I argued yesterday in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times that Lincoln’s experience with cabinet-making (the famous “Team of Rivals”) was more of a cautionary tale than a model to follow.

Consider this inconvenient truth: Out of the four leading vote-getters for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination whom Lincoln placed on his original team, three left during his first term — one in disgrace, one in defiance and one in disgust.

The article stirred up a decent response.  The New York Times Opinionator addressed the topic.  Daily Kos offered a poll pitting my interpretation against the more famous one by Doris Kearns Goodwin (I’m losing, by the way).  And there’s been calls and emails from various reporters.

Lincoln is the Great Example and all of us want to try to understand what his experience represents.  Look at the evidence yourself, or with your students, and decide for yourself.  Nothing could be more timely.

On this day 150 years ago an article was published in the New York Times giving the figures for the amount of police arrests in the past twelve months. Though crime had decreased throughout the year, it still was higher than anyone wished or expected to see.

The statistics didn’t necessarily reflect the amount of people that were convicted, but it’s interesting and also a bit discouraging that even today, 150 years later, there’s still a high level of crime. Is it too out of the question to think that something needs to seriously be done if there’s no real difference after 150 years?

The House Divided Project contains many depictions of Underground Railroad related violence, many taken from William Still’s The Underground Railroad. Depictions of events such as this one of the Christiana Riot are surprisingly graphic despite being hand drawn engravings.

Other pictures with titles like “Desperate Conflict in a Barn” and “Fight in the Bay” are equally as graphic yet very interesting to study. The story of the Underground Railroad had many important cases of violent conflict, and pictures such as these are useful for understanding those events. All pictures related to the Underground Railroad can be found on the image tab of the Underground Railroad page.

While House Divided has a large collection of maps, I want to highlight some the interesting city maps that are available. You can find maps of cities like Boston, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, and many more. Be sure to check out the Washington D.C. map since it provides the location of specific buildings, including the “Presidents House” and “War Departments.” These street level maps, which were published during the 1850s, can good resources for teachers to use in the classroom. For example, several city maps are in the Google Earth tour of Henry “Box” Brown’s escape. Students can follow the exact route that Brown took to freedom, from Samuel Smith’s house in Richmond, Virginia to the Vigilance Committee Office in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Today the Abraham Lincoln National Heritage Area printed an article in the Morris Daily Herald located in Illinois congratulating President-elect Barack Obama. Within the article they metion how Obama’s victory helps to keep the legacy of Lincoln alive.

“Yet, the arrival, to this place, at this time in our nation’s history, gives us hope that “all will yet be well” in our pursuit of that more perfect union to which Lincoln was so devoted.”

The full article can be read here.

Like we are doing today, 150 years ago Americans across the country were analyzing the fallout of the most recent elections. The 1858 midterm elections were of considerable importance for the Civil War Era, and the results of the election made great strides to divide the nation politically. As this New York Times article from 1858 indicates, the victory of Stephen A. Douglas over Abraham Lincoln in Illinois made him “more powerful at Washington than the President with all his patronage.” Today we have the leading figures in the two major parties advocating Americans to come together, but 150 years ago the parties themselves were decisively split. The original article, as well as its transcript, is available on the House Divided website.

In a thought-provoking column today in the New York Times, headlined “Finishing Our Work,” Tom Friedman argues that the Obama victory represents a final act of closure for the American Civil War.  And he finds it particularly fitting that it was Virginia in many ways that provided the key to Obama’s electoral triumph.  Friedman writes:

“A civil war that, in many ways, began at Bull Run, Virginia, on July 21, 1861, ended 147 years later via a ballot box in the very same state. For nothing more symbolically illustrated the final chapter of America’s Civil War than the fact that the Commonwealth of Virginia — the state that once exalted slavery and whose secession from the Union in 1861 gave the Confederacy both strategic weight and its commanding general — voted Democratic, thus assuring that Barack Obama would become the 44th president of the United States.”

Amen.

Two websites currently stand out for the access they provide to primary sources about the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868.  The first from Douglas O. Linder’s quite exceptional “Famous Trials” series.  Linder, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) has put together invaluable primary source packets on trials from Socrates to the 9/11 hijackers.  His archive on the Johnson impeachment trial is quite good and contains both primary sources and useful background information such as a timeline and bibliography.   There’s not too many visual bells & whistles here, but the content is strong.  A more professional-looking site and one that also contains significant content comes from HarpWeek.  Their site relies on over 200 excerpts, including wonderful cartoons and images, from Harper’s Weekly magazine during the period 1865-1869.

Maryland Public Television has developed an interactive website containing multiple resources for teaching the story of the Underground Railorad. As stated on their website, the site is, “to help Maryland students in Grades 4 and 8 look more closely at Maryland’s people, stories, and events of that surrounded this important effort.” The site contains several interactive maps, timelines, and a neat “Following the Footsteps” section that allows students to make choices for themselves. The site can be found here.

I recently read an article in Military History by Martin Dugard entitled “The Warm-up War”. In the article, the author shows how the Mexican War was the first significant military experience for many West Point educated officers that would later serve in the Civil War. Notable names such as Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and Jefferson Davis are all mentioned.  These connections were an intricate part of the story of the Civil War, and as it nears completion, the House Divided project will provide users with an unprecedented ability to navigate between these connections. The web that ties many of these men goes through many years and multiple wars and is important to the greater history of the period. The article can be located in the September/October 2008 edition of Military History.