A. Lincoln Semester

In Memoriam: David Herbert Donald

2009-05-19T10:11:00.003-04:00

I was saddened this morning to read of David Herbert Donald's death at age 88.

I first encountered Donald's work 25 years ago as a student, in the form of his edited collection Why the North Won the Civil War . As a professor, I've taught his Lincoln biography. This semester, for an undergraduate course on "Abraham Lincoln in History and Memory," I used his Lincoln Reconsidered. The first edition of that book appeared more than 50 years ago, and it wears its age extremely well. Despite the flood of Lincoln scholarship over the past half century (and the mini-tsunami in this bicentennial year), Donald's insights remain vital and provocative, and his prose sparkles and delights in a way that few historians can match.

Obituaries are here and here; a tribute from one of his former students is here.

In Love with Abe, NSFW Edition

2009-04-06T12:11:00.004-04:00

Maira Kalman's love for Abe was chaste, reverential, and fully clothed.

Painter Justine Lai's love is none of those things--nor is it reserved for the 16th president.

For the past three years, Lai has been working on a series entitled "Join or Die," which she explains thus:

In Join Or Die, I paint myself having sex with the Presidents of the United States in chronological order. I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated.

Lai began the series while an undergraduate at Stanford and is now up to U.S. Grant. The images are here, but consider yourself forewarned--the headline is no joke.

Lincoln Roundup

2009-04-06T10:48:00.003-04:00

The Washington Post magazine carried a story this weekend about the unhappy fate of Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancee, Clara Harris, the Lincoln's invited guests at Ford's Theatre on the night of April 14.

A pair of upcoming conferences in DC will put on display the very different ways that the members of two professions will remember the Lincoln bicentennial:

First up are the doctors: on Saturday and Sunday, April 18-19, the National Museum of Health and Medicine is sponsoring A Symposium on President Lincoln’s Health, on the grounds of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Takoma, DC. Registration is free but space is extremely limited (in fact, the event is no longer listed on their "Upcoming Programs" page, which perhaps suggests that it's already fully booked. But for those interested, it's worth a query).
The lawyers get their turn on Thursday, April, 30, when the American Bar Association hosts a program at the Newseum, Lincoln as Lawyer, Lincoln as Orator. Registration is free but space is limited. The ABA is sponsoring the event as part of The Leon Jaworski Public Program Series and in conjunction with its Law Day 2009, which this year focuses on the theme, "A Legacy of Liberty: Celebrating Lincoln's Bicentennial."

Abraham Lincoln, Extreme Makeover Edition

2009-04-02T16:08:00.006-04:00

Before:

After:

Those curious about the whys and wherefores can find them here.

So If Mao Was Lincoln, That Makes the Dalai Lama ...

2009-03-28T15:16:00.002-04:00

... Jeff Davis?

China marked 50 years of direct control over Tibet on Saturday, raising the national flag in the regional capital and commemorating a new political holiday honoring what it calls the liberation of slaves from brutal feudal rule.

...

March 28 marks the date when Beijing ended the 1959 Tibetan uprising, sending the Dalai Lama over the Himalayas into exile and placing Tibet under its direct rule for the first time.

In China's official version of events, Tibet in mid-century was a remote medieval backwater where most people lived in servitude to the Buddhist theocracy and nobility until the Communist government stepped in.

"Just as Europe can't return to the medieval era and the United States can't go back to the times before the Civil War, Tibet can never restore the old serf society era," Zhang Qingli, the Communist Party boss of the region, told the crowd of more than 13,000.

The ceremony followed a host of articles in the state-run media and shows on TV extolling Communist reforms and economic development. They have likened the end of the Dalai Lama's rule as akin to late U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's emancipation of slaves.

For more on "Serf Emancipation Day" and the Lincoln analogy, see the website of the official news agency of the Chinese government. For a different perspective on this anniversary, with no apparent references to Abraham Lincoln or the American Civil War, see the website of the Dalai Lama's government in exile.

Why Is This Man Glowering?

2009-03-26T12:00:00.005-04:00

The one on the wall, that is:

(From today's Washington Post.)

Who Owns Lincoln?

2009-03-16T23:50:00.007-04:00

A few months ago, historian Eric Foner published a piece in the Nation entitled "Our Lincoln" (not coincidentally, Foner edited a collection of essays by 11 historians that was published under that title last fall). In the Nation piece, Foner wrote that:

Lincoln is important to us not because of his melancholia or how he chose his cabinet but because of his role in the vast human drama of emancipation and what his life tells us about slavery's enduring legacy. The Nation, founded by veterans of the struggle for abolition three months after Lincoln's death, dedicated itself to completing the unfinished task of making the former slaves equal citizens. It soon abandoned this goal, but in the twentieth century again took up the banner of racial justice. Who is our Lincoln?

In the wake of the 2008 election and an inaugural address with "a new birth of freedom," a phrase borrowed from the Gettysburg Address, as its theme, the Lincoln we should remember is the politician whose greatness lay in his capacity for growth. Much of that growth stemmed from his complex relationship with the radicals of his day, black and white abolitionists who fought against overwhelming odds to bring the moral issue of slavery to the forefront of national life.

Foner was doing what legions of Americans have done for the past 140 years--trying to find something usable for present political purposes in Lincoln's legacy. Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. DuBois did it. James Vardaman and Thomas Dixon did it. Ronald Reagan did it. Barack Obama is doing it still (although he's slowed down considerably since Feb. 12). Foner's very means of posing the question--"Who is our Lincoln?"--implicitly recognizes the multiplicity and variety of Lincolns out there.

Still, Foner's essay was too much to bear for Lincoln historian Allen Guelzo, who fired back in a post last month at the National Review Online, entitled "Whose Lincoln?":

The difficulty is that Lincoln himself never confessed any awareness of “growth,” nor did those who knew him best. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,” Lincoln said in 1864, “ I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.” Far from needing growth, Lincoln (according to Illinois congressman Isaac Arnold) “had it in his mind for a long time to war upon slavery until its destruction was effected.” Lincoln did not end slavery by repentantly abandoning his conservative ideas; he ended it by tenaciously applying those ideas according to a blueprint of classical political prudence.

I suppose it is better that Foner wants to re-upholster Lincoln as “our Lincoln” rather than trashing Lincoln completely, as so many other Left historians do. But even Foner must recognize that this is an uphill task. In a collection of essays published last month under the title, Our Lincoln, Foner recruits a contingent of fellow Left historians to endorse the “growth” Lincoln. But only one of them is actually a Lincoln specialist, and the others show varying degrees of reluctance to embrace the growth thesis. (Bona fide Lincolnites — think of Michael Burlingame, Lucas Morel, Thomas Krannawitter, the great Harry Jaffa — were conspicuous by their exclusion). Foner’s Lincoln is not really Lincoln at all, but a wax-work progressive. The real Lincoln is the conservative, after all — our Lincoln, and not theirs.

The political dimension of this ownership dispute is obvious enough: the Nation vs. the National Review, the Left vs. the Right. There are also a number of scholarly disputes here. Most immediately, there is the longstanding debate about how to reconcile Lincoln's views regarding slavery and race before the war with his actions during it. Foner sees "growth"; Guelzo sees "classical political prudence" in the service of an unchanging agenda. Both are good enough historians to present arguments that other historians have found plausible.

Underlying debates about this or that aspect of Lincoln's career is a more fundamental question still, and one not unique to the study of Lincoln--how do historians balance the study of the individual's life with the study of his times?

Guelzo claims ownership of Lincoln in the name of "bona fide Lincolnites" and criticizes the presence of "only one ... Lincoln specialist" among the contributors to Foner's edited volume. On the face of it, that might seem a bizarre complaint, as the collection includes essays by three winners of the Lincoln Prize (which Guelzo has won twice), one second-place finisher, and one finalist--all for books with Lincoln's name in their titles. If these are historians who have written about Lincoln, however, most haven't made the study of his life the exclusive or predominant focus of their scholarly work.

And therein lies the rub. For Guelzo--who has complained recently of the dearth of college courses that focus just on Lincoln--to be a Lincoln specialist is, quite literally, to specialize in the study of Lincoln. For Foner, that's exactly the problem with too much recent scholarship on the 16th president, which seems to assume that "[t]o understand Lincoln ... one has to study only the man himself." Our Lincoln, Foner writes in the preface, aims instead "to bring to bear on the study of Lincoln some of the new interpretations of Lincoln's era, in the hope of producing a more nuanced understanding of the man and his world."

Readers can reach their own judgments about the merits of the two approaches--in general and in this case specifically. I'll close by offering one bit of unsolicited advice to Guelzo: if you're really determined to scoff at the non-specialists, you'd better get your own Lincoln facts right. The line about Lincoln having it "in his mind for a long time to war upon slavery" came from Joseph Gillespie, not Isaac Arnold. At least, that's what I read somewhere.

Another Post Hoc Prophecy Revealed

2009-03-10T23:05:00.005-04:00

As is being widely reported, the Smithsonian Institution today cracked open Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch to reveal a hidden inscription inside.

And therein lies a tale of the vagaries of human memory and the meaning of the Civil War.

The story goes like this:

In the midst of the secession crisis in 1861, Abraham Lincoln found time to send out his pocket watch to be repaired. It was sitting on the watchmaker's bench when news reached Washington of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and the watchmaker, Jonathan Dillon, seized the moment to etch a message inside the time piece before returning it to the president.

Dillon never mentioned the inscription to his customer, but he passed on stories about it to his family.

Here's what Dillon inscribed inside the watch (view the inscription):

"Jonathan Dillon April 13, 1861. Fort Sumter was attacked by the rebels on the above date. Thank God we have a government."

And here is how he later remembered it, according to a 1906 newspaper report:

"The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try."

Dillon, in other words, had mis-remembered the inscription and credited himself with foreseeing slavery's demise even before the Stars and Stripes had come down in Charleston harbor. He injected his later understanding of the war's outcome and significance into his furtive act of April 1861.

This sort of thing is hardly surprising. In terms of Lincoln lore, it reminds me of his cousin John Hanks's claim--35 years after the fact--that a youthful Abe, upon seeing a slave auction in New Orleans, had declared "if ever I get a chance to hit that thing I'll hit it hard."

The moral of both stories: there's no foresight like hindsight.

Loving and Hating Abe

2009-03-09T23:24:00.009-04:00

Loving Abe is artist Maira Kalman, who recently prepared a visual op-ed for the New York Times, "In Love with A. Lincoln":

Hating Abe is ... Maryland--or at least, the state's official song, "Maryland, My Maryland," which begins:

The despot’s heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland! My Maryland!

You might think that referring to Lincoln as a "despot" and "tyrant" (verse 7) is a bit much to stomach as the country celebrates the bicentennial of his birth. But a legislative hearing last week drew a crowd largely opposed to one state Senator's proposal to change the lyrics:

The Senate hearing was packed with Confederate re-enactors, amateur historians, teachers and a seventh-grader who said she loves the state song, which taught her the meaning of "despot."

For more than 50 years, lawmakers have periodically tried to dethrone Maryland, My Maryland, written in 1861 by James Ryder Randall and codified as the state song in 1939. Randall, 22 at the time, penned the lyrics after learning that his former college roommate had been killed in a Pratt Street riot between Confederate sympathizers and Union soldiers from Massachusetts, the history goes.

Many of those testifying yesterday said they were present seven years ago, the last time [State Senator Jennie] Forehand unsuccessfully tried to do away with Randall's words. She wants to replace them with a more pacifist version written in 1894 by John T. White, an Allegany County teacher.

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates Reinterpreted

2009-03-09T10:54:00.002-04:00

or at least caffeinated:

An Honor Lincoln Could Do Without – Part II

2009-02-25T17:39:00.003-05:00

Over at Civil War Memory, Kevin Levin reflects on the Pennsylvanians who want to re-enact Abraham Lincoln’s assassination as a means of honoring him. Both Kevin’s thoughts and the discussion in the comments are worth checking out.

Below are some comments I made over there, and which I copy here as a follow-up on my post of yesterday:

Commenters have raised a number of comparisons to question whether re-enacting Lincoln’s assassination is really so distasteful or different from what’s already out there. One commenter makes the comparison to re-enacting Civil War battles. I think it’s true that the popularity of battle re-enactments helps explain the Pennsylvania event and why its organizers don’t see it as anything unusual. They’ve taken that re-enacting impulse and fused it with the obsession in some quarters with Lincoln’s assassination. Personally, I find each of those things somewhat distasteful in itself, but in combination, they’re toxic.

For my money, there are some fundamental differences between re-enacting a battle and re-enacting Lincoln’s assassination. From the late 19^th century on, an important part of the dominant memory of the Civil War has emphasized the battlefield valor of common soldiers on both sides—displacing the focus, as David Blight and others have shown, from why soldiers fought to how they fought. Battle re-enactors, whatever else you think of them, are at least true to that longstanding aspect of the dominant memory of the war: they recreate soldiers doing what it is that the public honors them for.

Re-enacting what happened at Ford’s Theatre is a different case. Lincoln’s assassination is certainly important to his mythic place in American culture, but the act of murder itself —getting shot unawares in the back of the head—is not what we value about him. That’s why this seems such an inappropriate way to “honor” him, which is what the group claims to want to do, as another commenter points out. Unlike the common soldiers of the Civil War, Lincoln wasn’t displaying any particular valor or making any knowing sacrifice when he sat in that booth at Ford’s Theatre—he was trying to watch a show. That’s also what sets this apart the analogy to the Passion Play. In the Christian narrative, Jesus has to die, and suffer in dying, or he wouldn’t be the Christ; dying of natural causes at a ripe old age isn’t really an option. While Lincoln gets compared to Jesus by those who want to find meaning in his death, the powerful cross-current in public memory is the wish that Lincoln had lived, and the belief that America would have been a better place if he had.

As for the comparisons to cinematic or stage dramas, I’m with Kevin—Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, or even Oliver Stone’s JFK, this ain’t. Those are historically inspired works of imagination. This is an attempt at historical re-creation as an act of public commemoration, and it’s better compared to other commemorative events. And in comparison to grade schoolers or Lincoln impersonators reciting the Gettysburg Address, this seems a pretty gruesome and downright creepy way to make history “come alive.”

And Remember, Kids Under 12 Get in Free

2009-02-24T13:55:00.004-05:00

The Civil War has interested me ever since I was a kid, but there are some aspects of the popular fascination with it that I never shared, and that have long struck me as kind of weird.

The re-enacting impulse is one of those things. The obsession with Lincoln's assassination is another.

But you want to know what's truly, creepy, off-the-charts weird? The idea that you can honor Lincoln by mashing those two things together:

Ford’s Theatre re-enactment honors Lincoln
Sovereign Majestic Theater in Pottsville will be transformed into Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., circa April 14, 1865.

A group of 20 local actors will re-enact the night John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln, at “Murder at Ford’s Theatre,” scheduled for 7:30 p.m. March 7.

“Before the assassination, Booth told people to go to Ford’s Theatre. He said there’s going to be some ‘great acting’ there tonight. And I think there will be some great acting at the Majestic on (March 7). It will be transformed, as much as humanly possible, into that night of madness which occurred at Ford’s Theatre,” said Charles Sacavage, Hegins, who is playing the assassin.

The event will honor Lincoln’s 200th birthday, which was observed Feb. 12, said Civil War historian J. Stuart “Stu” Richards, Orwigsburg, who will play Dr. Charles Leale, the physician who initially treated Lincoln’s gun shot wound. Meanwhile, Richards’ grandson, Nathaniel Dixon, 8, of Palo Alto, will play Lincoln’s son, Tad.

Another Thing Lincoln Didn't Say...

2009-02-22T00:59:00.005-05:00

...but a number of folks wish he did.

Over at the Huffington Post, Ann Pettifor writes:

The President Must Heed Lincoln and Ignore Economists

The President is convening a bipartisan summit on Monday to debate paying for the government's deficit. Many economists want the deficit cut now - in the midst of the greatest financial crisis in world history. They want cuts - not in funding for bank bailouts, but in entitlements costs in healthcare and social security.

...

That is a nonsense. The US can finance what it needs. The US can finance its way back to recovery - and by doing so help the rest of the world recover.

What's this got to do with Abraham Lincoln? Honestly, not very much, and even less than Pettifor thinks--because the quote she attributes to Lincoln towards the end of the piece is something that appears nowhere in the Collected Works. Here's what Pettifor writes:

If government could always borrow at 0%, then "money" in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "would cease to be master and become servant of humanity. Democracy would rise superior to the money power." (Abraham Lincoln. Senate document No 23: National Economy and the Banking System of the United States. 1865.)

So far as I can tell, this quotation first got attributed to Lincoln in a 1935 tract, The Conquest of Poverty, by Gerry McGeer, a Canadian politician who claimed that Lincoln was assassinated by the "oligarchy of high finance" (McGeer saw himself battling the same oligarchy on behalf of monetary reform in the Great Depression, but apparently died a natural death).

The internet being what it is, you can find the spurious quotation in plenty of places with the same attribution Pettifor gives, and which is itself mistaken. The Senate document in question dates to 1939, and was written by a former Senator from Oklahoma, Robert L. Owen, who also advocated monetary and banking reform and who borrowed the quote from McGeer.

As a bonus, another spurious Lincoln quote appears in the comments to Pettifor's piece--it's the same quotation, also railing against the "money power" in suspiciously un-Lincolnian language, that Al Gore quoted a few years ago in his book, The Assault on Reason.

Lincoln on Film--Or Maybe Not

2009-02-20T09:40:00.004-05:00

Steven Spielberg's on-again, off-again Lincoln film--with a script by Tony Kushner and with Liam Neeson in the title role--appears to be at least temporarily off once more.

Appearing at a public forum on Lincoln at Harvard last week, Kushner suggested that the film might be in production or even released by the end of this year, but money troubles and corporate inside-baseball in Hollywood appear to have killed it.

So until Lincoln the film is revived once again, here are a few small-screen appearances by Honest Abe that may tide you over:

A full length and higher resolution video of the Star Trek episode is here; for the Twilight Zone episode, try here.

Move Over, Team of Rivals

2009-02-16T08:56:00.007-05:00

Abe is joining a more elite--even superheroic--team in a free digital comic that Marvel Comics is releasing for President's Day:

A Usable Lincoln

2009-02-13T14:35:00.004-05:00

President Obama spoke yesterday at two public events commemorating the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth—one at the US Capitol and the other at the Abraham Lincoln Association’s annual banquet in Springfield.

Obama avoided many of the clichéd and banal generalities that littered yesterday’s commemorative events. Obama sought to celebrate Lincoln by putting him to work—by highlighting aspects of the 16^th president’s tenure that are relevant to Obama’s own immediate political predicament.

In the address at the Capitol, that meant celebrating Lincoln the conciliator:

In the war's final weeks, aboard Grant's flagship, The River Queen, President Lincoln was asked what was to be done with the rebel armies once General Lee surrendered. With victory at hand, Lincoln could have sought revenge. He could have forced the South to pay a steep price for their rebellion. But despite all the bloodshed and all the misery that each side had exacted upon the other, and despite his absolute certainty in the rightness of the cause of ending slavery, no Confederate soldier was to be punished, Lincoln ordered....

What Lincoln never forgot, not even in the midst of civil war, was that despite all that divides us -- north and south, black and white -- we were, at heart, one nation and one people, sharing a bond as Americans that could bend but would not break.

And so even as we meet here today, in a moment when we are far less divided than in Lincoln's day, but when we are once again debating the critical issues of our time -- and debating them sometimes fiercely -- let us remember that we are doing so as servants of the same flag, as representatives of the same people, and as stakeholders in a common future. That is the most fitting tribute we can pay -- the most lasting monument we can build -- to that most remarkable of men, Abraham Lincoln.

And at Springfield, that meant celebrating Lincoln the economic nationalist. What’s gotten most of the attention is Obama’s laugh-line about his revolving-door nominees for commerce secretary, but keep reading:

In 1854, Lincoln was simply a Springfield lawyer who'd served just a single term in Congress. Possibly in his law office, his feet on a cluttered desk, his sons playing around him, his clothes a bit too small to fit his uncommon frame, maybe wondering if somebody might call him up and ask him to be Commerce Secretary -- (laughter) -- he put some thoughts on paper, and for what purpose we do not know: "The legitimate object of government," he wrote, "is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves."

To do for the people what needs to be done but which they cannot do on their own. It's a simple statement. But it answers a central question of Abraham Lincoln's life.…

This rugged rail-splitter, born in a log cabin of pioneer stock; who cleared a path through the woods as a boy; who lost a mother and a sister to the rigors of frontier life; who taught himself all that he knew; and everything that he had was because of his hard work -- this man, our first Republican President, knew better than anybody what it meant to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. He understood that strain of personal liberty and self-reliance, that fierce independence at the heart of the American experience.

But he also understood something else. He recognized that while each of us must do our part, work as hard as we can, be as responsible as we can, although we are responsible for our own fates, in the end, there are certain things we cannot do on our own. There are certain things we can only do together. There are certain things only a union can do.

After ticking off those things—building a transcontinental railroad, providing for settlement of the west via the Homestead Act, laying the basis for land grant colleges—Obama made the connection to today explicit for anyone who missed it:

That is the spirit we are called to show once more. The challenges we face are very different now: two wars; an economic crisis unlike any we've seen in our lifetime. Jobs have been lost. Pensions are gone. Families' dreams have been endangered. Health care costs are exploding. Schools are falling short. We have an energy crisis that's hampering our economy and threatening our planet and enriching our adversaries.

And yet, while our challenges may be new, they did not come about overnight. Ultimately they result from a failure to meet the test that Lincoln set….

But in recent years, we've seen the pendulum swing too far in the opposite direction. What's dominated is a philosophy that says every problem can be solved if only government would step out of the way; that if government were just dismantled and divvied up into tax breaks, that it would somehow benefit us all.

Now, I suppose you could say that it was crass of Obama to try to hijack yesterday's commemorative events for his own political purposes. But I’ve got to think that Lincoln himself would probably have approved.

I’m reminded here of Lincoln’s eulogy to Henry Clay—one of many such addresses after his death in 1852. Most indulged in high rhetoric and bland praise of a great statesman. Much of Lincoln’s eulogy did likewise. But Lincoln also took the unusual step of highlighting Clay’s opposition to slavery, and the views he ascribed to Clay were very much like those that would bring fame to Lincoln himself within a few years:

Having been led to allude to domestic slavery so frequently already, I am unwilling to close without referring more particularly to Mr. Clay's views and conduct in regard to it. He ever was, on principle and in feeling, opposed to slavery. The very earliest, and one of the latest public efforts of his life, separated by a period of more than fifty years, were both made in favor of gradual emancipation of the slaves in Kentucky. He did not perceive, that on a question of human right, the negroes were to be excepted from the human race. And yet Mr. Clay was the owner of slaves. Cast into life where slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated, he did not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived, how it could be at once eradicated, without producing a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself. His feeling and his judgment, therefore, ever led him to oppose both extremes of opinion on the subject. Those who would shiver into fragments the Union of these States; tear to tatters its now venerated constitution; and even burn the last copy of the Bible, rather than slavery should continue a single hour, together with all their more halting sympathisers, have received, and are receiving their just execration; and the name, and opinions, and influence of Mr. Clay, are fully, and, as I trust, effectually and enduringly, arrayed against them. But I would also, if I could, array his name, opinions, and influence against the opposite extreme---against a few, but an increasing number of men, who, for the sake of perpetuating slavery, are beginning to assail and to ridicule the white-man's charter of freedom---the declaration that "all men are created free and equal.''

Lincoln Round Up

2009-02-12T08:53:00.006-05:00

A wave of events and news stories today mark the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. A few I've noted or am keeping an eye on:

Lincoln Webcast: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and the History Channel are sponsoring the webcast of a Lincoln teach-in today at 1:30pm. A panel of historians--Matthew Pinsker, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Harold Holzer--will take questions from students across the country. Reportedly, 3,000 schools have already registered to participate in the event, so the live feed may be oversubscribed today, but the archived video should be available by tomorrow.

Lincoln Exhibited: New Lincoln exhibits open today at the Library of Congress and the National Gallery of Art--the former devoted to Lincoln manuscripts, the latter devoted to the design of the Lincoln memorial. Both are reviewed in today's Washington Post. A list of other commemorative events in DC today is here.

Lincoln Prize: Gettysburg College is bestowing its annual Lincoln Prize on James McPherson's Tried by War and Craig Symond's Lincoln and His Admirals. Not to take anything away from either book, but Fred Kaplan's Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer seems to me like a work of originality and enduring value that deserved more than an honorable mention.

Obama in Springfield: President Obama will attend tonight's banquet of the Abraham Lincoln Association in Springfield, and I look forward to seeing what he has to say. Last night, the President awarded the Lincoln medal to Sidney Poitier and George Lucas at the gala reopening of Ford's Theatre, and made time for a handshake across the ages:

Lincoln's Secession Winter: A Selected Diary of Events

2009-02-11T17:40:00.005-05:00

On this day in 1861, Abraham Lincoln departed Illinois for his nearly two-week, 1,900-mile train ride to Washington.

Lincoln had remained in Springfield for three months after his election, as six slaveholding states declared their secession from the union. In preparing a lecture about Lincoln's handling of the secession crisis, I drew up the following table of what he was doing (as recorded at A. Lincoln Log) on each of those six days.

This is obviously not a full record of Lincoln's actions during the period before his departure for Washington, but it does capture the substance behind the criticism of Lincoln as a do-nothing (or at least do-too-little) president-elect at a critical moment. Examining that criticism is one point of the lecture.

(UPDATE: Pardon any oddities in the formatting of the table, and especially the borders--Blogger and I aren't quite seeing eye-to-eye on this.)

Date	Secession of ...	Lincoln's actions that day
Dec. 20, 1860	South Carolina	Lincoln confers with Thurlow Weed in Springfield; proposes resolutions for Congressional Republicans re: enforcement of the Fugitive Slave law; reportedly receives "calmly" news of South Carolina's secession
Jan. 9, 1861	Mississippi	Lincoln attends the Illinois legislature's re-election of Lyman Trumbull to the US Senate; withdraws $20.97 from bank
Jan. 10, 1861	Florida	Lincoln withdraws more money from bank; Mrs. Lincoln leaves Springfield for shopping trip in NY
Jan. 11, 1861	Alabama	Lincoln writes General Winfield Scott to acknowledge correspondence re: Ft Sumter, and in a confidential letter to Republican Penn. Congressman James Hale, rejects proposal for concessions to slave states (Hale served on a committee of border and free state representatives that had revised the Crittenden compromise more to the liking of northern Republicans); Lincoln predicts that any concessions would either be rejected by Southerners or lead them to "repeat ... ad libitum" such demands in the future
Jan. 19, 1861	Georgia	Lincoln confers with Illinois Congressman William Kellogg re: compromise efforts in Washington, and meets with the Mexican charge d'affaires
Jan. 26, 1861	Louisiana	Lincoln selects Feb. 11 as his intended date of departure by train for Washington, along what he describes as "a circuitous, and rather tedious" route

Lincoln in Review and over the Airwaves

2009-02-07T22:55:00.004-05:00

In review: The penultimate issue of the Washington Post Book World this weekend carries reviews of Ronald C. White, Jr.'s A. Lincoln by David Blight and of Catherine Clinton's Mrs. Lincoln by Elaine Showalter. In the same issue, Fred Kaplan, author of Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, provides an entertaining and opinionated rundown of Lincoln books. Kaplan's essay runs under the title "The Lincoln Canon: There are too many Lincoln books. Which are indispensable?," but it's not clear the headline writer bothered to read the piece. Kaplan writes that C. A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln is "without evidence for [its] claim" of a gay Lincoln but suggests that the book "maybe should be read" anyway, "in the same way and for the same reasons one would read books that over the years have claimed Lincoln for Christianity without noticing that he did not believe in miracles, immortality or the divinity of Jesus." Kaplan wins bonus points with me by working "Lincoln's Doctor's Dog" into his first paragraph.

Elsewhere, the Post re- and previews theatrical productions featuring the 16th president, including the musical "Lincoln in Love" and "The Heavens are Hung in Black" (the latter began its run last week at Ford's Theatre), and a separate piece notes a number of Lincoln-themed musical performances.

The NY Times Sunday book review features William Safire's rundown of the recent crop of Lincoln books. It's more thorough than Kaplan's piece but far less entertaining--Safire doesn't get to Lincoln's doctor's dog til the 16th paragraph. The reopening of Ford's Theatre after an 18-month renovation provides the occasion for a "museum review" in the Times of the theater and the Petersen House, where Lincoln was taken after he was shot on April 14, 1865.

Over the Airwaves: PBS will air "The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln" this Monday night at 9pm, and "Looking for Lincoln," hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on Wednesday at 9pm. Gates's documentary is already available for viewing on the web; blogger Kevin Levin has checked it out, and you can find his thoughts at Civil War Memory.

And though it's not technically on the airwaves, the History Channel gets into the act on Feb. 16 with "Stealing Lincoln's Body," a documentary based on the book of the same title by Thomas Craughwell, who will speak at CUA on April 15. You can see a trailer here.

All That's Missing is the Doctor

2009-02-06T10:16:00.007-05:00

The story goes like this: challenged to come up with the title for a sure-fire best selling book, Random House founder Bennett Cerf shot back "Abraham Lincoln's Doctor's Dog"--on the theory that books about each one of those topics sold well, and so a book about all of them would necessarily sell even better.

Cerf's theory has been put to the test repeatedly: his title was adopted for an episode of the Screen Director's Playhouse TV series back in the 1950s, and for an essay in a collection of stories by satirist Richard Grayson. The same joke appears in the 1971 Disney film "The Barefoot Executive," wherein a very young Kurt Russell pitches the idea for a TV show on Lincoln's doctor's dog to a beleaguered network programmer (spoiler alert: it turns out that a chimp--the unshod executive of the film's title--is better at picking hit shows than either of them).

We're nearing the point in the Lincoln bicentennial celebrations, I suspect, where it's time for Lincoln's Doctor's Dog to make an appearance--the popularity of the 16th president's pooch is confirmed by news stories like this, by this exhibit at the Newseum, and by the "Lincoln Quiz" you'll find on the website of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. And in our time as in Cerf's, doctors certainly remain popular. So perhaps there's a way here for ER or Grey's Anatomy to do their part for the bicentennial celebrations.

Update: Until the TV shows step up, you'll have to content yourself with watching Kurt Russell give a pre-PowerPoint presentation on the concept here.

Yes, But Will He Help Blow Out the Candles?

2009-02-03T18:28:00.005-05:00

The birthday cards have been pouring into the Illinois capital for weeks, and now President Obama has made it official--he'll be on hand in Springfield on Feb. 12 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birthday.

Obama will attend a banquet sponsored by the Abraham Lincoln Association. More info is here, but don't think about attending if you don't already have a ticket--the Association reports that even the "overflow room" is sold out.

Backyard Lincoln

2009-01-31T10:46:00.004-05:00

The very rich really are different from you and me.

For one thing, they play with a different caliber of Lincoln logs:

Tucked behind the magnificent Greek Revival mansion of the Forbes House Museum in Milton [Massachusetts] is an exact replica of the log cabin in Hardin County, Ky., where the 16th president was born. Mary Bowditch Forbes, the last member of the Forbes family to live in the mansion, built the one-room cabin in the 1920s to house her collection of artifacts and memorabilia related to Lincoln and the Civil War.
Forbes's voluminous compilation began with, of all things, a simple one-cent piece minted in 1909 for the centennial of Lincoln's birth. It would be worth a penny for Forbes's thoughts to learn why that coin sparked a passion to collect Lincolniana. For the better part of the next 50 years, she collected more than 1,000 items and filled numerous scrapbooks with newspaper clippings.

The Forbes mansion is now a museum. Its website, with info about planned Lincoln bicentennial activities, is here.

Abe's Hallmark Moment

2009-01-28T20:38:00.003-05:00

His birthday is still a few weeks away, but the cards are already pouring in:

Bicentenary cards aren't easy to find. But that hasn't deterred well-wishers from creating their own for Abraham Lincoln, who'll hit the big 2-0-0 on Feb. 12.

More than 1,300 cards have already arrived for the nation's 16th president and hundreds more are being delivered daily to the Old State Capitol in Springfield. They've come from every corner of the country, including one from an Atlanta family who wrote in verse—"So, here's to you, Abe! And the years ahead. You seem so alive! To be so dead"—and another from a New York inmate who sketched a graffitilike drawing of the word "Lincoln."

"Just today one came in where the No. 200 had pennies taped where both zeros should be," said Illinois Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission spokesman David Blanchette. "Some are serious and respectful and others take a more humorous bent."

In anticipation of the arrival of birthday cards, the commission partnered with the U.S. Postal Service last fall to create a mailing address for Lincoln.

This is all in good fun, and I don't want to be a killjoy about it--it could be a good rainy (or icy) day project for my kids.

But this flood of cards is not, as the story might lead you to believe, a spontaneous outpouring from the Lincoln-obsessed public. The Illinois Bicentennial Commission has good reason for its "anticipation" of these cards--it issued a press release last month asking people to send them.

(Hat tip--A. Lincoln Blog)

Lincoln in Print, for Sale, and on Stage

2009-01-25T14:23:00.009-05:00

In print: More has been written about Abraham Lincoln than any historical figure save Jesus Christ, and publishers are working hard to close the gap--60 or more books about Lincoln are scheduled to appear in the months around the bicentennial of his birth.

Historian David Waldstreicher provides an overview of this publishing tide in the Boston Globe this weekend. Elsewhere, recent works by James Oakes and John Stauffer inspire literary critic and historian Brenda Wineapple to reflect on the connections and parallels between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

For sale: Publishers aren't the only ones looking to cash in on this once-in-a-century opportunity. Christie's will celebrate Lincoln's birthday this year by auctioning off more than 20 print and manuscript items by and about the 16th president. For the budget-minded shopper, there's a copy of The Republican "Campaign" Text-Book, for the Year 1860, with a pre-auction estimate of $600-800. For those feeling a bit more flush, there's this manuscript copy of a victory speech Lincoln delivered after winning re-election in 1864--estimated to go for $3-4 million.

For the rest of us, there's the internet, where you can find these things for free--the 1860 Republican handbook is here, and the text of Lincoln's 1864 victory speech is here.

On stage: Abe the Musical joins the growing list of theatrical productions to feature the 16th president. For others, see my previous posts here and here.

Personally, I'm still waiting for someone to remake "La Boheme" with Abe and Ann Rutledge as the star-crossed lovers. If substituting the East Village for the Latin Quarter worked in "Rent," I don't see why New Salem can't stand in for it as well.

Obama-Lincoln Round Up

2009-01-23T11:00:00.004-05:00

It's no surprise that the comparisons between the 16th president and the 44th reached a crescendo this week. The sheer number makes it impossible to comment upon or even note all of them, but here are a few of the pieces that I found most interesting:

Robert Schlesinger of US News and World Report runs down some of the rhetorical precedents for Obama's inaugural address. The Lincolnian echoes are pretty faint, but Schlesinger strains and manages to hear a few.

Paul Schwartzman of the Washington Post surveys the history of Obama's fascination with his predecessor. Eric Foner of Columbia University is quoted as saying, "I'd calm down if I were him.... The danger is you don't live up to it. Lincoln is the highest standard."

Foner offers more comments on the Lincoln-Obama comparisons in an interview with Terry Gross of Fresh Air--and on the radio, you can hear the occasional overtones of exasperation in his voice that don't come through in print.

John Stauffer and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., writing in the New York Times, turn the tables--instead of asking what Obama does or should think of Lincoln, they ask what Lincoln might have thought of Obama. They also remind us that the test of Lincoln's greatness lay in his rising to meet the worst cataclysm in American history, and hope that "Mr. Obama, for all of his considerable gifts, doesn’t get this particular chance to be great."

Stauffer offers some more reflections on the lessons of Lincoln's presidency in a piece at the Huffington Post, "What Obama Can Learn from Lincoln's Inaugural." There, Stauffer expresses the hope that Obama will look past the conciliatory gestures and "Team of Rivals" approach of Lincoln's early presidency, and model himself on the later Lincoln: the one who endorsed emancipation and met at the White House with Frederick Douglass.

[Lincoln and Douglass's] profound shift from enemies to friends stemmed in large part from Lincoln's abandonment of his "team of rivals" model of leadership, coupled with his realization that he needed radicals and progressives--especially blacks--on his side.
Douglass' response to Lincoln's Inaugural Addresses thus offers a salutary lesson for Obama: as he tries to move beyond partisan politics, he needs to be careful not to alienate his natural allies and renounce his campaign promise to "bring the change our country needs."

I understand Stauffer's purpose here--finding a Lincoln that modern-day progressives can love--but he oversimplifies the history somewhat in trying to do so. While there's no question that Lincoln moved closer to the "progressives" of his own day on questions of emancipation and race after 1862, he never completely identified with them--witness the storm of protest over his pocket veto of the Wade-Davis bill in the summer of 1864. A chief worry of the Radical Republicans was precisely that Lincoln remained too conciliatory towards white Southerners.

As I've noted before, Lincoln's assassination so early in his second term means that we can't know whether he and the Congressional Radicals would have ultimately come together on Reconstruction policy, as they did on emancipation. But all of this does suggest that Stauffer's contrast of the early and late Lincoln is a bit too pat.