ignorance and the Gettysburg Address" appeared in the February 11 Chicago Tribune. The author of Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man described a speaking engagement at Wittenberg University at which a professor cited approvingly his "mock-deconstruction" of the Gettysburg Address. Lehman wrote that the opening of the address—"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" — [End Page 41] meant, to the politically correct, that Lincoln appropriated, "for the patriarchal authorities the procreative power vested in the female body." "All men are created equal," to deconstructionists means that "men" excludes woman and other "marginalized" figures and that the document therefore promotes something other than full equality. Lehman said that he was sobered by today's campus atmosphere, where he believes a civil war is underway that is "peculiarly low and mean-spirited." | 52 |
| In "On Language" for the March 6 New York Times Magazine, William Safire discussed "Peoples" and pointed out that Lincoln, in his declaration at Gettysburg, drew on the phrase created by the Rev. Theodore Parker for "of the people, by the people, for the people." | 53 |
| Peter H. Gibbon discussed "In Search of Heroes" for the February Ideas, Notes, and News about History from the National Council for History Education. He feels that we have lost the vision of greatness, like Lincoln's, in our schools and culture and have traded the study of exemplary life for "information, irony and reality." Instead of being uplifted by exemplary lives, high culture, communities, families, churches, and temples, we are overcome "by an all-enveloping enemy culture interested in amusement, titillation and consumerism." | 54 |
| My "Abraham Lincoln's Legend Lives On" appeared in the February 3 Chariho (R.I.) Times and the February 9 Barrington (R.I.) Times. Donald Wyatt pointed out that "American's interest in Abraham Lincoln [is] at [an] all-time high" in the February 10 Warwick (R.I.) Beacon. | 55 |
| The January cover of Mad Magazine depicted "Abraham E. Neuman" in the Lincoln Memorial, stating, "You can fool some of the readers all of the time ... these are the schumucks we're after!" | 56 |
| Barron's cartoon syndicated in the April 18 Providence Journal-Bulletin had a two-faced William Clinton chiseled next to Lincoln on Mount Rushmore. | 57 |
| On January 17, "Berry's World" showed Washington and Lincoln giving each other high-fives, while Bob Thaves's "Frank and Ernest" portrayed one of Lincoln's secretaries telling him, "You know that little girl who said you should grow a beard?—Now she thinks you ought to have your ears pierced." | 58 |
| Cartoonist Holbert of the Boston Herald portrayed a group of Lincoln look-alikes at a meeting of GOP governors, where the moderator states, "And there may be some here with even higher aspirations in '96." His cartoon appeared in the December 8 Westerly (R.I.) Sun. | 59 |
| Ronald D. Rietveld's perspective on Lincoln, "A President for the [End Page 42] Ages," appeared in the November 19, 1993 Los Angeles Times. Rietveld pointed out that Lincoln was actually indifferent to power and, trusting in God, dared to take moral (and politically unpopular) stands. | 60 |
| The annual Lincoln editorial in the February 11 State Journal-Register (Springfield, Ill.) offered examples of the "tremendous surge of interest in Lincoln memorabilia"—the discovery of thirty-four original Lincoln documents in the Tazewell County Courthouse and the sale of a Lincoln letter for $728,500 when it had been appraised at $150,000. In the same paper on February 13, Doug Pokorski wrote "Celebrating Abe: Mary Lincoln Deserves Blame for Rough Treatment by Writers." | 61 |
| David Shribman's "Time to Revisit Lincoln Legacy" in the February 11 Boston Globe concerned "losing" Lincoln. Shribman believes that Lincoln is quickly receding from the American memory just when we need him the most. Americans must work to be worthy of such ancestor heroes, Shribman feels. His concern is that Lincoln's presidency is as remote to people today as George Washington's administration was to him. "Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church loathed Lincoln in life but celebrated him in death: 'Dead-dead-dead,' Beecher said, 'yet he speaketh.' Abraham Lincoln, the better angel of our nature, speaketh, if only we would listen." | 62 |
| "All Hail the Emancipator: Why Abraham Lincoln Was Not a Racist" by Bob Armidon appeared in the February 21 It magazine. The author criticizes those who accuse Lincoln of being a racist who acted against slavery only for political purposes. Such attacks not only ignore Lincoln's words and actions, Armidon observed, but also remove them from the historical setting of his time. Lincoln was always hostile to slavery, and although he was not an abolitionist in the true sense, he believed, "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." During the senatorial canvass of 1858 he declared that emancipation should be a long-term goal that must be achieved "as fast as circumstances should permit." As president, Lincoln's priority was to preserve the Union; without civil war, which he chose in order to save the Union, there could be no emancipation. His Emancipation Proclamation, a military measure, was "the most revolutionary action ever taken by a president up to that point." Lincoln confiscated about $3 billion worth of slave property, which in current value would be worth $3 trillion. To four million slaves, the promise of freedom was now government policy. As Fredrick Douglass said, "Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed, tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring [End Page 43] him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statement to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined." | 63 |
| Cartoonist Jim Borgman's portrayal of Washington as "Wonk City" appeared in the June 13 Washington Post; it depicted "The Washington Mall" anchored on the east by Congress and on the west by the Lincoln Memorial. "When the going got tough, it was not unusual for presidential aide Gil Wonkmeister to grab a TCBY and talk things out with Abe" according to one image. In another, Lincoln says from his memorial, "Like I told Nixon, Stonewall." | 64 |
| My "A Million Marathons" appeared in the spring-summer News from Marathon House (Providence). "If Lincoln were alive today, he would be the first to say there should be a million Marathons" in an effort to fight alcohol and drug addiction—this century's Civil War. | 65 |
| The July 18 New Yorker contained Handelsman's cartoon depicting Lincoln at Gettysburg saying, "But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. Only Disney can do that." Conrad's "Drawingboard" for the July 18 Los Angeles Times portrayed Lincoln at Gettysburg wearing Mickey Mouse ears with the label "Disney's America." The November 14 issue contained Sidney Blumenthal's history note, "Re-inventing Lincoln." While describing artist Sam Fink's The Illustrated Gettysburg Address, Blumenthal discussed how "every age has its own vision of Lincoln." Fink's illustration of a berobed Sixteenth President captures a "majestic Lincoln." | 66 |
| Mike Thompson poked fun at the alleged new photograph of Lincoln in the July 17 State Journal-Register (Springfield, Ill.) with an atypical American family: "Browsing through the local antique mall, the Abercromby family discovers yet another long-lost, authentic Abraham Lincoln photograph." One says, "It has a nose. Lincoln had a nose." "It has two eyes. Lincoln had two eyes." "It has hair. Lincoln had hair." "Then it must be Lincoln! It must be Lincoln!!" | 67 |
| Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. attorney in Rhode Island, wrote an op-ed piece for the October 15 Providence Journal-Bulletin, in which he discussed the lack of faith in government. In so doing, he praised "participatory democracy." It is the central message of Lincoln's description of government as "of the people, by the people, and for the people." | 68 |
| Garry Wills's "Read Polls, Heed America," which appeared in the November 6 New York Times Magazine, pointed out how political leadership in a democracy is like walking a tightrope. "Can a position be created that fudges some objections while seeming to satisfy several demands? That is how Lincoln treaded his way [End Page 44] through the mine fields of the slave issue when he ran for office in Illinois. He had to alienate abolitionists while stealthily appealing to the Know-Nothing party." Evading issues can be dangerous for a politician, Wills observed; one should evade, like Lincoln, only when it serves a purpose. Wills showed how Lincoln maintained "an intelligence network in Illinois" to deal with the power of public opinion. | 69 |
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The Arts | |
| The February–March American Heritage featured an article about the "discovery" of a daguerreotype alleged to be the first photographic portrait of Lincoln. Harold Holzer estimated that the picture, from the family of one of Lincoln's private secretaries, John Hay, was taken in 1843 when the thirty-four-year-old Lincoln was serving in the Illinois legislature. A controversy has ensued about whether the photo is authentic. Doug Pokorski's "Old Photo Looks a Lot Like Lincoln" for the March 6 State Journal-Register (Springfield, Ill.) quoted Thomas F. Schwartz's concern over the need of provenance— the documented, unbroken chain of possession that would link the photo directly back to Lincoln himself. There was no evidence that Hay or his daughter ever mentioned the picture or identified it as Lincoln or described how it came into the family's possession. | 70 |
| The March 15 Westerly (R.I.) Sun carried the story further with "President Lincoln Is Back as Prince Charles," indicating that shortly after the portrait of "Lincoln" appeared in the March 1 issue, Buckingham Palace officials contacted the editorial offices with an "urgent" request for more information. Apparently, Prince Charles was convinced that he is somehow related to Lincoln because of his resemblance to the man in the photo. Larry Dublin of Gannett suburban newspapers reported "Critics Question Authenticity of Picture" on January 14, and New York Newsday contained George DeWan's "Stir over 'Earliest' Photo." Other articles about the daguerreotype appeared in the Milwaukee Journal, Chicago Sun-Times, and Chicago Tribune on January 13, the Times (London) and Providence Journal-Bulletin on January 14, and the Washington Post on January 15. | 71 |
| Suzanne Richards reported in the March 31 Oregonian the dedication of the Portland monument to General Charles Frémont, who helped create Oregon Territory. Now known as one of the [End Page 45] thorns in Lincoln's side, Frémont was also a California senator, Arizona governor, and the first Republican candidate for president. | 72 |
| The U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing has issued a souvenir card for the European convention featuring the $100 gold certificate intended for use in 1908 but never issued. The certificate bears a portrait of Lincoln and is part of a series by the bureau called "Unfinished Masterpieces." | 73 |
| The surreal The America Play played at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in the East Village. Presiding over the first act is the "Foundling Father" played by Reggie Montgomery, a Lincoln look-alike. | 74 |
| The Springfield Historic Sites Commission rededicated the Lincoln Eighth Judicial Circuit marker in the Old State Capitol Plaza, Springfield, on May 8. | 75 |
| H. Konick's cartoon of Sam Waterston in Abe Lincoln in Illinois appeared in the New Yorker (December 15). | 76 |
| Griessman (Suite 505, 1421 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta, GA 30309) has available a sixty-minute audiocassette titled "Lincoln Live." | 77 |
| William Gordon's "Lincoln Before and After Split Image," which appeared in the February 10 Star-Ledger (Newark), featured a one-of-a-kind 1860 ambrotype of Lincoln taken for Marcus L. Ward of New Jersey two days after the presidential nomination at the Republican convention. Gordon compared the youthful image to the president's aged appearance five years later. | 78 |
| Wisconsin Public Television has produced The Memoirs of Abraham Lincoln in video. Written by Peter King Beech, it stars Granville "Sonny" Van Dusen as Lincoln. | 79 |
| Commemorative coins of the Lincoln Shrine, minted by the Redlands Coin Club, are once again available for sale at the Lincoln Shrine at the A. K. Smiley Public Library, Redlands, California. Created by the longtime president of the Redlands Coin Club, John Lenker, the coins feature the Barnard bust of Lincoln above an exterior view of the shrine. The five varieties include bronze, oxidized bronze, copper, oxidized copper, and silver. | 80 |
| "Lincoln and the American Experience" was the theme of the 1994 season of the Great American People Show at Lincoln's New Salem. Presented were Mr. Lincoln and the Fourth of July and Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology. | 81 |
| Bonnie L. Roecker, director of development for St. Joseph's Home in Springfield, Illinois, announced the issuance of the 1994 Christmas collector's ornament featuring the Lincoln Home. The 1993 ornament featured the Old State Capitol. [End Page 46] | 82 |
| Craig D'Ooge's " The Birth of a Nation': Symposium on Classic Film Discusses Inaccuracies and Virtues," featuring a still of John Wilkes Booth leaping from the president's box at Ford's Theatre, appeared in the Library of Congress Information Bulletin on June 27. John Hope Franklin discussed the "Cruel Hoax" on the American people that the movie created in a picture of Reconstruction still used to bar African-Americans from positions of public trust. | 83 |
| Allan Kozinn reviewed Van Cliburn's historic return to the stage in a concert with the Moscow Philharmonic at the Metropolitan Opera House on August 2. Cliburn's program included his own animated reading of the narration in Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait (New York Times, August 4). The February 23 Chronicle for Higher Education reported that eighty-five-year-old U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmum took the stage at the University of Minnesota to narrate Lincoln Portrait—a long-held wish. | 84 |
| The National Endowment for the Humanities announced a $750,450 grant to American Social History Productions to produce the first hour in a projected five-hour documentary titled "Forever Free: America in the Era of Emancipation and Reconstruction" (New York Times, August 25). | 85 |
| Among its 1995 calendars, Pomegranate (Box 6099, Rohnest Park, CA 94927) has produced "Lincoln," featuring images from the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian Institution and "The Civil War 1995 Calendar" from the Library of Congress. | 86 |
| Dicksons, Inc. (P.O. Box 368, 709B Avenue East, Seymour, IN 47274) has produced Hong Zing Zou's portrait of Lincoln kneeling in prayer. | 87 |
| On October 20, the Associated Press reported that "Tad," a Family Channel movie starring Kris Kristofferson and Jane Curtin, had finished filming in Richmond and Petersburg. It was to delve into Lincoln's personal side as father and as chief executive. The show aired in March 1995. | 88 |
| On October 27, CBS aired "The Ghost of Lincoln," with David E. Long as one of the commentators. The program discussed Lincoln's dreams, premonitions, and preoccupation with death. | 89 |
| Cartoonist Mike Thompson showed Lincoln in the September 8 State Journal-Register (Springfield, Ill.) saying, "We are now engaged in a great Civil War, a long, bloody conflict fought in a house divided against itself.... But enough about my married life, let's discuss the war with the South." On September 21 he portrayed modern-day campaign managers reviewing the Lincoln-Douglas [End Page 47] debates on C-SPAN with such comments as "Where are the zingers?!!" "No sound bites?! No sound bites?! You call this a DEBATE?!!" | 90 |
| Stahler's cartoon in the August 30 Westerly (R.I.) Sun, titled "Today's Congress in 1863," featured a member of Congress saying to Lincoln, "We've hammered out a compromise, Mr. President, that frees 95 percent of the slaves by 1899." | 91 |
| The documentary "Frederick Douglass: When the Lion Wrote History" appeared on PBS on November 2. | 92 |
| Christopher LaMontagne has created an Abraham Lincoln in wood (P.O. Box 45, Forestdale, RI 02824). | 93 |
| Sculptor John McClarey (4 Ridge Ct., Decatur, IL 62522) has created and cast in bonded-bronze his "Trial Lawyer," "The Lincoln Family, circa 1858," "The Campaigner," "Civil War President," and "Debate '58," which includes small busts of Lincoln and Douglas. | 94 |
| The Lincoln Memorial University 1994 Christmas card featured the traditional Lloyd Ostendorf portrait of Lincoln reflecting on a moonlit evening while walking home with Christmas gifts and saying, "I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God." A matching print is available from Lincoln Memorial University. | 95 |
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The C-SPAN Reenactment of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates | |
| Doug Pokorski reported that the "Lincoln-Douglas Debates Make C-SPAN" in the February 24 State Journal-Register (Springfield, Ill.). Encouraged by Harold Holzer's 1993 The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete Unexpurgated Text, C-SPAN televised the first-ever reenactment of the entire series of seven debates. Each of the local communities produced the debates: Ottawa on August 20, Freeport on August 27, Jonesboro on September 17, Charleston on September 18, Galesburg on October 8, Quincy on October 9, and Alton on October 15. On March 2, C-SPAN sponsored R. Fredrick Klein giving Lincoln's "House Divided" speech in the Old State Capitol. | 96 |
| For each of the reenactments, C-SPAN presented six hours of programming, including the debates, with a total of 3,891 telephone calls and queries from the viewing audience, demonstrating that Americans can sit through more than three-second sound bites. C-SPAN also produced a press kit and educators' kit, complete with [End Page 48] poster, teachers' guide, and college-level resource guide, along with a "scrapbook" of the reenactments. | 97 |
| Along with the debates, C-SPAN offered A Companion to the Lincoln-Douglas Debates by John Splaine as well as the following videotapes: Lincoln-Douglas Series Highlights: The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debate Reenactments (twenty-one hours), The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates Series (forty-two hours), a single debate reenactment, or a single debate reenactment with C-SPAN programming (C-SPAN, Box 53, Washington, DC 20055). Rebecca Bailey wrote about the series in the August Civil War News. Harold Holzer's "Lincoln-Douglas Debates: Exploding History's Myths" appeared in the New York Post on August 19. | 98 |
| Valerie Burd reviewed the reenactment in Ottawa for the August 22 Chicago Tribune; the August 22 New York Times reviewed the performances of Max Daniels as Lincoln and Jim Gayan as Douglas. | 99 |
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Exhibits | |
| "The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America" continued at the Huntington Library through August, with more than three hundred thousand viewing the exhibition. The catalog by John H. Rhodehamel and Thomas F. Schwartz, with a foreword by James M. McPherson, is available from the Huntington (1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 91108). A review by F. Colin Kingston appeared in the July Autograph Times. | 100 |
| The University of Chicago Library Department of Special Collections sponsored "Stephen A. Douglas and the American Union" from February 12 to June 15. The exhibition was drawn from the Douglas papers in the library. Daniel Meyer is the author of the handsome catalog. | 101 |
| "Now He Belongs to the Ages: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln" was on view at the New York Academy of Medicine from February 7 to April 15. A group of artifacts related to Lincoln's assassination was shown from the Lattimer Family Collection. | 102 |
| Drawing upon the extensive collections of the Lilly Library at Indiana University and the Lincoln Collection at Brown University, "Abraham Lincoln: Cartoon Character and National Icon" was featured in the Round Barn at Heritage Plantation of Sandwich (Mass.) from May 8 to October 23. | 103 |
| The April 12 State Journal-Register (Springfield, Ill.) reported that a surveying demonstration, including a display of antique and [End Page 49] modern surveying instruments, was held at New Salem State Historic Site on August 13 and 14. "Surveying at New Salem" included a party of five men "viewing" (surveying) a road through New Salem village using surveying instruments similar to those Lincoln employed during his six years as deputy surveyor for Sangamon County. | 104 |
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Tours | |
| William D. Pederson conducted his Land of Lincoln pilgrimage to Springfield from February 10 to 14. | 105 |
| Under the direction of Stephen Hague, Lincoln Memorial University conducted a Lincoln Pilgrimage from May 8 to 14 to prominent Lincoln sites in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. The second Lincoln Pilgrimage retraced the steps of the first, conducted by R. Gerald McMurtry in 1940. | 106 |
| Lee C. Moorehead's annual Lincoln Seminar—"Long Look at Lincoln"—was held July 8–10. It also included tours of Lincoln sites in Sangamon and Menard counties in Illinois. I delivered "Abraham Lincoln: Our Ever-Present Contemporary"; Marty Benner told how "The Study of the Lincoln Legal Papers Shows Lincoln to Have Been an Outstanding Lawyer"; Harold Holzer presented "The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: What They Really Said" and "Lincoln and His Mail"; and Lee Moorehead spoke on "The Controversy over Billy Herndon, Lincoln's Law Partner, as a Major Source of Lincoln History" and "Lincoln as Masterful Politician." The dramas Abraham Lincoln and the Fourth of July and An Evening with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln (written and enacted by Max and Donna Daniels) were performed at New Salem. | 107 |
| The Civil War Round Table (Chicago) conducted its October 12–16 "Kentucky Bluegrass" tour of Lincoln's birthplace outside Hodgenville and the homes of Mary Todd Lincoln, Cassius Marcellus Clay, and Joshua Speed. Ralph Geoffrey Newman wrote "The Lincoln Family in Kentucky" for the fall tour edition of Civil War Round Table. | 108 |
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Auctions | |
| Sotheby's on May 3 auctioned an Abraham Lincoln autographed letter dated "Washington 17 March 1863" to his "intimate" friend Joshua Speed. President Lincoln asked Speed to intervene in the [End Page 50] case of Lyman Guinnip, who had been indicted for helping a slave to escape. Lincoln comments, "I scarcely think he is guilty of any real crime. Please try if you can to slip him through." Estimated at between $80,000 and $120,000, it sold for $79,500, perhaps indicating some stabilization in the price of Lincoln manuscripts. | 109 |
| Another autographed letter signed "A. Lincoln," sent after the 1860 Republican convention to Charles C. Nott, a board member of the Young Men's Republican Union, contains the nominee's instructions for publication of the Cooper Institute address, "I do not wish to have the sense changed, or modified, to a hair's breadth." The letter was sold at Christie's on May 20 for $387,500, after an original estimate of $120,000 to $150,000. A signed carte-de-visite ("A. Lincoln") sold for $27,600, after an estimate of $15,000 to $20,000. | 110 |
| The Arthur Rubloff collection of sculpture was auctioned by Leslie Hindman in Chicago on May 22. Featured were Daniel Chester French's maquette of his Abraham Lincoln executed for Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1912 (which sold for $68,000 after a pre-bid estimate of $30,000 to $40,000); James Earl Fraser's seated Lincoln maquette (which sold for $18,000 after a pre-bid estimate of $5,000 to $10,000); and John Gutzon Borglum's Lincoln, a reduction of the Lincoln the friendly neighbor statue in front of the Essex County Courthouse in Newark, New Jersey (which sold for $150,000 after a pre-bid estimate of $15,000 to $25,000). | 111 |
| An autographed letter and envelope franked by Lincoln as postmaster and written from Vandalia, Illinois, on December 10, 1835, to T. J. Nance of New Salem brought $100,000 at the auction of the Louis Grunin collection of free franks and Americana held at the Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries on May 5, 1993. | 112 |
| Sotheby's November 7 auction featured Lincoln's letter to Governor Michael Hahn of Louisiana, in which Lincoln proposed extending the voting franchise to "some of the colored people" of Louisiana who "would probably help ... to keep the jewel of liberty within the family of freedom." It sold for $288,500. Also offered was Congressman Lincoln's letter of February 2, 1848, to William H. Herndon describing the effect of fellow Representative Alexander H. Stephens's speech: "I just take up my pen to say, that Mr. Stephens of Georgia, a little slim, pale-faced, consumptive man, with a voice like Logan's, has just concluded the very best speech of an hour's length, I have ever heard. My old, withered, dry eyes, are full of tears yet." Estimated at between $25,000 and $35,000, it sold for $101,500. [End Page 51] | 113 |
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Awards and Prizes | |
| The Abraham Lincoln Association and Southern Illinois University Press continued the call for manuscripts for the Abraham Lincoln Association Prize, which receives $1,000 and publication. Manuscripts were judged by a panel of Lincoln scholars, including Richard N. Current, Robert W. Johannsen, and Mark E. Neely, Jr. The panel was chaired by John Y. Simon. The award recipient was Michael Burlingame for Abraham Lincoln: An Oral History. | 114 |
| Recipients of the Abraham Lincoln Association Award of Achievement on February 12 were Sam Waterston (who several times has portrayed Lincoln), William D. Pederson (who organized the first-ever Lincoln conference held in the Deep South as well as a teacher's institute to explore ways of approaching Lincoln in the classroom), and Louise Taper, who initiated the idea of the Huntington Library exhibition "The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America." | 115 |
| Harold Holzer received the annual award of the Lincoln Group of New York for 1993 for Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President and his edition of The Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Winner of the 1994 award was the Huntington Library for the exhibition "The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America," with special citations to Louise Taper for conceiving the idea and Thomas F. Schwartz and John H. Rhodehamel for writing the catalog. | 116 |
| The 1994 Barondess Lincoln Award of the Civil War Round Table of New York was presented to Harold Holzer on April 15 for The Lincoln-Douglas Debates and Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President. | 117 |
| On May 7 Lincoln College awarded honorary degrees to General Gordon R. Sullivan, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army; James T. Hickey, former curator of the Horner Lincoln Collection of the Illinois State Historical Library; and Civil War historian Frank E. Vandiver. | 118 |
| The fourth Lincoln Prize at Gettysburg College was awarded to Ira Berlin, Barbara Fields, Steven Miller, Joseph Reidy, and Leslie Rowland for Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War. The editors of that book divided $40,000. Second place went to Reid Mitchell for The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home. | 119 |
| The Society of American Historians presented the Bruce Catton Prize for Lifetime Achievement to John Hope Franklin, citing his 1947 book From Slavery to Freedom as the introduction of black history to many readers. [End Page 52] | 120 |
| Nominations for the 1994 Tony Awards included Abe Lincoln in Illinois and Sam Waterston for "Leading Actor in a Play." | 121 |
| The Lincoln Essay Awards of the eighth annual Lincoln Essay Competition of the Lincoln Home National Historic Site had as the theme "The Character of Abraham Lincoln." With nearly 650 essays submitted, the winners were, first place, Melissa Judy Unterseh of Waterloo, Illinois, Junior High School; second place, Shelby Craig of Winchester Elementary School; and third place, Ryan Berkshire of Brookwood Junior High School. | 122 |
| The Association of Lincoln Presenters gave the 1993 Abraham Lincoln Award to Dan Bassuk and the 1993 Glenn Schnizlein Memorial Award to Max and Donna Daniels as the best team to portray Abraham and Mary Lincoln. Beginning in 1994, that group presented three awards: the Abraham Lincoln Award, the Mary Todd Lincoln Award, and the Best Lincoln Pair. | 123 |
| Michelle Caswell received a check for $2,500 for her winning Lincoln essay in a contest sponsored by the Huntington Library. One of five thousand entrants, Caswell escaped Bulgaria with her family when she was sixteen. Bettina Boxall profiled her in "A Picture of Freedom, Lincoln Postcard That Kept a Child's Hope Alive Inspires Prize Essay" in the Los Angeles Times on February 12. | 124 |
| Thomas Turner and William Hanchett were awarded the Lincoln Diploma of Honor by Lincoln Memorial University at the spring commencement exercises. | 125 |
| Richard N. Current received the 1995 Nevins-Freeman Award from the Civil War Round Table (Chicago) at the October 13 meeting. Glen Wiche and Ralph Geoffrey Newman wrote The Nevins-Freeman Award: The First Decade, 1974–1983. | 126 |
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Lincoln Home National Historic Site | |
| The Lincoln Heritage Lectures held February 12 featured John Y. Simon's "Mary Lincoln and the Biographers," Roger A. Fischer's "Lincoln as Icon: The Posthumous Lincoln in American Cartoon Art," and Harold Holzer's "The Lincoln Mailbag: The Presidential Mail, 1861–1865." | 127 |
| "Abraham Lincoln: A Biography in Words and Music," February 5 and 6, featured Fritz Klein as Lincoln and Paul Presney, Jr., as Jesse DuBois, Illinois state auditor. | 128 |
| On April 8 the Midwest Regional Office of the National Park Service announced approval for an environmental assessment for [End Page 53] the location of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Center. The service recommended that construction of the center be on the block in downtown Springfield bounded by Capitol, Fourth, Jackson, and Fifth streets, just north of the Executive Mansion. Derrick DePledge reported in the State Journal-Register that the U.S. Senate, despite efforts at delay, had authorized up to $18 million for the facility. In the May 26–June 1 Illinois Times (Springfield), James Krohe, Jr., offered "Making Lincoln Come Alive" and stated that a building rising from the parking lot where the old Abe Lincoln Hotel had once stood would be "the closest thing to a miracle I ever expect to see." Other than that, Krohe saw very little to commend about spending $18 million for the Lincoln Center. His tongue-in-cheek editorial did indicate that people would "flock" to see Lincoln's body, "probably better preserved today than Reagan was at the time he left office." He termed the presentation of Lincoln as "Disneyfication." | 129 |
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Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, Lincoln City, Indiana | |
| The opening of a "see and learn" exhibition "A Walk Through the Life of Abraham Lincoln" was held February 6. The exhibit was developed from a new American history textbook, Adventure Tales of America: An Illustrated History of the United States. The book's author, Jody Potts, was the featured speaker. | 130 |
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The Lincoln on Democracy Project | |
| Just when we believed that Lincoln on Democracy had seen its final foreign translation, Mario M. Cuomo, coeditor, arranged for translations of the book into both Hebrew and Arabic abridged editions for distribution in the Mideast in 1994 and 1995. | 131 |
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Periodicals | |
| Slyvia A. Leeseberg, editor of the Lincoln Chronicle, announced that the Chronicle will no longer be published. | 132 |
| Harold Holzer's twenty-first annual article for the Antique Trader appeared on February 9 ("Letters to the Civil War White House, Dear Mr. Lincoln"). [End Page 54] | 133 |
| Douglas L. Wilson's "A Most Abandoned Hypocrite" in the February–March American Heritage unveils a previously unknown Lincoln manuscript in which he dismantles a long-time political adversary, the Rev. Peter Cartwright, with ruthless wit. | 134 |
| "The Great Debate, Lincoln vs. John A. MacDonald on the Speaker's Platform" by David Raymont appeared in the February–March Beaver: Exploring Canada's History. | 135 |
| "Family Tree: Last of the Lincolns" by Michael R. Beschloss, which appeared in the February 28 New Yorker, solicited a spirited response from Paul H. Verduin. Verduin pointed out that Lincoln's mother, not grandmother, was reputed to be illegitimate; that Lincoln's last law partner and biographer William Herndon did not interview anyone in Kentucky; and that the old rumor that Lincoln was illegitimate is without credibility. The Chicago Tribune syndicated an article about the Beschloss piece, "Lincoln Lineage Still Fascinates," which appeared in the May 8 Providence Journal. | 136 |
| The March–April Harvard Magazine contained "Very Truly Your Friend, A. Lincoln" about the letter written to George C. Latham on July 22, 1860. Latham was a friend of Lincoln's eldest son, Robert, and the presidential candidate wrote a consoling letter about Latham's being turned down for admittance by Harvard College. All was not lost, for George enrolled at Yale. | 137 |
| "What Makes a Good Leader?" by Garry Wills appeared in the April Atlantic Monthly. | 138 |
| The May Journal of Southern History contained "Southern History in Periodicals, 1993: A Selected Bibliography." | 139 |
| Peter Reisenberg's speech at the ninth annual meeting of the Lincoln Society, Taipei, on April 18, 1993, "Citizenship: Ancient and Modern," was published in the winter Sino-American Relations. The spring issue contained "Abraham Lincoln and Human Rights" by Yu-Tang D. Lew, which he presented at the International Conference on Lincoln, Taipei, November 12–15, 1989. The autumn issue contained Cullom Davis's "The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln," which also was presented at the conference. | 140 |
| The winter Lincoln Herald contained Douglas L. Wilson's "A Talk at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site," Erving Beauregard's "Edwin M. Stanton and Freemasonry," and Gary R. Planck's "Lincoln News Digest." The spring issue included my "Robert Todd Lincoln and John Hay, Fellow Travelers," Michael Burlingame's "How Shorthand Reporters Covered the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858," and Planck's "Lincoln News Digest." In the summer issue were Mark H. Dunkelman's "Emory Sweetland Remembers November 19, 1863," Charles M. Hubbard's "Lincoln's Choice of Foreign Minis- [End Page 55] ters," Mark Reinhart's "The Lincoln Image on the Screen," Wayne C. Temple's "An Index to Charles Durman's He Belongs to the Ages: The Statues of Abraham Lincoln," and Planck's "Lincoln News Digest." The fall issue included Brooks D. Simpson's "Lincoln Finds His General," Richard Hanks's "Lincoln and the Politics of Nepotism," Lloyd Ostendorf's "Lincoln Photographs—Signed and Dated," and Planck's "Lincoln News Digest." | 141 |
| Barbara Hughett's "The Birth of Lincoln College" and William D. Beard's "Lincoln's Jarndyce v. Jarndyce: A Family Dispute on the Illinois Frontier" appeared in the spring Lincoln Newsletter. The summer issue included David E. Long's "Lincoln the Assassin?" and Harold Holzer's "The Great Debates in Print." The fall issue contained George Levy's "President Lincoln Rejects an Appeal for Mercy" and Barbara Hughett's " "The Lion of Whitehall': Cassius Marcellus Clay." The winter issue contained Holzer's "Re-creating the Lincoln-Douglas Debates" and Hughett's "The Birth of a City, 1853" and "Lincoln at the Chessboard" as well as excerpts from her forthcoming The Lincoln College Story, 1865–1995. | 142 |
| Articles in the February Illinois History: A Magazine for Young People, published by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, had as the theme "Illinois and the Civil War." | 143 |
| Clark Evans wrote "The Curious Turns of the Hackett Affair" for the January–February Lincolnian. His "Maumguinea Lincoln's Favorite Dime Store Novel?" appeared in the March–April issue. Evans and Wendy Swanson wrote "President Lincoln Rides the Eastern Rails" for the July–August issue. The September–October issue included Evans's "Lincoln Sites: Britain's Monument to the Great Emancipator Are Not Exclusive to Edinburgh." Gayle T. Harris wrote on "Lincoln in Literature" for the May-June issue, in which she discussed Mr. American and the remarks of George MacDonald Fraser's character, Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., on Lincoln: "Good lawyer. Damned good lawyer ... pity his people immigrated. He'd have been the best Law Chief Justice or Law Chancellor this country ever saw." Fraser's 1980 novel Flash for Freedom! that includes Flashman's run-ins with Lincoln is now available from Books on Tape. | 144 |
| The entire May issue of Cobblestone, a publication for children, is devoted to Lincoln. | 145 |
| The first newsletter in recent memory of the Lincoln Fellowship of Pennsylvania appeared in April. | 146 |
| Dan Bassuk's "A Lincoln Portrait of Raymond Massey (1896–1983)" appeared in the spring Lincarnations, the newsletter of the Association of Lincoln Presenters. The fall issue contained a profile of Robert and Janet Taylor, who portrayed President and Mrs. [End Page 56] Lincoln at Hildene, Robert Todd Lincoln's twenty-four-room Georgian mansion in Manchester, Vermont. | 147 |
| "Lincoln Takes the Fall at Niagara" appeared in the spring Reviewing Stand, a quarterly publication for Friends of the Presidential Entourage of Abraham Lincoln. | 148 |
| The February Lincoln Ledger, published by the Lincoln Fellowship of Wisconsin, contained Henry J. Peterson's "Lincoln at the Wisconsin State Fair as Recalled by John W. Hoyt," Tom Millstead's "Ex-Racine Newsman Saved Lincoln's Speech for Posterity," and the second "Cumulative Bibliography" compiled by Daniel E. Pearson. "'I Slept with Lincoln': Lucien S. Hanks's Nighttime Experience," reported by Fred L. Holmes, was in the May issue. | 149 |
| James I. Robertson, Jr.'s "A Man Called Lincoln" appeared in the May Maryland Line, the newsletter of the Montgomery County Civil War Round Table. Michael W. Kauffman's "The Lincoln Assassination: The Case Revisited" was in the October issue. | 150 |
| The April Little Giant, the publication of the Stephen A. Douglas Association, featured Barbara Hughett's "George D. Levy to Deliver Address on 'To Die in Chicago: Confederates at Camp Douglas'" as well as Glen Wiche's "The Little Giant and the Lady Elgin." | 151 |
| Numbers 1839 and 1840 of Lincoln Lore contained Matthew Noah Vosmeir's "Lincoln's World: Election-Time in Britain." Number 1840 also included "News from the Abraham Lincoln Association." The Lincoln National Museum has suspended publication of Lincoln Lore until the Lincoln Museum relocates to its new home and museum in 1995. | 152 |
| The March 31 supplement to Illinois Times contained a "Visitor's Guide to Springfield." | 153 |
| Caesar Roy attempts to answer "Was Lincoln the Great Emancipator?" in the May-June Civil War Times Illustrated. | 154 |
| "The Political Acsent of James Buchanan" by Kurt Zwikl appeared in the spring-summer Keynoter. | 155 |
| The March Lincoln Train Times from Illinois Benedictine College announced completion of the "President's Car" in the Lincoln miniature train. | 156 |
| The Louisiana Lincoln Group has commenced a new serial, Louisiana Lincolnator, with the fall issue. David Wells is editor-in-chief. Sonja Webb's "Lincoln's Trip to Louisiana," "Lincoln Featured Prominently in The Book of Virtues," and "Abe for Kids" are in that first issue. | 157 |
| In the December 1992 Color Bearer: The Journal of the American Blue and Gray Association, a southerner proposed that Lincoln was a visionary deserving of credit for saving the Union. Not so, responds [End Page 57] a Virginian in "Lincoln the Savior: A Dissenting View" in the May 1993 issue. The author traces "Big Government" woes back to Lincoln's constitutionalism. The July 1993 issue contains David E. Long's "Lincoln, Once Again," a dispute of the portrayal of the Sixteenth President as a belligerent despot. | 158 |
| Arthur F. Loux contributed "The Lincoln Club of Topeka" to the fall Lincoln Herald. | 159 |
| My "A Candidate Speaks in Rhode Island: Abraham Lincoln Visits Providence and Woonsocket, 1860" appeared in the November 1993 Rhode Island History. | 160 |
| Judy Hevrdejs's "Illinois Proudly Presents Lincoln's Life and Times" was in the Providence Sunday Journal on July 31. | 161 |
| Stephen Hansen and Paul Nygard wrote "Stephen A. Douglas, the Know-Nothings, and the Democratic Party in Illinois, 1854–1858" for the summer Illinois Historical Journal. | 162 |
| The spring Journal of Information Ethics, on the special theme "Plagiarism, Part I" contained several papers on the Robert Bray-Stephen B. Oates controversy. Part 2, the fall issue, discussed plagiarism in general terms. | 163 |
| The summer Lincoln Legacy includes a membership directory for the Lincoln Group of Illinois. | 164 |
| The fall 1993 Northern Kentucy Law Review (Salmon P. Chase College of Law) included Susan J. Court's "An Uneasy Partnership: The Political Relationship between Salmon Chase and Abraham Lincoln," Roger D. Billings, Jr.'s "Salmon P. Chase and the Great Lincoln Biographers," and Herman Belz's "Deep-Conviction, Jurisprudence, and Texas v. White: A Comment on G. Edward White's Historicist Interpretation of Chief Justice Chase." | 165 |
| The September Turf North included Susan J. Harlow's "Hildene Recalls the Time of Country Gentlemen." | 166 |
| "The Jurisprudence of Levi Woodbury" by William D. Bader, Henry J. Abraham, and James B. Staab appeared in the winter Vermont Law Review. | 167 |
| Stacey Breadhoff's "Mining the Archives" in the November Record (National Archives and Records Administration) discussed Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863, in which he enumerated the blessings of the American people and called upon them to "set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving," thus creating the first traditional celebration of Thanksgiving. | 168 |
| Don Comer asked whether history's great president was also a great lawyer in "Lincoln the Hedger" for the November Oregon State Bar Bulletin. [End Page 58] | 169 |
| "Abraham Lincoln as Authentic Reproduction: A Critique of Postmodernism" by Edward M. Bruner appeared in the June American Anthropologist. | 170 |
| "'Who Has Done This Deed?': The Response of Methodist Pulpits in the North to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln" by David B. Chesebrough was in the July Methodist History. | 171 |
| "Gettysburg and Silence" by Edwin Black appeared in the February Quarterly Journal of Speech. | 172 |
| Allen D. Spiegel's "Abraham Lincoln and the Insanity Plea" was in the June Journal of Community Health. | 173 |
| "Historians Commemorate Political Reform of Frederick Douglass" by Peggy Langrall was published in the winter Smithsonian Institution Research Reports. | 174 |
| "Pericles's Influence on the Gettysburg Address" by James A. Stevenson was published in the spring Midwest Quarterly, and "Lincoln vs. Douglas Over the Republican Ideal" appeared in the spring American Studies. | 175 |
| John Rhodehamel and Thomas F. Schwartz wrote about the "Abraham Lincoln Exhibition at the Huntington Library" for the winter Historian. | 176 |
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Books and Pamphlets | |
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Lincoln | |
| Merrill D. Peterson depicts Lincoln's changing image and how it served the needs of Americans after his death in Lincoln in American Memory (Oxford University Press), a History Book Club selection. Philip Shaw Paludan's The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (University Press of Kansas) also was a History Book Club selection. Paludan discusses Lincoln's complex personality, because of which the president was in conflict on many issues. He offers a portrait of the president as he evolved plans for reconstruction, restricted civil liberties, and managed foreign affairs. | 177 |
| The psychobiography The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln by Michael Burlingame has been published by the University of Illinois Press. Also from Illinois is Sylvia Neely's translation (from the French) of Olivier Frayssé's Lincoln, Land, and Labor, 1809–60, William Hanchett's succinct and thought-provoking Out of the Wilderness: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Gabor S. Boritt's Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream, and A History of Illinois: From Its Commencement as a State in 1818 to 1847 by Governor Thomas Ford (originally written in 1854), annotated and introduced by Rodney [End Page 59] O. Davis. A video documentary based on the Hanchett book has been produced by White River Pictures and is available through TN Releasing Co. (1-800-289-6682). | 178 |
| The University of Nebraska Press has reissued Lloyd Lewis's Myths after Lincoln as The Assassination of Lincoln: History and Myth, with a new introduction by Mark E. Neely, Jr. | 179 |
| LaWanda Cox's Lincoln and Black Freedom: A Study in Presidential Leadership has been published in paperback by the University of South Carolina Press. | 180 |
| The papers from the seventh annual Lincoln Colloquium held October 24, 1992, at Sangamon State University and sponsored by the Lincoln Home National Historic Site, Eastern National Park and Monument Association, the Sangamon County Historical Society, and the Lincoln Group of Illinois have been published as Abraham Lincoln and the Political Process. Contents include George L. Painter's "Introduction: 1854: Year of Decision," Rodney O. Davis's "'I Shall Consider the Whole People of Sangamon, My Constitutents': Lincoln and the Illinois General Assembly," Cullom Davis's "Abraham Lincoln, Esq.: The Symbiosis of Law and Politics," Roger A. Fischer's "Retailing the Railsplitter: 1860 Lincoln Material Culture Reconsidered," John Y. Simon's "Lincoln's Decision to Issue the Emancipation Proclamation," and William E. Gienapp's "The Presidential Leadership of Abraham Lincoln." | 181 |
| Abraham Lincoln in the American Mind, papers from the eighth annual Lincoln Colloquium, was also published by the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. Edited by Linda Norbut Suits and George L. Painter, the book contains an introduction by Painter, Richard West Sellars's "Remembering Abraham Lincoln: History and Myth at Historic Sites," my "The Crisis in Lincoln Collecting: Mayhem and Beyond," Douglas L. Wilson's "William H. Herndon and the Necessary 'Truth,'" William Hanchett's "When the Bells Tolled: The Misunderstood Aftermath of Lincoln's Assassination," and Harold Holzer and Mark E. Neely, Jr.'s "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Lincoln and the Civil War in Art." | 182 |
| Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's lecture delivered November 19, 1993, at Gettysburg College, "To Be Worthy of God's Favor: Southern Women's Defense and Critique of Slavery," has been published as the thirty-second annual Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture. | 183 |
| Among Lincoln publications for children are Martha Brenner's Abe Lincoln's Hat, with illustrations by Donald Cook (Random House) and Fred Trump's Lincoln's Little Girl: A True Story (reprinted by Boyd's Mills Press, 1815 Church, Honesdale, PA 18431). | 184 |
| Even though Lincoln is not profiled in any of the sixteen categories [End Page 60] of leadership in Garry Wills's Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders (Simon and Schuster), Lincoln is the standard Wills uses in the Introduction. To Wills, Lincoln satisfies the definition of leadership as a "leader [who] does not just vaguely affect others.... He or she takes others toward the object of their joint quest." | 185 |
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