Tag: Abraham Lincoln
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My professional pantheon
I now have my own office at work, along with a bookshelf I don’t have much to put on. So I moved the figurines I used to keep on my desk to the top of the bookshelf and christened them my professional pantheon. Here’s what they are and what I’ll look to them for. Top:…
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4 lessons from the Trump years
It’s been a tradition on this blog since its inception to do a kind of presidential postmortem for the outgoing commander-in-chief (see Bush and Obama), assessing both the political takeaways and my personal life during their administration. (I planned to publish this on Inauguration Day, but as the actual end date of the Trump administration…
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Lincoln’s letter to Grant: ‘You were right, and I was wrong’
This letter from President Lincoln to Major General Ulysses Grant in July 1863 might be the last documented instance of a president apologizing for anything: My dear General I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done…
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So Runs the Man Away or (The Unexpected Virtue of Synchronicity)
The theme that has defined my 2014, I only now realize, is synchronicity. That Jungian concept (“the occurrence of two or more events that appear to be meaningfully related but not causally related”) bubbled up several times this year, especially in what I was reading, watching, or listening to concurrently. For instance: To name only the…
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Thurlow Weed
Part of the Cool Civil War Names series. This guy, for better or worse, was like the Karl Rove of his time. The sources differ on the details about his life, but we know that before he turned into the Turd Blossom of the mid-19th century Weed apprenticed as a printer and editor of various…
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The Weight Of History
We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies. – Shirley Abbott Today, as on every veterans’ themed day, I thought of my grandfather. A lieutenant in Patton’s…
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Jubal Early
Part of the Cool Civil War Names series. There’s so much Civil War in this guy it makes me want to cry. “Old Jube” (as Robert E. Lee would later come to call him) and his brawny beard fought early and often in the war between the states, but for reasons you wouldn’t suspect from…
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Rufus Saxton
Part of the Cool Civil War Names series. Saxton was, in the argot of youth, the bomb diggity. A Massachusetts native, his father was a transcendentalist, feminist, and abolitionist, which helped form Rufus’ anti-slavery sentiments from a young age. He graduated from West Point eighteenth in this class, then spent the rest of his antebellum…
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Lambdin Purdy Milligan
Part of the Cool Civil War Names series. This guy’s tale helps puncture a few holes into the Abraham Lincoln Was An American Jesus Who Was Perfect In Every Way story that kids get fed in grade school. Milligan was a lawyer from Indiana (who had actually taken the bar exam with future Secretary of…
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Clement L. Vallandigham
Part of the Cool Civil War Names series. Opinions abound about this guy, but I think the nickname Lincoln gave him describes him best: the Wily Agitator. An Ohio-born lawyer and Congressman with Southern ancestry, Vallandigham took it upon himself to lead a crusade against the anti-slavery Republican Party before and during the war and…
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Lovin’ Lincoln
I finally went on the most important pilgrimage a history buff must go on: to Springfield, IL, for the loads of Lincoln lore there. First, I went with my dad to the Old State Capitol where Lincoln worked as a state legislator. Though mostly recreated, the building smacked of authenticity. But the biggest and best…