http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/ Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.101 Winter 2011 www.abrahamlincolnassociation.org Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 1 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.102 Winter 2011 Michael F. Conlin is an associate professor of history at Eastern Washington University, where he publishes and teaches in the fields of the early republic, the Civil War, and the history of science. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 1 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.103 William C. Harris Winter 2011 On January 29, 1863, Senator Willard Saulsbury of Delaware rose in the United States Senate and launched a blistering attack on Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation. Although the proclamation did not free slaves in Delaware and the other border states, Saulsbury, as well as his colleague, James A. Bayard, claimed that its effect would be to flood his state with the freed slaves of rebels, creating racial conflict and serious social problems. He defiantly declared that, though opposed to secession, he would keep Delaware “a slaveholding State now and forever.” The senator, who had been drinking heavily, then leveled his rhetorical guns on Lincoln. Saulsbury characterized the president as a tyrant who had acted in perfect disregard of the Constitution and the rights of the people. He proclaimed Lincoln “a weak and imbecile man; the weakest man that I ever knew in a high place; for I have seen him and conversed with him, and I say here, in my place in the Senate of the United States, that I never did see or converse with so weak and imbecile a man as Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States.” Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, who was in the chair, ruled Saulsbury out of order and directed the sergeant-at-arms to escort the belligerent Delaware senator from the chamber. Later, a sober Saulsbury was permitted to return, but only after he had apologized for bringing a pistol into the Senate chamber, not for his criticism of the president. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 1 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.104 Eric H. Walther Winter 2011 When Senator William Henry Seward in 1850 invoked a “higher law” than the Constitution of the United States that compelled people of conscience to stop the sin of slavery, the New Yorker became the Yankee that Fire-Eaters most loved to hate. Seward’s remarks contributed to a very real and widespread disunion effort from 1850–1852. His prominence in creating the new antislavery Republican Party helped reinvigorate the secessionist movement in the mid-1850s. And in 1858 Seward proclaimed that the rising hostility, conflict, and violent incidents that were occurring with greater frequency and consequence represented “an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces . . . and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation.” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 1 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.105 Jennifer L. Weber Winter 2011 Many Americans mistakenly believe that Abraham Lincoln enjoyed nearly universal support during the Civil War. If they are aware of any opposition, it is in the form of the New York City Draft Riots in the summer of 1863. In fact, Lincoln had to deal with dissent from the very beginning of the war. Opposition to the war, to the administration’s policies, and to the president himself waxed and waned, depending on how well—or poorly—the army was doing in the field. When opposition to the war was fiercest, in the summer of 1864, Lincoln was under incredible pressure to stop the war at any cost. Lincoln resisted clamorous calls for a cease-fire, but he and many others thought it would cost him reelection that fall. That Lincoln was able to withstand the extraordinary pressures to halt the bloodshed, even at what he thought would be the expense of his presidency, underscores both his tenacity and his moral and political courage. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 1 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.106 David Lowenthal Winter 2011 James M. McPherson. Abraham Lincoln. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. 88. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 1 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.107 Michael F. Conlin Winter 2011 David R. Contosta. Rebel Giants: The Revolutionary Lives of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2008. Pp. 365. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 1 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.108 S. Chandler Lighty Winter 2011 David Work. Lincoln’s Political Generals. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Pp. 287. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 1 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.109 Winter 2011 Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 1 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.201 Summer 2011 www.abrahamlincolnassociation.org Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.202 September 2011 James M. Cornelius is curator of the Lincoln collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.203 Robert G. Wick September 2011 Almost two weeks elapsed before the news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination reached the northern Virginia tobacco farm of Richard Garrett. Although located just sixty miles south of Washington, it might well have been on the other side of the world. One Garrett family member would later recall that a lack of mail service, no telegraph wires to speak of, and few travelers making their way through conspired to keep news under wraps. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.204 James Lander Summer 2011 In 1844 thirty-five-year-old Abraham Lincoln asked William H. Herndon, who was nine years younger, to become his law partner. “Billy” was the son of an old friend, had boarded above Joshua Speed’s store at the same time as Lincoln, and was a bright young man, though he had left Illinois College without a degree before deciding to take up the law and becoming a clerk in the office of Logan & Lincoln. Contemporaries and later historians have proposed numerous explanations for why Lincoln chose someone so young and inexperienced to be his law partner. There are many plausible explanations, not all of which can be correct, and probably more than one factor contributed to Lincoln’s decision. In his classic study of Lincoln’s legal career, John J. Duff concluded that “weighing the few possible advantages against the many distinct disadvantages involved in entering into a partnership with Herndon, it is not clear on any rational ground why Lincoln . . . should have made the choice he did.” In the half century since Duff’s verdict, no consensus has emerged among scholars. Speculation about Lincoln’s motivation caused Herndon himself in later life to declare emphatically: “I don’t know and no one else does.” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.205 Phillip W. Magness September 2011 As an administrator of the federal Emigration Office, Reverend James Mitchell had little patience for bureaucratic rules and procedure. Perhaps it was this rebellious flair that endeared the feisty Ulsterman to Abraham Lincoln, himself no stranger to the discomforting tendencies of Washington decorum. “Mitchell I know and like,” Lincoln told William H. Seward while reviewing candidates for political appointments at the outset of his presidency. Mitchell and Lincoln first met in 1853, when the minister traveled through Illinois to recruit members for the American Colonization Society. A resident of neighboring Indiana, Mitchell had been that state’s colonization agent for many years, as well as a friend of Caleb Blood Smith, Lincoln’s incoming Secretary of the Interior. When Lincoln convinced Congress to appropriate $600,000 for the controversial policy of establishing freedmen’s settlements abroad, Mitchell, as an enthusiastic colonization backer and veteran of the movement, was likely already in line to lead the effort. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.206 Stewart Winger Summer 2011 Allen D. Spiegel. A. Lincoln Esquire, a Shrewed, Sophisticated Lawyer in his Time. Macon, Ga., Mercer University Press, 2002. Pp. 384. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.207 Daniel W. Hamilton Summer 2011 Daniel W. Stowell et al., eds. The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases, 4 vols. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008. Pp. 1,919. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 2 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.208 James M. Cornelius Summer 2011 Fred Reed. Abraham Lincoln: The Image of His Greatness. Atlanta, Ga.: Whitman Publishing, 2009. Pp. xi, 272. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 2