FALL 2014
LINCOLNIANA
BY
FRANK J. WILLIAMS
The Spoken Word and Group Activities
The Lost River chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution heard Robert Henderson review Killing Lincoln, the book by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, on May 10 in Paoli, IN.
Frank J. Williams presented “Lincoln and Leadership” at the Lyme Senior Center, Old Lyme, CT, on June 18.
The energy conservation company, Cenergistic, hosted its 2014 Summer National Training Conference in Chicago on August 11 with Frank J. Williams presenting “Gettysburg at 150.” It also included a press conference with President Abraham Lincoln—interpreted by Howard Wright covering the year 1864.
The Dallas Morning News One Day University featured The Civil War: From The Origins Through Reconstruction with Louis Masur on August 23.
Frank J. Williams presented “Lincoln’s Melancholia” on September 5 at the Dunns’ Corners Presbyterian Community Church.
Thomas Horrocks discussed his Lincoln’s Campaign Biographies at the Lincoln Group of Boston on September 20.
Eric Foner presented “The Emancipation of Abraham Lincoln,” the 2014 R. Gerald McMurtry Lecture, on September 26 at the Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, IN. The Annual Lincoln Colloquium, “Amid the Din of Arms: The Election of 1864,” was held at the Allen County Public Library on September 27. Speakers included Jeffrey J. Malanson (“‘George Washington, the founder of American independence, and Abraham Lincoln, the liberator of the slave’: The Founding Fathers and the Election of 1864”); Jonathan W. White (“Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln”); and Nicole Etcheson (“Sustaining the National Government: The Election of 1864 in Indiana”). The panel discussion was moderated by Sara Gabbard.
John C. Waugh presented the 31st Frank & Virginia Williams Abraham Lincoln Lecture at LSU Shreveport on October 3—“Lincoln Ends the War.”
The University of Illinois-Springfield hosted Lincoln’s Funeral on October 16 with James L. Swanson (“‘I give you my sprig of lilac’: The Death and Funeral of Abraham Lincoln”), Richard Wightman Fox (“What We’ve Forgotten About Lincoln’s Funeral, and What We’ve Never Known”), and Michael Burlingame (“Why Lincoln was Murdered”).
Harold Holzer, on the road speaking on his new book, Lincoln and the Power of the Press, appeared in Washington (in conversation with Major Garrett of CBS News) on October 16 at the Lincoln Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home; the Metropolitan Club on October 17; Frederick County (MD) Civil War Round Table on October 17; and the Newseum on October 18.
Professor James Coll of Hofstra University provided four sessions on October 27 and November 10 to discuss “Lincoln on the Civil War” at the Massapequa (NY) Public Library.
International Legacy
John Fabian Witt’s “Civil War Historians and the Laws of War,” appeared in the June 2014 issue of Journal of the Civil War Era.
Malvya Chintakindi’s “Neglected Lincoln’s Poetic Biography Gets Translated,” appeared in the September 4, 2014 issue of Helipolis (HeliopolisSBC@gmail.com).
Bret Stephens’s “What Does Vladimir Putin Want?” in the September 9 issue of the Wall Street Journal, includes a discussion of Lincoln’s Lyceum address.
The July 21 issue of Linn’s Stamp News reports that Tanzania issued a souvenir sheet on November 28, 2012 in honor of Lincoln.
The University of British Columbia Press has published Richard M. Reid’s African Canadians in Union Blue: Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War.
Joseph C. Miller, The Problem of Slavery as History: A Global Approach, rev. by Anthony E. Kaye, Journal of Southern History (August 2014).
Enirco Dal Lago, American Slavery, Atlantic Slavery and Beyond: The U.S. “Peculiar Institution” in International Perspective, rev. by Natalie Zacek, Journal of the Civil War Era (June 2014).
John MacKay, True Songs of Freedom: “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in Russian Culture and Society, rev. by Amanda B. Bellow, Journal of the Civil War Era (June 2014).
Robert J. Cottrol, The Long, Lingering Shadow: Slavery, Race, and Law in the American Hemisphere, rev. by Robert J. Steinfeld, Journal of the Civil War Era (June 2014).
John Boyko, Blood and Daring: How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged a Nation, rev. by Phillip E. Myers, Journal of American History (June 2014).
Jeffery R. Kerr-Ritchie, Emancipation Day in the Black Atlantic World, rev. by Ted Maris-Wolf, Louisiana History (Spring 2014).
Arts & Entertainment
A. Lincoln: A Pioneer Tale, a two-act musical drama, was performed at the Lincoln Amphitheater, Lincoln City, IN.
The Gettysburg Address, with music by Granville Wyche Burgess, with an arrangement by Stan Wietrzychowski, is available on CD (Granville Burgess, 983 North Street, Greenwich, CT 06831-2820).
Cartoonist Stephan Pastis drew “If Abraham Lincoln Had Tweeted—An Alternative History” for the May 19 Washington Post. (Lincoln “Take that, you little troll, Stephen Douglas”; “The Gettysburg Address,” “87 yrs ago, our fathers did stuff. Now big war. Govt by people good”; “On the South’s firing upon Fort Sumter,” “Oh No You Di’int”; “The Emancipation Proclamation,” “Slaves free! (if living in Confed.) Rest of you-not so much. #DoingBestICan”; “Ford’s Theatre,” “Play s’posed 2B good. Am dying to see.”)
A. Lincoln: A Pioneer Tale was performed at the Lincoln Amphitheater, Lincoln City, IN, on June 19.
New York’s Public Theater celebrated the newly published Library of America Shakespeare in America on June 24 at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park with actors Alec Baldwin, Annette Bening, and F. Murray Abraham, together with Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer who recounted Abraham Lincoln’s Shakespearean dreams.
Cartoonist Ramirez presented two panels in the July 24 Investors Business Daily with President Lincoln on one side reciting “Four score and seven years ago…” and President Obama in the adjoining panel, with golf club in hand, shouting “Fore!” The caption of the cartoon reads “Presidents during a crisis.”
Petersburg and Mobile Bay were honored in the Fourth Civil War Set on July 30, issued in a pane of 12 to commemorate the 150th anniversaries of the 1864 Civil War battles at Petersburg and Mobile Bay.
Smithsonian tours included The Seven Days Battle with Ed Bearss and Gregg Clemmer, August 9; The Battle of Antietam, also with Bearss and Clemmer on September 19; and Three Decisive Days at Gettysburg with day one on July 13, day two July 19 and day three July 27 with Bearss and Clemmer.
Lincoln’s Favorite Shakespeare by Harold Holzer was performed by the Berkshire Theatre Group with the author as narrator and performances by Kathleen Chalfant, Chris Noth, John Douglas Thompson, and Fritz Weaver. Gordon Hyatt was the producer and editor.
Exhibits
The Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum of Lincoln Memorial University will open a temporary exhibit that runs from October 6, 2014 to December 7, 2015. “Death and Memory: Abraham Lincoln in American Culture” is curated by students Jacob Wright and Marcus Smith and examines the Lincoln image post-assassination in popular culture.
Strong Women—Man’s World, an exhibit created by Jean Hendrick, a long-time volunteer at the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, will run from October 10, 2014 to September 16, 2015.
Mr. Lincoln’s Washington: A Civil War Portfolio, an exhibit using large-format reproductions of original photographs, prints, drawings and maps that show how the Civil War affected life in the District of Columbia, was on display at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, through January 25, 2015. Mathew Brady’s photographs of Union Generals runs through May 31, 2015, as is One Life: Grant and Lee, 1864-1865.
Undying Words: Lincoln 1858-1865 will open at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in November 2014. Mounted in cooperation with the Chicago History Museum in borrowing 24 historic items from their collections, it will be the biggest Lincoln show that the ALPLM has undertaken in eight years.
Civil War Sesquicentennial
Efforts are underway to ensure the appropriate commemoration of Abraham Lincoln’s funeral in Springfield, IL, May 1-3, 2015. While the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s interment at Oak Ridge Cemetery was May 4, 1865, the 2015 Lincoln Funeral Coalition is planning a re-enactment three days before the 150th in 2015. These activities will include a re-creation of the Lincoln funeral proceedings with a funeral march through Springfield ending at Oak Ridge. Coalition chairwoman Katie Spindell anticipated thousands of re-enactors would participate.
The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency is planning for a “lying in state” exhibit at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. The exhibit Undying Words will focus on Lincoln’s major speeches and likely run through most of 2015. The Chicago History Museum will lend the bed where Lincoln died in the Peterson house, Washington, for the exhibit.
The Old State Capitol will be draped in black ribbon and bunting during the weekend of the 150th anniversary of the Lincoln Funeral. An exhibit will focus on the city of Springfield and how locals prepared for the funeral.
An additional plan is the restoration of the original entrance to Oak Ridge Cemetery that received Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession 149 years ago.
Awards and Prizes
Cullom Davis, professor emeritus of history at the University of Illinois, Springfield, received the 2014 William E. Winter Award for Outstanding Advocate Leadership. Davis, a founding faculty member of Sangamon State University—predecessor to the University of Illinois, Springfield, was a strong campus advocate and fundraiser and also served as editor of the Legal Papers of Abraham Lincoln.
The Lincoln Memorial Shrine in Redlands, CA, was the 2014 winner of the Certificate of Excellence awarded by TripAdvisor Awards.
Auctions
A letter from Congressman Lincoln on May 7, 1859, auctioned at Swann on May 22, failed to reach the reserve. It was estimated at between $15,000 and $20,000: “…You overrate my capacity to serve you. Not one man recommended by me has yet been appointed to any thing, little or big, except a few who had no opposition.” An autographed manuscript signed “Lincoln” in the third person with five-lines of notes relating to his response to the speech of Senator Stephen A. Douglas during the 5th joint debate at Galesburg, IL in 1858 was sold for $32,500. At the Swann auction on April 8, the first report of the assassination of President Lincoln in the New York Times on April 15, 1865, went for $1,875.
Collections
“Lincoln’s Story Continues,” about the refurbishing and reorganization of the Lincoln Heritage Museum at Lincoln College, Lincoln, IL, by Mike Kienzler, appeared in the April 17 State Journal-Register.
The Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum at Lincoln Memorial University has announced a new project with Ford’s Theatre, Remembering Lincoln: A Digital Collection of Responses to His Assassination. This online project will commemorate the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln’s assassination and will collect the reactions of people who lived through the President’s murder and its aftermath. The two institutions will work together to collect, digitize, and share local responses during the 13 months following the assassination. The project will be launched in 2015. (http://fordstheatre.org/remembering-lincoln)
Daniel R. Weinberg’s Abraham Lincoln Book Shop has published its 118th catalog.
Doug Finke reported in the Illinois State Journal-Register that there is a plan to completely overhaul the Lincoln-Herndon law office as a historic site in Springfield, to include a working version of an 1840s dry goods store. Planned to start in the fall of 2015, the estimated $1.16 million project would assist visitors in understanding commerce in Springfield at the time Abraham Lincoln was practicing there.
Bob Lewin wrote about Harold Culver’s Lincoln postal cachets in “A Spectacular Lincoln Cover” for the June American Philatelist.
Abraham Lincoln’s handwriting was found inside a well-worn book justifying racism which he may have read to better understand his opponents’ thinking on slavery. The 700-page volume is in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, IL. The inscription, written on a page in the book Types of Mankind, was penned by Abraham Lincoln—but not signed by him. Denver Nicks wrote about it in the August 5 Time.
Richmond, VA’s new American Civil War Museum is in the design phase. Scott C. Boyd reported this in the September Civil War News. A conceptual plan for the 35,000 sq. ft. facility is to be built at the Tredega Iron Works along the James River. The American Civil War Museum was formed in 2013 by the merger of the Museum of the Confederacy and the American Civil War Center.
The Atlanta cyclorama painting, The Battle of Atlanta, is being moved to a new 23,000 sq. ft. facility to be built at the Atlanta History Center. An additional painting portraying the locomotive Texas, which won The Great Locomotive Chase, and artifacts in the Atlanta Cyclorama and Civil War Museum will be moved from Grant Park to the new facility.
Billy Brantley has for sale replicas of the Abraham Lincoln Pocket Knife (www.Lincolnpocketknife.com).
Books and Pamphlets
Simon & Schuster has published Harold Holzer’s Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion.
Johns Hopkins has published Michael C.C. Adams’s Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War.
Lincoln’s Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months That Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War by Todd Brewster has been published by Scribners.
Lincoln’s Dilemma: Blair, Sumner, and the Republican Struggle Over Racism and Equality in the Civil War by Paul D. Escott has been published by the University of Virginia Press.
A.J. Langguth wrote After Lincoln: How the North Won the Civil War and Lost the Peace for Simon & Schuster.
Lewis E. Lehrman has written Lincoln ‘by littles’ (The Lehrman Institute).
Fred J. Martin, Jr. is the author of Abraham Lincoln’s Path to Reelection in 1864: Our Greatest Victory (AuthorHouse).
William F. Moore and Jane Ann Moore are the authors of Collaborators for Emancipation: Abraham Lincoln and Owen Lovejoy (University of Illinois Press).
Donald Motier wrote Saving Lincoln: Mystic Chords of Memory, Part Two. This fictional novel has been published by Outskirts Press, Denver.
Gustav Niebuhr is the author of Lincoln’s Bishop: A President, a Priest, and the Fate of 300 Dakota Sioux Warriors (HarperOne).
Lincoln Dialogue by the late James A. Rawley, edited by William G. Thomas, has been published by the University of Nebraska Press. Professor Rawley cross-examines Lincoln’s major statements, papers and initiatives with the comments and criticism of his supporters and opponents.
Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein has written Treasures of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library (Southern Illinois University Press).
The Concise Lincoln Library of Southern Illinois University Press has published Lincoln’s Assassination by Edward Steers, Jr., Lincoln and the War’s End by John C. Waugh, and Lincoln and the Military by John F. Marszalek.
Jonathan W. White has written Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Re-Election of Abraham Lincoln (Louisiana State University Press).
Civil War Sesquicentennial and Related Books
Michael C.C. Adams has authored Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War for Johns Hopkins University Press.
William A. Blair has written With Malice Toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era (University of North Carolina Press).
William C. (“Jack”) Davis’s Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, the War They Fought, the Peace They Forged has been published (Da Capo Press).
Chris DeRose wrote The Presidents’ War: Six American Presidents and the Civil War That Divided Them for Globe Pequot.
Civil War Limericks by Charles H. Hayes has been published by Pelican Publishing Co. Also published by Pelican is The Confederate States of America Poster by Daryl Hutchinson.
James M. McPherson’s Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander-in-Chief has been published by Penguin Press.
Students of Professor Herman Belz have edited and contributed to Constitutionalism in the Approach and Aftermath of the Civil War (Paul D. Moreno and Jonathan O’Neill, eds.) (Fordham University Press).
Simon & Schuster and Rowan Technology Solutions have published The West Point History of the Civil War, the first volume in a series of definitive West Point military history. Contributions in the first volume include “Origins of the Civil War and the Contest for the Borderlands” by Mark E. Neely, Jr.; “The War in the East, July 1861 to September 1862” and “Lee’s War in the East” by Joseph T. Glatthaar; “Grant’s War in the West” by Steven E. Woodworth, “Coordinated Strategy and Hard War” by Earl J. Hess, and “The End of the Civil War and Reconstruction” by James K. Hogue.
Periodicals
The winter 2013 issue of The Lincoln Herald included “The Plight of The African Americans Despite the Hopes of President Lincoln and the Bittersweet Victory of the Civil War” by Jay Goldberg, “Stephen A. Douglas, Lawyer, Legislator, Register and Judge: 1833-1843 – Part 2” by Harry E. Pratt, and “Lincolniana” by Frank J. Williams. Michael Burkhimer edited the reviews.
The spring Lincoln Forum Bulletin included John F. Marszalek’s report, “Lincoln, the Movie and the Man,” a symposium at Mississippi State University, Robert Taylor’s poem, I Went to See Lincoln, Burrus M. Carnahan’s “Lincoln’s Legal Gem—The 1863 Conkling Letter,” and Paul Mellen’s “Lincoln’s Death Watch?”
The summer issue of The Civil War Monitor included Bob Zeller’s “Lincoln’s Final Journey” with a reproduction of a newly-found photograph of the funeral procession for President Lincoln in New York City.
John Hoffmann wrote “The Lincoln Ox Yoke” at the University of Illinois for the summer issue of For the People: A Newsletter of the Abraham Lincoln Association.
Reflections on General Ulysses S. Grant, including ratings on his service as General-in-Chief and biographies about him, appeared in the summer Civil War Monitor. Of those polled, 21.7% believe that his presidency was underrated, with 8.7% disappointed.
The summer Lincoln Lore, edited by Sara Gabbard, included her interview with Eric Foner, Frank J. Williams, and Richard Striner.
The second issue for 2014 from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, Four Score and Seven, included an article by Glenn R. Schroeder-Line discussing the new book, Treasures of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Ian Hunt’s “1864: Lincoln’s Winter of Discontent,” and James Cornelius’s “Finding a Free Spot for ‘Free Homes.’”
Campaign materials from “The Election of 1864” were featured in the Fall issue of The Civil War Monitor.
Bradley Harjehausen wrote “The Young Napoleon and the Original Guerrilla: George McClellan, Abraham Lincoln, and the Changing State of Warfare in the Civil War” for the winter and spring Lincoln Memorial Association Newsletter. Don McCue wrote “Sam Grant, Savior of the Union” for the same issue.
Reviews
James L. Cotton, Jr., The Greatest Speech, Ever: The Remarkable Story of Abraham Lincoln and His Gettysburg Address, rev. by David A. Galli, Civil War News (August 2014).
William C. Harris, Lincoln and the Union Governors, rev. by Allen C. Guelzo, Civil War News (July 2014).
Martin P. Johnson, Writing the Gettysburg Address, rev. by Jay Jorgensen, Civil War News (August 2014).
William Nester, The Age of Lincoln and the Art of American Power, 1848-1876, rev. by Thomas A. Horrocks, Civil War News (September 2014).
Jared Peatman, The Long Shadow of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, rev. by Thomas A. Horrocks, Civil War News (July 2014).
Joshua Zeitz, Lincoln’s Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay, and the War for Lincoln’s Image, rev. by Clint Johnson, Civil War News (September 2014).
People
Robert F. Henderson was profiled in the Paoli News-Republican (IN) on February 2014.
Historian and teacher James Percoco is now the Civil War Trust’s Teacher-in-Residence. For more information, go to www.civilwar.org/education.
Lincoln portrayers Max and Donna Daniels of Wheaton, IL—she for Mary and he for Abraham—were profiled in the Lake County Daily Herald on February 22.
David Kloke of Elgin, IL, is constructing a full-sized replica of the funeral train car that carried the President’s body from Washington, D.C., to Springfield, IL—Lincoln’s final resting place. Dubbed “The Lincoln Special,” the original train was built in 1864 as the office car for the President.
Lincoln and Political Culture
Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan badly miscalculated when he attempted to separate control and direction of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency in order to make the library and museum a stand-alone state agency. The Speaker’s proposal surfaced just one week before adjournment of the Illinois legislature and without any input from Governor Pat Quinn. Bruce Rushton wrote about the situation in the May 29-June 4 Illinois Times (“Presidential Politics: Lawmakers Ponder Future of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum”). Despite a House committee endorsement for a plan to make the presidential library and museum its own state agency, the plan died when Senate President John Cullerton confirmed that the Senate would not take up the bill during the 2015 session. Madigan said the cost of making the presidential library and museum its own agency would be minimal, but the historic preservation agency estimated it would cost $2.4 million. Madigan acknowledged that he is friends with the library and museum’s Executive Director, Eileen Mackevich, but denied that he was pursuing the legislation to bring patronage jobs to the facility. The House had earlier approved the bill on a bipartisan 84-29 vote.
The cover of the August 11 issue of National Review portrayed Lincoln with a tear in his left eye to accompany Kevin D. Williamson’s “How to Ruin the Land of Lincoln: The Misrule of Illinois Governor Pat Quinn.”
Maureen Dowd’s article for the August 24 New York Times was a put-up of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg declaration, using President Obama’s passion for golf as its thrust.
“Fore! Score? And seven trillion rounds ago, our fore caddies brought forth on this continent a new playground, conceived by Robert Trent Jones, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal when it comes to spending as much time on the links as possible—even when it seems totally inappropriate, like moments after making a solemn statement condemning the grisly murder of a forty-year-old American journalist beheaded by ISIS….”
The Lincoln Memorial led the number of visitors in Washington during 2012 with 6,191,386 followed by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at 4,424,404. Ford’s Theatre was ninth with 701,542.
Professor William D. Pederson, director of the International Lincoln Center at Louisiana State University Shreveport, wrote about the formation of the Lieber Code, which President Lincoln authorized at the urging of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, Army General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck and Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, for the Shreveport Times on August 22. “The code was in sync with the Declaration of Independence and Emancipation Proclamation,” wrote Pederson, suggesting that a ‘natural law’ governs human beings even during times of armed conflict.” The Lieber Code (General Orders 100) became the basis for the Geneva Conventions.
Assassination
Anthony S. Pitch gave his annual speech at Ford’s Theatre on the anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination, based on his book, “They Have Killed Papa Dead!:” The Road to Ford’s Theatre, Abraham Lincoln’s Murder, and the Rage for Vengeance. Later he gave four tours of Lincoln assassination sites in Washington, D.C. to sold-out crowds under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution.
The 58th Annual Lincoln Tomb Ceremony Commemorating the 149th Anniversary of the Death of Abraham Lincoln, sponsored by the Death Day Association, Inc., occurred on April 15 at the Lincoln Tomb, Springfield. The Lincoln Tomb reopened on April 1 after a four-month closure to repair water damage. The $700,000 restoration involved a variety of projects, including fixing cracks and repairing plaster molding, as well as new LED lighting.
Works in Progress
Oxford University Press will publish Terry L. Alford’s Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth in February 2015.
Brian McGinty’s Lincoln’s Greatest Case: The River, the Bridge, and the Making of America will be published by Liveright Publishing Corporation (W.W. Norton & Co.) in February.
Southern Illinois University Press will issue as Concise Lincoln Library books in 2014: John F. Marszalek’s Lincoln and the Military; Edward Steers, Jr.’s Lincoln’s Assassination; and John C. Waugh’s Lincoln and the War’s End. For Spring 2015, the press will also publish Bryon Andreasen’s Looking for Lincoln in Illinois: Lincoln’s Springfield; Harold Holzer and Sara Vaughn Gabbard’s 1865: America Makes War and Peace in Lincoln’s Final Year; John F. Marszalek’s The Best Writings of Ulysses S. Grant; Edna Greene Medford’s Lincoln and Emancipation; Christian G. Samito’s Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment; Justin Solonick’s Engineering Victory: The Union Siege of Vicksburg; and Todd Nathan Thompson’s The National Joker: Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Satire.
Necrology
Dr. David E. Long, a co-founder of the Lincoln Forum, teacher and author of The Jewel of Liberty, died on May 17 at age 66.
Lincoln collector and Lincoln Forum founding member Jean Hoefer died on April 8 at age 90. She packed many Lincoln items, including books and ephemera, in her 10×12 foot library at home in Freeport, IL.
Author’s Note
I want to thank Thom Bassett, Randal Berry, Roger Billings, Kenneth L. Childs, Aaron Crawford, Alice Dure, Sybil and Bill Forsythe, Harold Holzer, Richard Sloan, Tom Lapsley, Dave Leroy, William D. Pederson, Dennis E. Stark, Joseph Fornieri, Robert F. Henderson, Thomas Horrocks, Wayne C. Temple, Edward Steers, Jr., David J. Stiller, Jo Dzombak, Guy C. Fraker, Malcolm Garber, Mike Marlow, Ralph S. McCrea, William K. Miller, Thom Bassett, Tracey Minkin, David Warren, John Schildt, Philip W. Stichter, Thomas J. Trimborn, Justice William P. Robinson III, Judges W. Dennis Duggan and Dennis Curran, Frank and Virginia Musgrave, and Virginia Williams for providing information for this column. I welcome news concerning Abraham Lincoln. Please contact me at 300 Switch Road, Hope Valley, RI 02832; fax (401) 364-3642; e-mail alincoln@courts.ri.gov.