News: Sixth Known Bible Belonging to A.Lincoln Found In San Francisco, CA

 
 
A New Lincoln Bible, From a Mantel to a Presidential Library,  Peter Baker, New York Times, June 19, 2019

In 1864, Abraham Lincoln made a rare wartime trip out of Washington to visit a charity event in Philadelphia raising money to care for wounded soldiers. He donated 48 copies of the Emancipation Proclamation to be sold for fund-raising.

But it turns out he received a gift in return: a Bible whose pages were edged with gilt and decorated with the words “Faith,” “Hope” and “Charity” after I Corinthians 13:13 — a holy book at a time when Lincoln was turning increasingly to Scripture to understand personal tragedy and national trauma.

Now, more than 150 years later, historians have discovered the Bible for the first time, a unique artifact of the 16th president life  that they did not even know existed. Given by his widow to a friend of Lincoln’s after his assassination,  it has remained out of sight for a century and a half, passed along from one generation to another, unknown to the vast array of scholars who have studied his life.

As of Thursday, it will go on display for the first time at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library  and Museum  in Springfield, Ill., a bequest from the family of the Rev. Noyes W. Miner, who lived across the street from the Lincolns in the Illinois capital and spoke at the slain president’s funeral. After preserving the Bible over the decades, Miner’s descendants recently came forward to disclose its existence and donate it to the public. Full text continued at the New York Times.

Full Text and Image Link: New York Times

News--Lincoln's Last Hours and a Mary Lincoln's Guest at The Peterson House

 News--Lincoln's Last Hours and a Mary Lincoln's Guest at The Peterson House,  National Institute of Health


This week, Circulating Now marks a pivotal event in American history with a short series of posts. 150 years ago on April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in a crowded theater in Washington DC. On April 15th he died and an autopsy was performed. Several doctors supported Lincoln in his last hours but no medical intervention could prevent his death and bystanders could only watch and wait.

On the night of April 14, 1865, a lone assassin shot the President of the United States at point-blank range during an evening performance at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.  That evening, John Wilkes Booth made his way into the theater and to the box where President Abraham Lincoln, his wife Mary Lincoln, and two guests, Major Henry Rathbone and Miss Clara Harris were enjoying a performance of Our American Cousin.  Pulling out a single-shot, derringer pistol, Booth aimed the gun, pulled the trigger and fired a bullet at the President’s head.   Many of us know the details of what occurred at Ford’s Theater that night, but what transpired after the fatal shot was fired and during the many hours before the President succumbed to his wounds?

Among the many accounts of that evening is one by physician Charles Leale,  an assistant surgeon with the U.S. Army and the first physician to reach Lincoln after he was shot.  Seated in the dress circle of the theater, not far from the Presidential box, Leale heard the gunshot and saw assassin John Wilkes Booth leap to the stage snagging his spur on the draped flag.  As shouts rang out that the President had been murdered, Leale rushed from his seat to the President’s box.  “When I entered the box,” Leale recounts, “Mr. Lincoln was seated in a high-backed arm-chair with his head leaning towards his right side supported by Mrs. Lincoln who was weeping bitterly.”   Leale took charge of the President’s medical care and immediately began to assess his injuries.  He was soon joined by physicians Charles Taft and Albert King.   After consulting together about the President’s condition, the three physicians decided it was best to have Lincoln moved from the theater to the nearest house.

Full Text continued at :
 
News--Lincoln's Last Hours and Mary Lincoln's Guest at the Peterson House

Image Source:  Taken by Alexander Gardner in February 1865, two months before Lincoln’s assassination.      Courtesy National Portrait Gallery

News: Thomas Nast's First Sketches of Lincoln Found

Uncovering Thomas Nast’s First Drawings of Abraham Lincoln, Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, March 5, 2018.


On Lincoln’s first visit, in 1860, he stopped to have his picture, now indelible, taken by the photographer Mathew Brady. Less well known is that, on his 1861 trip, the other great New York image-maker of the time, the cartoonist Thomas Nast, saw him, too—for the first time—and made a series of drawings that are startling in their intimacy and alert observational power. The series has been known by scholarly rumor, but recently, tucked among the sketches in a Civil War notebook, two small images that Nast made of Lincoln’s face have been uncovered for the first time. This discovery we owe to the historian Ted Widmer, who came upon them in the archives of Brown University.

“I’ve been working on a book about that train trip from Springfield to Washington,” Widmer, who worked as a speechwriter in the Clinton White House, explained the other morning. “Presidents had never been as exciting to people before as Lincoln was at this moment. He was performing his part—the part of the President-to-be, and even the part of the savior of his country. He started off with a couple of so-so speeches, but he got his game going and was giving great speeches by the time he got to New York.”

Searching for material at Brown—which has an exceptional Lincoln archive, including the collection of John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary—Widmer came upon a Civil War notebook with sketches in it ascribed to Nast. Turning the pages, he found a series showing Lincoln arriving at 30th Street train station, the precursor to New York’s Penn Station. Nast, only twenty, was already drawing regularly for Harper’s Weekly and other papers (although his first cartoon of Santa Claus, whose now iconic shape and beard were largely Nast’s invention, was about a year off).

“Nast was waiting in the train station in New York. He made all these drawings of the big crowd waiting for the train—and then you see Lincoln in his top hat, coming through! And in the middle were the two unknown sketches that I went crazy about: one is a pretty good side view—Nast got up close to Lincoln. There was another piece of paper Scotch Taped to the back of the page, and I was overcome with curiosity and looked on the back side, and there it was, this incredible frontal sketch of Lincoln’s face. Sixty seconds of looking, I suppose, but so strong.”

One of the striking things about the drawings is the exceptionally free and vivid shorthand with which they’re done, and the informality of their approach. Nast was still working largely in a finished, ceremonial vein common to cartoonists of the period. Most of the images he went on to draw of Lincoln were of that kind; one, an allegorical vision of a “false peace” between North and South, was widely credited with helping Lincoln get reëlected. But, in these 1861 sketches, we see Nast’s mastery of the living thing, the face seized from life, which gives tensile strength to his more elaborate tableaux.

The other striking aspect of the sketches is the beard, which Lincoln had grown a year earlier. “The beard is endlessly fascinating,” Widmer said. “It’s true that a young girl did write to Lincoln suggesting that he grow one—that’s the old story. But the historian Adam Goodheart has a theory that the beard was a kind of rebellion against the crappiness of the compromising politicians of the preceding period, Buchanan and the rest, which was exemplified in the starchy way they dressed—a professional way of looking. Lincoln wanted to look Western, with a soft collar and a beard. Almost like Whitman—forging his own identity. I also have a theory that he may have been inspired by the great Hungarian liberal leader Lajos Kossuth, whom he keenly admired.”

Widmer has returned to the sketches often. “He looks so strong in these drawings—like a real force of nature, coming at the darkest moment to save the country, and even global democracy. With all its imperfections, the United States was still the largest democracy. If we didn’t make it, democracy didn’t. That was his point. And you see its outer surface here.

Full Text Source: The New Yorker

Wondering: Did Abraham Lincoln Have a Will?

Wondering:  Did Abraham Lincoln have a will?

. . .  did our 16th president have a plan for his money after death? The answer is no; Abraham Lincoln died intestate, meaning without a will. These days, any major figure of state is certain to have a proper will, but in Lincoln's day, this was not so common. So what happened?

By noon the day Lincoln died, his oldest son, Robert, had sent a telegram to Justice David Davis of the United States Supreme Court asking him to get at once to Washington in to take change of his father's affairs. Mrs. Lincoln and Robert then penned a letter to the county court in their home state of Illinois to recognize Davis as the administrator of Lincoln's estate.

In the end, there was over $110,000 to be divided from the estate. Justice Davis did not take any payment, and had handled the estate administration entirely on his own, without even hiring an attorney. With record-keeping as common to the time and the devotion to the late president, much is known about his estate. For example, Lincoln's unpaid debts only totaled $38.31 at his death -- far less than most could imagine in today's age, even with inflation.

Bearing in mind that Davis was a Supreme Court Justice, it is no surprise that he was able to manage it on his own. Estate administration is not a simple process, and typically, the person charged with it hires and attorney. An experienced attorney can be an irreplaceable resource for families and individuals in need of estate planning or administration.

Text Found at Berman and Aspell, LLP 
Image:  Civil War Librarian

New and Noteworthy--Lincoln and Churchill: Statesmen at War

Lincoln and Churchill, Lewis Lehrman, Stackpole Books, 544 pages, bibliographic note, illustrations, 2018,  $34.95

A portion of a book review from the January 26, 2018 Wall Street Journal

Both leaders had not only a genius for waging war but a gift for explaining why it must be waged.

The enduring fame of Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rests chiefly on their leadership during existential conflicts. And while the American Civil War and World War II differed in scale, strategic difficulty and technological complexity, the two leaders indelibly stamped their respective causes in similar ways, as Lewis E. Lehrman observes in his penetrating new book, “Lincoln & Churchill: Statesmen at War.” Decades and much else divide the two men, but the qualities they share inspire all who defend the cause of freedom.

At first glance, their contrasts seem to loom larger than their similarities. Lincoln was born in a frontier cabin, Churchill in a ducal palace. The American president was nearly monkish in his asceticism, eating little and drinking not at all; Churchill relished fine food and champagne (and whisky and brandy). “My tastes are simple,” Churchill said, “I am easily satisfied with the best.”
Lincoln was an enigmatic figure even to his closest associates; his longtime law partner called him the most “shut-mouthed” man that ever lived. Churchill was ceaselessly voluble, pouring out his thoughts and opinions in an endless geyser of rhetoric, publishing more words than Shakespeare and Dickens combined.

Their martial experience, too, could hardly have been more different. At about the age when Churchill was charging with the British cavalry in the Sudanese desert, Lincoln waged “bloody struggles with the mosquitoes,” as he self-mockingly put it, during the Black Hawk War in Illinois. Pacific by nature, the young Lincoln refused even to hunt game, while Churchill lunged into conflicts from Cuba to India to Africa. 

Ultimate power came to Churchill late. He was 65 when a reluctant King George VI appointed him prime minister. By that time, he had held every high cabinet post save that of foreign secretary. Lincoln was inaugurated a few weeks after his 52nd birthday, one of the youngest presidents yet elected, having served only a single term in Congress.

Full Text of this review is found at Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2018

New and Noteworthy: Science Meets Lincoln's Assassination and an Author Interview

A Finger In Lincoln's Brain: What Modern Science Reveals About Lincoln, His Assassination, And Its Aftermath, E. Lawrence Abel, Praeger an imprint of ABC-CLIO, 270 pp., 18 b/w illustration, bibliographic end notes, bibliography, index, $48.00.

CWL:  E. Lawrence Abel brings his professional training in psychology and anatomy to a comprehensive examination of the Lincoln assassination. His arguments deal with the sciences of ballistics, disease, human behavior. Very well written in an accessible style. Myths and misunderstandings are explored and explained. Very likely to be the touchstone for all past and future considerations of the Lincoln assassination.

From the Publisher: In this book, E. Lawrence Abel sheds much-needed light on the fascinating details surrounding the death of Abraham Lincoln, including John Wilkes Booth's illness that turned him into an assassin, the medical treatment the president is alleged to have received after he was shot, and the significance of his funeral for the American public. 

The author provides an in-depth analysis of the science behind the assassination, a discussion of the medical care Lincoln received at the time he was shot and the treatment he would have received if he were shot today, and the impact of his death on his contemporaries and the American public.

The book examines Lincoln's fatalism and his unbridled ambition in terms of empirical psychological science rather than the fanciful psychoanalytical explanations that often characterize Lincoln psychohistories. The medical chapters challenge the long-standing description of Lincoln's last hours and examine the debate about whether Lincoln's doctors inadvertently doomed him.

The Interview: 

CWL: You suggest that Booth's shot was a 'lucky one.' With Booth so close to Lincoln, how could Booth have missed his target?

ELA: Even at a distance of 5 feet, a derringer is inaccurate. I have just written an article for the Surratt Courier going into this in depth and I also cover it in detail in my talk at the archives (with illustrations).  You can see it by googling:  e. Lawrence Abel archives youtube.  In short, the youtube shows that an expert aiming at a target five feet away, missed, and there is also a clip showing that the gun had a lot of recoil, causing it to jerk upward from the target. It was "lucky" in the sense that Booth was likely aiming at Lincoln's back (the larger target).


CWL: Recently Dr. Charles Leale has been excoriated for his medical treatment of Lincoln?  Do you agree?

ELA: No, he did what he was trained to do. Although what he did would be sanctioned today, he shouldn't be blamed for making what in those days, wasn't a mistake. The ones who should be "excoriated" are the other doctors who also inserted their fingers into Lincoln's brain. It's as if they thought their fingers were better than Leale's.

 

CWL: Recently, historians and psychologists have described Lincoln has being both emotionally depressed and fatalistic.  You suggest that Lincoln may have dealt with these conditions by successfully managing his depression, fatalism  and his ambition.  How so?

ELA: I don't suggest he did other than his fear of death [that] motivated him to do things that would result in a "symbolic immortality" such as becoming president, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.

CWL:  What does a modern understanding of forensics make clear about Lincoln's wound?

ELA: The fact that the wound was smooth and round means that Booth had to have shot Lincoln from Lincoln's right and not behind him. This is because Lincoln was leaning to his left when he was shot, and the only way to get a round smooth entry wound is if the gun is perpendicular to the target. If Booth were standing behind him, the entry wound would have been oblique and sharp edged. 

CWL: In what ways does your professional career bring clarity to the many myths of the assassination?

ELA: Coming from a science background, I focused on issues that other historians largely ignored because they don't feel comfortable dealing with aspects of the assassination and individuals involved.

CWL: How would you rate Samuel Mudd's medical treatment of John Wilkes Booth?

ELA: I don't go into Mudd's medical treatment in the book. From what we know, he did what he could. The controversy is whether he lied about knowing he was treating Booth

 

CWL: Was the embalming of Lincoln's body a 'state of the art' in 1865 effort?

ELA: Yes. Lincoln was embalmed using state of the art methods for that time. The deterioration in his body afterwards may have been due to the embalming fluid or poor perfusion.

 

CWL:  Describe your case for John Wilkes Booth not being a tool of the Confederate government.

ELA: That would take a long time and I cover it in my book.  Even if he were a "tool" that would not solely explain his attitude toward Lincoln, or his willingness to murder--there were other "tools" and others with the same deep seated hatred, and they didn't try to kill Lincoln.

CWL: You make a persuasive case for John Wilkes Booth being very ill previous to the assassination.  What symptoms do you see in Booth that suggests this?

ELA: I have about ten pages of arguments that Booth was suffering from syphilis before the assassination, which was a spur of the moment act.

CWL:  Thank you for your work regarding Lincoln's assassination.

News--Pope Francis 1 To Stand At Lincoln's Gettysburg Address Lectern While In Philadelphia

Pope To Use Lincoln's Gettysburg Lectern In Philadephia, Kathy Matheson, Associated Press, August 8, 2015

When Pope Francis speaks outside Independence Hall in September, he will stand at the same lectern that President Abraham Lincoln used to deliver the Gettysburg Address.

The Union League of Philadelphia said Friday it would offer the simple wooden stand for the pontiff to use during his planned speech on immigration and religious liberty.

"Its simple beauty and humble role in one of American history's most important moments reflects, in many ways, Pope Francis' own world view," said Robert Ciaruffoli, president of the World Meeting of Families.

The pope's visit to Philadelphia on Sept. 26 and 27 comes at the close of the World Meeting of Families, a triennial Catholic conference designed to strengthen family bonds. The pope will also celebrate a public Mass on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Lincoln used the lectern on Nov. 19, 1863, to dedicate part of the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg as a cemetery. His two-minute address - beginning with "Four score and seven years ago" - became one of the most famous speeches in American history.

It ended with Lincoln's resolution that "this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Lincoln, however, was not the featured speaker at the dedication. The wooden stand had been provided by a local professor to help the main orator, Edward Everett, manage extensive notes for a now largely forgotten two-hour speech, said Jim Mundy, director of education and programming for the Foundations of The Union League. The president followed Everett at the lectern.

The stand is on a long-term loan from a private collector to The Union League, which was founded during the Civil War with the goal of preserving the Union. It has been on display at the league's stately building in downtown Philadelphia for the past two years.

Conservators will soon begin working to stabilize the lectern for the pontiff's speech. Further details were not immediately available.  Francis' appearance outside Independence Hall on Sept. 26 is expected to be a ticketed event. Exact arrangements have not been announced. The pontiff's first stops on his U.S. visit will be in Washington and New York.

Text and Image Source: Associated Press

News---Gardner Photo of Gettysburg Addess May Contain Lincoln, But Not The One You've Seen

I Found Real Abraham Lincoln! Armchair Historian Disputes 2007 Claim, Michael Sheridan, September 24, 2013.

Armchair historian disputes 2007 claim, says he's found the actual 16th President in famed Gettysburg Address photo. Assistant professor and animator Christopher Oakley, who is working with his students on a Virtural Lincoln Porject to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, claims his Lincoln is the correct one. He never believed the claim six years ago that focused on another person in the same Alexander Gardner photo.

They got the wrong man.
An animator and teacher at a North Carolina college says the man believed to be President Abraham Lincoln on horseback in a famed photo taken 150 years ago isn’t him. Instead, the slain 16th President is actually farther to the right. The “Where’s Waldo”-like discovery by Christopher Oakley, an assistant professor of new media at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, was revealed Tuesday. And his potentially historic find came completely by accident. “I was actually looking for William Seward,” Lincoln’s Secretary of State, the 51-year-old told the Daily News.

Oakley was studying the image as part of the university’s Virtual Lincoln Project, a computer animated, interactive 3D film that celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address in November. It was during an early morning examination in March of the image captured by famed photographer Alexander Gardner that he came across the man he immediately knew to be Abraham Lincoln.  “You ever have that feeling that you’re about to fall out of bed, and your heart is racing?” he said, describing how he felt the moment he saw that stovepipe hat.


Link to Full Text: New York Daily News September 24, 2013

New and Noteworthy In Paperback--- Abraham Lincoln, A Life In Two Volumes by Michael Burlingame

Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volumes, One and Two,  Michael Burlingame, Johns Hopkins University Press, Paperback, Volume One, 1035 pp., 10 illustrations, bibliographic notes, index, Volume Two, 1048 pp.,  23 illustrations, bibliographic notes, index.  Each volume is $29.95.

In the first multi-volume biography to be published in decades, Michael Burlingame offers comprehensive and fresh look at Abraham Lincoln's entire life. Accessing the field notes of earlier biographers, and relying upon decades of his own research in manuscript archives with extensive newspaper collections, Burlingame as produced a remarkable work.  A fresh look?  Is that still possible?  Indeed, it is possible and it has been achieved. Abraham Lincoln: A Life both alters and reinforces readers' understanding of the sixteenth president.

Volume One presents Lincoln's early childhood as a farm lad in Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, his legal training, and his 1846-1848 term in the U.S. House of Representatives.  The volume through the end of 1860 as Lincoln chooses is presidential cabinet.  Volume Two begins with his February 1860 trek through the North and ends with his assassination in 1865. Military dilemmas, battlefield crisises, relentless office seekers, challenges from senators and representatives, the death of a son, stresses to his marriage are presented with new interpretations.

Published during the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, Burlingame's hallmark study reinforces his reputation as a thorough author of Lincoln's life and era.  Abraham Lincoln: A Life has been named as one of the top ten Lincoln books by the Chicago Tribune. The work has also won the 2008 Prose Award of Best Book in U.S. History and Biography and the 2010 Lincoln Prize from the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. Readers who have enjoyed the narrative styles of Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote, will likely also enjoy Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life.

 

Review---What Was Lincoln Thinking?: A Very Short Introduction

Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, Allen C. Guelzo, Oxford University Press, 145 pp., 2 maps, ten photographs, index, bibliography, 2009, $11.95.

Abraham Lincoln is one of five Americans who are known on every continent of the planet earth. Allen Guelzo considers Lincoln's beliefs regarding seven essential issues being contested during the mid-19th century. The limits of  equality, the possibility of advancement, the nature of law, the hazards of liberty, the importance of debate in a democratic republic, the emancipation of slaves, and the terms of reunion in order to end of the war.

Experiments in establishing democratic republics during this era had failed with the exception of the United States of America.  During the 1850s it became apparent that this government was on the brink of collapse. The possibility of all men being equal was put at risk by the presence of slavery. The opportunity of all men to rise, economically and socially, was in conflict with the right to hold property in the form of slaves. Lincoln tailored and tempered his ambitions to rise in the frontier environment of a capitalistic, democratic republic. His advancement came though agriculture, transportation, retail work, military life, the practice of law and participation in local, state and national politics. Rejecting farm work, he embraced Mississippi River and Indiana commerce, militia leadership during the Black Hawk War, the bar and legislative election campaigns.

In his law practice he represented both masters and runaway slaves. The natural rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, among others, were for Lincoln in direct conflict and contradicted by slavery. Hammered out in political debate, Lincoln's understanding of these natural rights were honed by his service in the courtrooms, the federal House of Representatives and the Presidency. The necessity of emancipation and the possibility of reuniting the states perplexed Lincoln.

Guelzo, Gettysburg College professor and preeminent Lincoln scholar, carefully describes Lincoln's beliefs and their context within post-revolutionary America and Europe. In clear and concise language, the author clarifies what Lincoln believed, thought and practiced. The Old Testament declares that out of the heart flows the issues of life. Guelzo's very short introduction to Lincoln's beliefs and his struggle to conform his life's work to them is a thought provoking revelation for 21st century readers.

Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, is one of over 200 Very Short Introductions offered by Oxford University Press. CWL recommends this series; it well rewards the brief amount of time it takes to read one of the series.  Curious about Freud, Jung, Islam, History, Dreaming, or the American Presidency?  There is a Very Short Introduction for you.

New and Noteworthy: The Lincoln Haters' Club, 1861-1865

The Battles That Made Abraham Lincoln: How Lincoln Mastered His Enemies To Win The Civil War, Free The Slaves, and Preserve The Union, Larry Tagg, Savas Beatie Publishing, 576 pp, paperback, $19.95.

From the Publisher:  Today, Abraham Lincoln is a beloved American icon, widely considered to be our best president. It was not always so. Larry Tagg's The Battles that Made Abraham Lincoln is the first study of its kind to concentrate on what Lincoln's contemporaries thought of him during his lifetime, and the obstacles they set before him. Be forewarned: your preconceived notions are about to be shattered.Torn by civil war, the era in which our sixteenth president lived and governed was the most rough-and-tumble in the history of American politics. The violence of the criticism with which Lincoln had to deal came from both sides of the Mason-Dixon line and was overwhelming. Indeed, the breadth and depth of the spectacular prejudice against him is often shocking for its cruelty, intensity, and unrelenting vigor. The plain truth is that Mr. Lincoln was deeply reviled by many who knew him personally, and by hundreds of thousands who only knew of him. His rise to greatness was in spite of their vitriol.Boisterous and venomous enough to be good entertainment, The Battles that Made Abraham Lincoln rests upon a wide foundation of research. Tagg includes extensive treatment of the political context that begat Lincoln's predicament, riding with the president-elect to Washington and walking with him through the bleak years of war up to and beyond assassination. Throughout, Tagg entertains with a lively writing style, outstanding storytelling verve, and an unconventional, wholly against-the-grain perspective that is sure to delight readers of all stripes.Lincoln's humanity has been unintentionally trivialized by some historians and writers who have obscured the real man behind a patina of bronze. Tagg's groundbreaking book helps all of us better understand the great man Lincoln was, and how history is better viewed through a long-distance lens than contemporaneously. The Battles that Made Abraham Lincoln will be the "must-read" title for general readers and scholars alike.

Early Reviews:  "This is a well-written and edited book. Much to its credit, it is devoid of an author's opinion and presents the information in a straightforward manner and is a valuable addition to the Lincoln library, and a must for serious students." Civil War News.

"The author has done an impressive amount of research. . . . an impressive work." Sacramento Book Review

"This is a tour de force demonstration of writing, reading, and thinking that never lets the reader down. Easily the Lincoln book of the Bicentennial of his birth and the best Lincoln tome I have seen in 15 years of compiling and reviewing Civil War book releases." - Dimitri Rotov, Civil War Bookshelf

Film---Engaged in a Great Civil War, Speilberg's Lincoln

A President Engaged in a Great Civil War: Lincoln by Steven Spielberg with Daniel Day-Lewis, reviewed by A. O. Scott, New York Times, November 8, 2012.

Excerpts:

"After a brutal, kinetic beginning — a scene of muddy, hand-to-hand combat that evokes the opening of Saving Private Ryan  “Lincoln” settles down into what looks like the familiar pageantry and speechifying of costume drama. A flock of first-rate character actors parades by in the heavy woolen plumage of the past".

"The script, by Tony Kushner is attentive to the idioms of the time without being too showy about it. Lincoln is eloquent in the manner of the self-taught provincial prodigy he was, his speech informed by voracious reading and also by the tall tales and dirty jokes he heard growing up in the frontier country of Kentucky and Illinois. He uses words like “shindee” and “flib-flub” and likes to regale (and exasperate) his cabinet with homespun parables, shaggy dog stories and bits of outhouse humor. His salty native wit is complemented by the clear and lofty lyricism that has come down to us in his great speeches."

"The main business of “Lincoln” is framed by two of those, the Gettysburg Address — quoted back to the president by awed Union soldiers on a January night in 1865 — and his Second Inaugural Address, which he delivered a little more than a month before the end of the Civil War and his own assassination. These are big, famous words and momentous events, and the task Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Kushner have set themselves is to make this well-known story fresh and surprising. Mr. Day-Lewis, for his part, must convey both the human particularity and the greatness of a man who is among the most familiar and the most enigmatic of American leaders. We carry him around in our pockets every day, and yet we still argue and wonder about who he was."

"This is, in other words, less a biopic than a political thriller, a civics lesson that is energetically staged and alive with moral energy. Lincoln, having just won re-election, faces a complex predicament. The war has turned in the Union’s favor, but the Capitol is in some turmoil. Lincoln must contend with a Democratic opposition that reviles him as a dictator (“Abraham Africanus,” they call him) and also with a deep, factional split within the Republican Party. "

"The question facing Lincoln is stark: Should he abolish slavery, once and for all, even if it means prolonging the war? The full weight and scale of this dilemma are the central lesson “Lincoln” asks us to grasp. The film places slavery at the center of the story, emphatically countering the revisionist tendency to see some other, more abstract thing — states’ rights, Southern culture, industrial capitalism — as the real cause of the Civil War."

" . . . this is finally a movie about how difficult and costly it has been for the United States to recognize the full and equal humanity of black people."

"There is no end to this story, which may be why Mr. Spielberg’s much-noted fondness for multiple denouements is in evidence here. There are at least five moments at which the narrative and the themes seem to have arrived at a place of rest. (The most moving for me is a quiet scene when the 13th Amendment is read aloud. I won’t give away by whom.) But the movie keeps going, building a symphony of tragedy and hope that celebrates Lincoln’s great triumph while acknowledging the terror, disappointment and other complications to come."

Full Text and Image Source:  New York Times, November 8, 2012

 

News---Lincoln Through The Eyes of Daniel Day Lewis

Abe Lincoln As You Have Nerver Heard Him: Daniel Day-Lewis On Playing Abraham Lincoln, Charles McGrath, New York Times, October 31, 2012.

A Portion of the Text from the New York Times Interview With Daniel Day-Lewis

" Mr. Day-Lewis prepared for the part not by splitting rails or doing sums on the back of a shovel but mostly by reading. He started with Ms. Goodwin’s book, pored over Lincoln’s own writing and finished up with the Carl Sandburg biography. He also spent a lot of time studying the photographs taken toward the end of Lincoln’s life by Alexander Gardner. “I looked at them the way you sometimes look at your own reflection in a mirror and wonder who that person is looking back at you,” he said.

“Everyone’s jaw was on the floor,” he said. “It was one of the great things I’ve ever seen. To do that, you have to be there, in that moment. It’s not psychosis; it’s sustained concentration. Is all that necessary, the staying in character? It makes sense to me.” He added: “I’ve never seen a great actor do a major role that didn’t cost a lot. They’re sacrificial animals of a sort.”

Mr. Day-Lewis said that he felt a “great sadness” when the movie was done and that he still feels connected to it. “I’m woefully one-track-minded,” he said. “Without sounding unhinged, I know I’m not Abraham Lincoln. I’m aware of that. But the truth is the entire game is about creating an illusion, and for whatever reason, and mad as it may sound, some part of me can allow myself to believe for a period for time without questioning, and that’s the trick.” He laughed. “Maybe it’s a terrible revelation about myself that one does feel able to do that.”  "

Text Source, Image Source and Full Text Link:   New York Times, October 31, 2012

Review---Lincoln's 100 Days Between September 22 1862 and January 1 1863

Jim Cullen's Review of Louis P. Masur's Lincoln's 100 Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War For the Union, [Oxford 1862]

Louis P. Masur's latest book stands at the intersection of two important long term trends in Civil War historiography (and, by extension, U.S. historiography generally). The first a post-1960s emphasis on foregrounding the racial dimension of the conflict, asserting slavery was the precipitating cause and abolition as the primary significance of its outcome. This would almost be so obvious among scholars to not bear mentioning if such emphasis was not primary before the late twentieth century, and if there didn't remain vocal segments in the culture at large that explicitly reject it. The other, more recent trend is a new emphasis on political history, in effect closing a circle that began with a move toward social history in the 1970s and '80s and cultural history in the 1990s and 2000s. In recent decades historians have tried to affirm their commitment to a democratic discourse by affirming the agency of individual actors at the ground level rather than the Words and Deeds of Great Men. Like all well-intentioned (or perhaps just intellectual marketplace-driven) trends, however, such tendencies have perhaps reached the point where they conceal more than they reveal. Who's running the government at any given time really may matter after all.

Given this context, there may well have been a spate of Emancipation Proclamation books even if its 150th anniversary was not at hand (President Lincoln issued the preliminary Proclamation on September 22, 1862, and the final one putting it into effect on January 1, 1863). In recent years, a string of heavyweight scholars -- among them Allen Guelzo, Harold Holzer, and, going back a bit further, John Hope Franklin -- have made it the subject of volume-length studies. This is interesting when one considers the traditional perception of the E.P., captured most vividly by Edmund Wilson, who in Patriotic Gore famously described it as having "all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading." But just as the center of gravity in the military history of the war has shifted from Gettysburg to Antietam, so too is the E.P. getting a second look as a document as carefully crafted, and eloquent in its own way, as the Gettysburg Address.


Full Text Continues at  History News Network, October 15, 2012

New and Noteworthy: The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln

The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln, Stephen L. Carter, Knopf Publishing, 528 pp.,  $26.95.

From the Publisher: Stephen L. Carter's thrilling new novel takes as its starting point an alternate history. President Abraham Lincoln survives the assassination attempt at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. Two years later he is charged with overstepping his constitutional authority, both during and after the Civil War and now faces an impeachment trial.  Here is a vividly imagined work of historical fiction that caputres the emotional tenor of post-Civil War America, a brillantly realized courtroom drama that explores the always contention question of the nature of presidential authority, and a galvanizing story of political suspense.

From a Books and Culture Review: Re-reading it, I'm reminded why I read fiction in the first place, and why a new book by Stephen Carter is always to be celebrated.  On top of all its novelistic pleasures, The Impeachment of Abraham Lincolnis perfectly timed for this election year. "Nowadays," Carter writes in an author's note at the end, "the more politically engaged among our citizenry tend to cry 'impeachment' whenever a President they happen to dislike does anything remotely controversial. Our sense of history has grown dangerously thin, and our sense of proportion with it."   Amen.

Books and Culture Link with John Wilson's review. 

Amazon.com Link with publisher's remarks and  video trailer.

Lincoln And The Election of 1860, Michael S. Green,152, pp., Southern Illinois University Press, 2011, bibliographic notes, index, $19.95.

One of the new titles in Southern Illinois University's Concise Lincoln Library series, Lincoln And The Election of 1860 is a fine work. Michael S. Green's narrative is clear and direct; every sentence is lean and concise; the pace never falters. Events, decisions, and personalities are described by to-the-point anecdotes and on-the-money-quotations. Green offers the best of recent Lincoln and American political party scholarship.  Elbow by elbow conversations reveal the principles and political savvy, the borders and brinksmanship of Lincoln, his allies and his opponents.

Green's first two chapters offer a cogent description of the American political party system to 1850. He captures the essence of the era's politics with two quotations from Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson's 1801 inaugural address 'We are all republicans; we are all federalists' statement is contrasted by his later statement in a letter that 'I shall . . . sink federalism into an abyss from which there shall be no resurrection for it.'  The first and second party systems, the founding of the Whig Party, and the great debates of the 1850s are fully sketched.


The Republican field of candidates, Lincoln's perception of himself and his perception of how others view him is the cornerstone of the book. Greene relies upon Lincoln's remarks and those of others to clarify the issues. The Constitution, the federal union, the election of 1860 are offered as understood by those at that time. Eager to give no offense to others, Lincoln creates a meandering path to the White House; others paint themselves into a corner and Lincoln keeps his feet out of their paint. Green wonderfully describes the Illinois Republican Party's presidential nominating convention at which 'The Rail Splitter' is lifted up by the attendees and literally passed forward to the stage.  Greene's story climaxes during the Republican national nominating convention and the elections of  October and November balloting process. 


Michael S. Greene has succeeded in crafting a clear and concise narrative. It is one that offers a fine summary of Lincoln's efforts, the endeavors of his friends and the political climate of the presidential campaign of 1860.  Blessedly Greene does not set forth observations on the political environment of 2010s, which has become a habit of other scholars sesquicentennial books. Lincoln and the Election of 1860 is accessible to advanced placement high school students, undergraduate and graduate readers. 

New and Noteworthy----What Did Lincoln Read?

Reading With Lincoln, Robert Bray, Southern Illinois University Press, 272 pages, $29.95.

Lincoln Revealed through the Books He Read, Reviewed by John Patrick Daly; Published on H-CivWar, February, 2012)

Robert Bray’s Reading with Lincoln is a welcome addition to the endless list of Abraham Lincoln titles. Do we really need another book on Lincoln? The answer in this case is a resounding and somewhat ironic, yes. It turns out that we need a book on Lincoln and books. Bray has written a masterful account of Lincoln as a reader. The catalog of books he read is impressive and fascinating and gives a new window into the man. Lincoln was a classic autodidact and to journey through his life in books is to see his mind in formation and action. Bray has to do some speculation to fill in Lincoln’s library and what he actually read, but his guess work is honest and well grounded, giving his book some of the pace and interest of a mystery story.

Lincoln was an eclectic reader and read low-brow regional humor as much as he did classics and William Shakespeare. Bray, through Lincoln, brings to life the lost world of publishing and reading taste in the mid-nineteenth century. Nothing ages faster and to its detriment more than humor writing and writing on popular politics and current events. Lincoln read deeply in such literature in his time. In reconstructing Lincoln’s studies Bray delivers a study of faded popular works, like those of Artemus Ward and Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby (David Ross Locke). Lincoln defied the educational snobbery and standards of his day and proselytized for regional humor and obscure Western political prose. His reading helped make him unique and also let him step into a more modern form of expression and communication confidently divorced from the long-winded, classical allusion-laden style of the politicians and academics who considered themselves his social and educational betters. This even came up in his cabinet where he regaled his colleagues with “low” humor tales taken from Ward and Nasby that mystified most of them and tried their patience. But with the benefit of hindsight we can see how Lincoln was developing a speaking, political, and writing style more attuned to the modern democracy he would not live to see.

Lincoln built his own world of expression and knowledge over a long period. Lincoln’s self-education--and limited formal education--began with the moral didactics found in readers; grammars; popular versions of Aesop; and, of course, sermons and the Bible. If much of what constituted Lincoln’s early reading is guesswork, the books Bray discusses are still fascinating chances to speculate about the development of Lincoln’s mind. The roots of Lincoln’s religious skepticism are one such puzzle. Constantin de Volney’s writing on history, civilization, political philosophy, and theology in The Ruins (1791), now forgotten, clearly was a formative experience. Lincoln also read Thomas Paine and probably David Hume. The poetry of Robert Burns and Lord Byron--long emphasized by biographers of Lincoln--also get a strong analysis from Bray. Lincoln wrote his own poem in 1838, “The Suicide’s Soliloquy,” which was even darker than its title. In the realm of poetry, some authors have tried to link Lincoln’s modern sensibility to his reading Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855), but Bray shows that this connection of the two great contemporaries is a fabrication. Lincoln read more obscure poets, like Thomas Hood, whose satirical tone he admired.

In the books Lincoln read, both a satirical and serious vein shines through that mirrors the contours of his personality. As grammars were a key in his formative years, legal commentaries honed his early adult mind. He then turned his rational legal skills to dissecting human nature and creation itself. Robert Chamber’s Vestiges of Creation (1844) gave Lincoln grounding in radical science. He also read Theodore Parker and other theological radicals. In one of the strongest sections of the book, Bray shows how Lincoln’s views of humanity, religion, and politics found a chord in his eclectic mastery of Shakespeare. Many minds have found similar solace in the bard, but Bray’s most original and crowning achievement is his account of Lincoln’s love of low-brow regional humor, especially Ward and Nasby. Lincoln really comes alive through these authors whose rough humor he performed for White House colleagues. Lincoln’s psychology, as far as we can know it, in which high spirits and depressive near nihilism coexisted, reveals itself in these authors. They had humor but also a grim view of human motivations and abilities. It is a testament to Bray’s skill that Shakespeare, Paine, Byron, William Blackstone, Chambers, and the others set the stage for Ward and Nasby. Bray shows the reader the rough insight into human nature both in the popular comedy that Lincoln treasured and in the better known authors. Great ideas came to life in Lincoln’s bawdy jokes and jests, and that ability to inspire and instruct in a common medium was perhaps his greatest genius as a politician and a man.

Bray is to be commended for his outstanding scholarship and lively presentation of Lincoln’s reading history. Lincoln spent a large portion of his life immersed in books. Bray shows that though we are immersed in Lincoln studies, a new Lincoln can still be unearthed. A man who studied so much merits much study, and Bray’s originality in doing so rewards his readers.

Text Source: H-Net

News---3.5 Story Tower Of Books Represents Only Half Of The Number Lincoln Books Published

Forget Lincoln Logs: A Tower Of Books To Honor Abe, National Public Radio staff, February 20, 2012.

This President's Day, a group of historians in Washington, D.C., decided they wanted to do something different to recognize the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. But how do you memorialize someone who is already one of the most memorialized people in history?

Their solution: to physically illustrate Lincoln's importance by creating a tower of books written about him. The tower measures about eight feet around and 34 feet — that's three and a half stories tall. "It makes a real statement to anyone that this is an important guy and there was a whole lot written about him, and there continues to be a whole lot written about him," says Paul Tetreault, director of Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.

The towering tribute to the 16th president rises up through the middle of a spiral staircase in the lobby of the new Ford's Theatre Center for Education and Leadership, located just across the street.

Some 15,000 books have been written about Lincoln — more books, says Tetreault, than have been written about any other person in world history, with the exception of Jesus Christ. Nearly 7,000 of these books are contained in the tower. They even look authentic up close (click here to get a closer look) but the tower's books are actually replicas made of pieces of bent aluminum, with the covers of the real books printed on them.

"There are books here for people of all ages," says Tetreault. "There's young people's books, there's an Abraham Lincoln stickers book, there's an Abraham Lincoln coloring book. And then of course there's all of the bestsellers: David Herbert Donald's great book about Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals — all of these major scholars who've written about Abraham Lincoln, they're all contained in this stack."

Text and Image Source: National Public Radio

Film News---Spielberg Films Team of Rivals in Virginia; Release Date 2013

Daniel Day-Lewis Has a Great Honest Abe Beard Going for ‘Lincoln’, Tim Grierson, The Projector, December 2, 2011.

It was just over a year ago that it was announced that Daniel Day-Lewis would be the star of Steven Spielberg's Abraham Lincoln film. There's no question that the two-time Oscar-winner is an astonishingly gifted actor, but when you're playing a revered American president there will always be questions about whether you can do justice to a mythic figure in U.S. history -- especially when some people refuse to accept Day-Lewis in the role since he's English. But we think most folks will be willing to look past such minor issues after checking out this first photo of Day-Lewis sporting his beard for "Lincoln." You have to admit, the resemblance is pretty striking -- and rather presidential.

The photo (the first we've seen of the actor as Lincoln) was snapped by Michael Phillips (via Badass Digest), who took the picture presumably while Day-Lewis was enjoying a lunch break during the filming of "Lincoln" in Virginia. While a lot of unofficial on-set photos capture stars at their most unflattering, this casual shot actually gives Day-Lewis a regal, dignified air that's synonymous with most people's impressions of our 16th president. Even in repose, the guy just exudes rugged authenticity.

"Lincoln," which is based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals" is said to follow Lincoln during the final months of his life when the Civil War was coming to a close. The film won't open until December 2012, but it already has to be considered an Oscar front-runner simply because of the pedigree of the material, the director and the star -- and that it's not even mentioning the rest of the cast, which includes Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jackie Earle Haley, Michael Stuhlbarg, David Strathairn and Hal Holbrook. Spielberg has two movies coming next month -- "The Adventures of Tintin" and "War Horse" -- but after seeing this Day-Lewis photo it's hard not to focus on what the director has coming our way next year. We always knew Day-Lewis could play the part. Today, we learned he definitely looks the part, too.

Text Source: The Projector

Image Source: IFC.com

Actor/Character
Joseph Gordon-Levitt/Robert Todd Lincoln
Daniel Day-Lewis/Abraham Lincoln
Tommy Lee Jones/Thaddeus Stevens [Pennsylvania, US Congressman]
Lee Pace/Fernando Wood [Mayor NYC]
Sally Field/Mary Todd Lincoln
Jackie Earle Haley, Alexander Stephens [CSA, Vice President]
Jared Harris, Ulysses S. Grant
Joseph Cross, John Hay [Secretary to Lincoln
David Strathairn, Secretary of State William Seward
Bruce McGill, Edwin Stanton [Secretary of War]
Jeremy Strong, John Nicolay [Secretary to Lincoln]
Grainger Hines, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles
Reed Birney, James Speed [Kentucky friend of Lincoln]
Mike Shiflett, CSA Senator RMT Hunter
John Hutto, Senator Charles Sumner [Massachusetts, US Senator]
Lincoln (original screenplay) (filming)

John Logan is the development screenwriter; his works include: 2004 The Aviator, 2003 The Last Samurai, 2000 Gladiator, 1999 Any Given Sunday. Tony Kushner is the onset screenwriter; he also wrote the screenplay of Munich

Information Source: IMBD.com

New and Noteworthy---Lincoln, Two Constitutions And The War

Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War, Mark E. Neely, University of North Carolina Press, 410 pages, notes, bibliography, index,$35.00. [November 2011]

From the publisher: The Civil War placed the U.S. Constitution under unprecedented--and, to this day, still unmatched--strain. In Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mark Neely examines for the first time in one book the U.S. Constitution and its often overlooked cousin, the Confederate Constitution, and the ways the documents shaped the struggle for national survival.

Previous scholars have examined wartime challenges to civil liberties and questions of presidential power, but Neely argues that the constitutional conflict extended to the largest questions of national existence. Drawing on judicial opinions, presidential state papers, and political pamphlets spiced with the everyday immediacy of the partisan press, Neely reveals how judges, lawyers, editors, politicians, and government officials, both North and South, used their constitutions to fight the war and save, or create, their nation.

Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation illuminates how the U.S. Constitution not only survived its greatest test but emerged stronger after the war. That this happened at a time when the nation's very existence was threatened, Neely argues, speaks ultimately to the wisdom of the Union leadership, notably President Lincoln and his vision of the American nation.

CWL: The author of The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction , The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America , The Confederate Image: Prints of the Lost Cause and many others, Mark Neely offers a thorough discussion secession, habeas corpus, the presidency, soldiers in courtrooms, the police state of Richmond Virginia, and states' rights in the Confederacy. Readers will be informed and possibly provoked. In a lifetime of studying Lincoln, the Constitution of 1787, the Confederate Constitution, civil liberties on both side of the Mason-Dixon Line, Mark Neely offers both a distillation of his previous works and new information and interpretation of how the Constitution of 1787, as a legal foundation, was stressed and saved in the courtrooms of The North, The South and The West during the war.