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Title: Lincoln’s Mailbag
Source:
nytimes.com
URL Source: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/lincolns-mailbag/
Published: Nov 12, 2010
Author: TED WIDMER
Post Date: 2010-11-13 06:15:48 by HOUNDDAWG
Keywords: None
Views: 151
Comments: 9
Lincoln’s Mailbag By TED WIDMER The election of Nov. 6 was big news, to put it mildly. In the days following, newspaper headlines screamed it from one city to another, across the not very united states. As Adam Goodheart wrote earlier, the telegraph allowed the results to be known nearly as quickly as we would know today. Now, thanks to another marvel of technology — the Internet — we can see the private telegrams and letters that Lincoln himself was seeing, as Americans exhaled and realized, to their amazement, that he had pulled it off. In the days following the verdict, an enormous range of Americans, from all walks of life, wrote to their president-elect to express their feelings about where the country was headed. These letters present a remarkable documentary portrait of a nation at a crossroads. Most of Lincoln’s correspondence is housed in the Library of Congress, just off the East Portico of the Capitol, where he gave his two great inaugural addresses. (They are there, too.) The Library is a national treasure, both for its holdings and for its robust commitment to make these priceless artifacts available to all. That means putting them online, for free, which the Library has been doing since February 2000, with scholarly support from the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College. By visiting the Library of Congress Web site, you can now read Lincoln’s mail more or less as he did. What a story these pieces of paper tell! They recreate the drama of election night, from anxiety over the election (will he win?), to joy at the result (he did!), to a new kind of anxiety (now what?). As Americans from all backgrounds wrote to Lincoln, you realize just how much depended on this one man. They bared their emotions to him, sometimes in surprising ways. William F. Smith, a proud citizen from Germantown, PA, wrote in to say that his wife had given birth as the results were being announced, and their son would be henceforth be known as “young Abe.” A neighbor of Lincoln’s in Springfield, Henry Fawcett, wasted no time asking for a job, as his personal servant in the White House, the first of a torrent of similar letters to come. An anonymous person (letter at right), who identified himself only as “one of those who are glad today,” wrote, “God has honored you this day, in the sight of all the people. Will you honor Him at the White House?” More disturbingly, “a citizen” in Pensacola, Fla., sent a telegram to say “you were last night hung in effigy in this city.” Undoubtedly many regretted the words “in effigy.” This online collection is all the more astonishing for the fact that its contents have often been severely restricted from view. Robert Todd Lincoln supervised the removal of his father’s papers immediately after the assassination, and asked a trusted judge in Chicago, David Davis, to take care of them. Judge Davis stored them in a bank vault in Bloomington, Ill., but they were moved several times after that, by order of Robert T. Lincoln; to Washington, to Chicago, back to Washington, to Manchester, VT (Lincoln’s summer home). In 1919, he finally placed them in the Library of Congress, but on condition that they not be revealed to be there. In the confused aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Lincoln’s documents were removed again for safekeeping. Most went to the University of Virginia, but several documents were deemed so central to American history, and therefore to national security, that they were sent to Fort Knox in Kentucky (these included the two inaugural addresses and the Gettysburg Address). All of the papers were returned in 1944, and the entire Lincoln collection opened to the public for the first time in 1947. But still they were not as open as they could be. The people granted access to these precious papers, generally, were the small number of specialists in the highest stratosphere of Lincoln scholarship. It is only in the last decade that they have been truly open, in the sense that the Internet provides, allowing every American — indeed, every person on Earth — to access them from home. The collection contains both soaring oratory and the ordinary dross of everyday governance. But its unfiltered availability to all is itself a tribute to Lincoln’s insistence that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth.
Poster Comment: Lincoln's letters were no doubt hidden all these years because his family, his fawning groupies and the liars who've struggled to maintain the eternal glow of his halo didn't want the people of the world in general and the American people in particular to learn the truth. During the Lincoln–Douglas debates of 1858 as the platform traveled around Illinois great crowds from neighboring states flocked in. Lincoln was not about to be cornered so he waffled depending on local sympathies. He was pro slavery and concerned to varying degrees about the often ghastly conditions of servitude for our noble African brothers and sisters. "The debates in Freeport, Quincy and Alton drew especially large numbers of people from neighboring states, as the issue of slavery, or the peculiar institution, was of monumental importance to citizens across the nation.[2][3] Newspaper coverage of the debates was intense. Major papers from Chicago sent stenographers to create complete texts of each debate, which newspapers across the United States reprinted in full, with some partisan edits. Newspapers that supported Douglas edited his speeches to remove any errors made by the stenographers and to correct grammatical errors, while they left Lincoln's speeches in the rough form in which they had been transcribed. In the same way, Republican papers edited Lincoln's speeches, but left the Douglas texts as reported. After losing the election for Senator in Illinois, Lincoln edited the texts of all the debates and had them published in a book. The widespread coverage of the original debates and the subsequent popularity of the book led eventually to Lincoln's nomination for President of the United States by the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago..... .....While denying abolitionist tendencies was effective politics, the African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass remarked on Lincoln's "entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race." (Abe lied about it and Freddie swore to it-HD) In spite of Lincoln's denial of abolitionist tendencies, Stephen Douglas charged Lincoln with having an ally in Frederick Douglass in preaching "abolition doctrines." Stephen Douglas said that "the negro" Frederick Douglass told "all the friends of negro equality and negro citizenship to rally as one man around Abraham Lincoln." Stephen Douglas also charged Lincoln with a lack of consistency when speaking on the issue of racial equality,[27] and cited Lincoln's previous statements that the declaration that all men are created equal applies to blacks as well as whites."__wiki ____________ Burying the truth all those years was necessary because Lincoln was a lawyer with political aspirations, and then as now a lawyer politician like Honest Abe would have allowed his mother to be Shanghaied to a garbage scow to get elected. Thomas J. DiLorenzo has done the best work of any researcher to put Abraham Lincoln in short pants. Needless to say the New York Times isn't the slightest bit curious about why Lincoln's lawyer-politician slime trail was hidden, and they've never even heard of Thomas DiLorenzo. "All The News That Fits" should be the paper's motto. Even as public access will validate DiLorenzo's research, The Times will simply ignore that which they can no longer dispute or fictionalize.
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#1. To: HOUNDDAWG (#0)
Poor little bastard.
Poor little bastard. If William F. Smith only knew what the future held for Germantown, PA and how much it resembles Algiers (In New Orleans) or PORT–AU–PRINCE today he'd have named his son J.W. and held Booth's horse outside Ford's Theatre. The students at Temple University never know when a modern day "German" is going to slide on over from the ghetto to rob, rape, shoot or stab them for their valuables.
That's a sad commentary. Well, that thing about holding Booth's horse was a good one. Any patriotic American would have done that.
I suppose it would have been worth the wait to see if Abe intended to keep his promise to "ship those equals back."
#7. To: HOUNDDAWG (#6)
Abe probably wouldn't have kept that promise any more than he kept his oath when he was sworn in to office. You can't defend the Constitution against its enemies and be one at the same time.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestWilliam F. Smith, a proud citizen from Germantown, PA, wrote in to say that his wife had given birth as the results were being announced, and their son would be henceforth be known as “young Abe.”
#2. To: James Deffenbach (#1)
William F. Smith, a proud citizen from Germantown, PA, wrote in to say that his wife had given birth as the results were being announced, and their son would be henceforth be known as “young Abe.”
#3. To: HOUNDDAWG (#2)
#6. To: James Deffenbach (#3)
That's a sad commentary. Well, that thing about holding Booth's horse was a good one. Any patriotic American would have done that.
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