“He said, in substance, Ninety years ago our fathers formed a Government consecrated to freedom and dedicated to the principle that all men are created equal.” Centralia (IL) Sentinel  November 26, 1863, from coverage of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

Ninety years ago? Imagine being the Civil War-era reporter who did not believe that the phrase “Four score and seven years ago” was memorable enough to record in its exact language. Yet historian Gabor Boritt includes this passage from the Sentinel’s slightly botched coverage of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in his book, The Gettysburg Gospel (2006).  Boritt uses the example as a way to highlight the surprisingly complicated story about how Lincoln’s brief speech at the Soldiers’ National Cemetery dedication was received in late 1863 and then how the memory of it changed 0ver the years that followed.  Boritt’s book introduces readers to a host of primary sources, including numerous historical newspaper accounts, that show a wide range of reactions to Lincoln’s now-famous and universally-celebrated words.  This post attempts to organize some of these sources for teachers and students to view themselves.  In addition, I have started to collect various post-war recollected accounts of the dedication ceremony, including some that Boritt does not feature, as a way to provide first-hand accounts of that memorable day on November 19, 1863.

Local Reactions

“How the president’s words were reported would impact how they were received. People often read papers out loud, and what they heard, if they read his remarks, varied widely.” (Boritt, 142)

• (Gettysburg, PA) The Adams Sentinel, “Speech of the President,” November 24, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com) 
• (Lancaster, PA) Daily Inquirer, “The Gettysburg Celebration,” November 20, 1863 [IMAGE][FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Genealogy Bank)
• (Harrisburg, PA) The Patriot News, “President Lincoln’s Last Speech,” December 3, 1863 [IMAGE] (Courtesy of Genealogy Bank)
  • This one is especially teachable because the paper retracted their criticism many years later.
• Union County (PA) Star and Lewisburg Chronicle, “Dedication at Gettysburg,” November 27, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Chronicling America)

Republican Reactions

“The Republican papers printed overwhelmingly favorable editorial comments.” (Boritt, 131)

• Chicago Tribune, “The Consecration of the Battle Cemetery,” November 21, 1863  [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com) 
• (Montpellier, VT) The Daily Green Mountain Freeman, “Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg,” November 21, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
• New York Times, “The Heroes of July,” November 20, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL ARTICLE] (Courtesy of New York Times Online Archives)
  • The editor of the Times, Henry Raymond, served as chairman of Lincoln’s reelection campaign in 1864.
• (Springfield) Illinois State Journal, “Inauguration of the Gettysburg Cemetery,” November 23, 1863 [IMAGE][FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Genealogy Bank)
  • This article by Lincoln’s hometown newspaper ends with noting the tremendous applause he received following his remarks at the cemetery.
• (Washington, DC) Weekly National Intelligencer, “The Ceremonies at Gettysburg,” November 26, 1863 [IMAGE][FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)

Democratic Reactions

“Most of the Democratic papers tried to hide, or entirely ignore, the president’s speech, which they regarded as the start of his presidential campaign.” (Boritt, 140-141)

• Baltimore Sun, “The National Cemetery,” November 20, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • The Sun mostly avoided criticism of the president’s remarks.
• Clearfield (PA) Republican, “A Voice From the Dead,” December 2, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • The column attacked both Edward Everett and Lincoln for allegedly making the dedication about themselves.
• (Ebensburg, PA) Democrat and Sentinel, “The Gettysburg Cemetery,” December 2, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • This account aggressively misquoted the president to make it appear as if he was not appreciating the fallen.
• (Indianapolis) The Indiana State Sentinel, “The President at Gettysburg,” November 30, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • Lincoln is yet again attacked for trying to be political at the dedication.
• New York Herald, “Consecration of the National Sepulcher at Gettysburg,” November 20, 1863 [IMAGE][FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • The Herald focuses on the soldiers who fought rather than any of the speeches at the dedication.
• Philadelphia Inquirer, “Gettysburg Celebration,” November 20, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL ARTICLE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com) 

British Coverage

• (Colchester, UK) The Essex County Standard,  “Later Intelligence,” December 4, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
• (London, UK) The Morning Post, “The Civil War in America,” December 12, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)

Recollections

• Noah Brooks,  “Personal Reminisces of Lincoln,” Scribner’s Monthly, Vol. 15 (Feb. 1878), p. 565 [IMAGE] (Courtesy of HathiTrust, digitized by Cornell University)
  • Brooks was a leading journalist who described his interactions with Lincoln leading up to the speech, and how he remembered the president writing the speech.
• [John Hay], The Holton Recorder (KS), “Lincoln the Author of His Gettysburg Address,” January 3, 1884 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • Hay, who was Lincoln’s personal aid, admitted to signing the President’s name often but assured he had nothing to do with the Gettysburg Address.
• [Samuel Schmucker], Adams County News (PA), “Death of Judge S. D. Schmucker,” March 11, 1911 [IMAGE]  [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • Schmucker was a local jurist who viewed the speech as a young man.
• [James Speed], The Chicago Tribune, “A Pretty Little Fiction,” April 20, 1887 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE]  (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • Speed, who served as Lincoln’s second attorney general, disputed the impression that Lincoln wrote the speech on the train to Gettysburg.
• [David Wills], The Carlisle Sentinel (PA), October 7, 1885 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE]
  • Wills was the local attorney who hosted the president at Gettysburg and recalled that Lincoln wrote at least the final version the speech in his house.

Further Reading

Boritt, Gabor. The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech that Nobody Knows. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006.

Pinsker, Matthew.  Lincoln’s Gettysburg Addresses.  House Divided Project exhibit at Google Arts & Culture, 2013.

While phones can be a distraction in the classroom, with augmented reality (AR) they can help bring lessons to life and create an interactive learning experience. By simply aiming their phones at augmented images, students can unlock the personal stories of historical figures, triggering videos and other online content (called auras). Here at the House Divided Studio, we are working to enhance our visitor experience and to model classroom applications through the use of AR. You can learn more about the various uses of AR and how to create your own free augmented experiences in this instructional post.

Downloading the HP Reveal app

To view the auras created by the House Divided Project, visitors and educators can download the free HP Reveal app, create an account and follow the House Divided channel in HP Reveal. (House Divided content won’t trigger until you follow the channel). Once those steps are completed, simply open the app, select the blue viewer square located at the bottom of the screen, point your phone at images located throughout the studio and the app generates specific video content (auras) related to those images.

Once you’ve followed the House Divided channel on the HP Reveal app, select the blue viewer button and then point your phone at an image.

The HP Reveal app’s viewer scans images with pulsating dots and triggers augmented content (auras).

An image augmented with a video about the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Using Augmented Reality

Through AR, teachers can bring new experiences into their classrooms. Below are some of the most innovative uses of AR.

• Augmented Portraits – At the House Divided studio, the walls are decorated with augmented portraits that trigger brief student-produced films. At right, check out this augmented portrait of President James Buchanan (Class of 1809).  You can access all of the House Divided images with AR enhancements here at the online version of our studio.
• Handouts/Facsimiles – Reproductions of historic photos, letters and newspaper articles enable students to connect to personal stories.  Here’s an example of Lincoln’s famous Blind Memorandum from the 1864 election, augmented with a video by project director Matthew Pinsker.
• Virtual field trips –  The Google Expeditions app is already being used in schools. Google created a brief promotional video showing how students at an Iowa middle school experienced world-renowned architecture using the app. The app is free, and can be downloaded and accessed by anyone with a Google account. Google Expeditions shows virtual images of sites accompanied by longer text explanations, available by tapping the bottom of your screen. Especially in classroom settings, Google encourages the use of a Virtual Reality headset for the best experience. Students can place their phones into the headsets, known as Google Cardboard, and experience a site. The Cardboard headsets are available for around $15.

Creating Your Own Augmented Reality Experience

Augmented reality is not only an effective teaching tool, but it is also free and relatively easy to learn. Using the HP Reveal studio, you can upload images and augment them. When editing your image, you should use a variety of circles, eclipses and rectangles to mask the background of your image (see below), making faces and main objects easier for the app to recognize.

Masks hide parts of the image, enabling the app to trigger augmented content (auras).

Tips for masking images:

• Identify and mask mundane objects/spaces in the background of your image. Think of it as removing clutter so the app can recognize the image and trigger your content. For the example above, I masked the indistinct faces of the pursuers in the background, making it easier for the app to focus on the four main figures.
• HP Reveal is often color sensitive. If your trigger image is in color, a black and white version (i.e., photocopies) may not work successfully. For the best results, convert an image to grayscale and then mask it.
• Finally, make sure you save and then share your aura. If you haven’t shared your aura, it will be marked private.

After you have finished masking the image, click “Next” and upload your overlaying video or other content. Press save and then try viewing the image through the HP Reveal app to verify it works.

For more guidance on how to mask images in the HP Reveal studio, see the following House Divided tutorial.

This post is part of a new summer 2017 “DIY” (do-it-yourself) series by House Divided Project interns Rachel Morgan and Sam Weisman on how to make various types of primary source facsimiles; see posts on CDVs, stereocards, colorized photos, and letters.

Imagine holding the tear-stained letter from a loving wife to her husband, a Union soldier. Then, follow the soldier through news clippings to the bloody Battle of Antietam. Hold the wife’s letter in one hand and the soldier’s death notice in the other.

House Divided Project facsimile collection

When students leaf through facsimile documents, they connect with these emotional stories. The authentic feel of a replica letter adds an interactive, physical layer to the study of primary sources.

Within my first week as an intern at the House Divided project, I picked up some tricks to quickly reproduce primary source documents. A few key details can make a facsimile ready for classroom use with little time and effort.

Getting the Paper Right

Paper was not made from wood pulp until after the Civil War. This is good for historians because newspapers and letters from this time are often better preserved than documents from the early 20^th century. Most documents were off-white though, no matter how hard printers tried to clean them with bleach or lime.

“Fine writing” in books was printed on laid paper, a thin, woven, lightly coated sheet similar to Resume paper. Illustrations were printed on coated paper. The facsimile equivalent of this is photo glossy paper. People would have seen major events in the Harper’s Weekly or Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. The Harper’s Weekly archives are subscription-based but the Library of Congress carries many of the same photographs for free.

Realistic marbled binding on a facsimile diary or damage to a replica letter really feels like a piece of the past. Think about what practical details are missing from an image. For example, I bound a pamplet from the Southern Historical Society with colorful marbled paper.

To get the feel right, it can be useful to stop by your local historical society or archives to handle some original documents.

Patriotic Letters

A red, white, and blue sailor raises the flag of Union, surrounded by words of wartime optimism. Decorated stationary and envelopes like this were one of the main trends of the Civil War. Facsimiles of patriotic letters help bring to life the experience of the era. One of the House Divided documentary projects features this patriotic letter.

House Divided Project

How to make a patriotic letter: 

• Format the page size to 5″ by 8″.
• Add faint blue lines on the front and back, spaced about 3/8″ apart.
• Download a patriotic cartoon image, printed in red, white, and blue.
• Position an image in the upper left corner of the page.
• If reproducing a handwritten letter, transcribe the text and paste the transcript on the back. Feel free to correct misspelling or illegible sections.

Writing Home Courtesy of the Delaware Historical Society

How to make a formal letter:

• Format page size to 8″ by 10″.
• Switch to landscape mode.
• Divide into three sections, each about 3.5″ by 8″.
• Add message using period appropriate font or handwriting.
• Print and fold in thirds.

I printed letters on manila paper which was popular in the Civil War era. The same effect can be reached by recoloring the paper background in Microsoft Word. Go to the Design tab and select Page Color on the right of the tool bar. It may be difficult for students to read the handwriting so transcribing a letter in advance is very useful.

Learn more:

Cycleback, David (February 10, 2013) “Identifying and Dating Paper” Looking at Art, Artifacts and Ideas

 Kautz, August V (1864) The company clerk: showing how and when to make out all the returns 1826-1896 (J.B. Lippencott&Co, Philadelphia)

Sullivan, Bob (February 26, 2009) “19th Century Stationery Items” Civil War Wiki 

Valente, AJ (2010) “Changes in Print Paper During the 19th Century” Proceedings of the Charleston Library Conference: 209-214

This post is part of a new summer 2017 “DIY” (do-it-yourself) series by House Divided Project interns Rachel Morgan and Sam Weisman on how to make various types of primary source facsimiles; see posts on CDVs, stereocards, colorized photos, and letters.

If you mention MySpace, you just dated yourself. Believe it or not, fads in social networking gave away their times just as easily 150 years ago. “Carte de visites” (CDV) were a mid-nineteenth century phenomenon like Facebook or Instagram. These portrait cards captured the nation in “cardomania”. Photography itself dates in the United States from the 1830s and 1840s, but early daguerreotypes were expensive and rare.  By the late 1850s, the widespread emergence of printed photographic cards, CDVs, allowed friends and family to share their images with each other in relatively inexpensive ways.  They often used the CDVs to create albums that, in effect, marked the boundaries of their social network.  

This summer, I made several CDV printouts for classroom use. I found woodcut portraits and newspaper photographs to make CDVs. Then, I added some teaser introductions. When visitors enter the House Divided studio, they can pick up a CDV and find their subject in the exhibit.

I used Photoshop to make these CDVs but Microsoft Word works just as well on a budget.

Carte de visite for Napoleon III, Disdéri(1859) Courtesy of Wikipedia

Carte de visite back Courtesy of WikiCommons

How to make a CDV:

• Buy some cream colored card stock. Avoid cardboard.
• Download an image of your subject. It could be a full body portrait, head-shot, or illustration.
  • If the image is colored or black and white, apply a sepia tone filter in Microsoft Word.
• Resize the image to about 2″ by 3.5″.
• Insert a blank CDV background and resize to  2.5″ by 4″
  • Leave about 3/4″ space below the image.
• Insert a text box in the space at the bottom. Make sure it’s set to “no fill” and “no outline.”
• Add the subject’s name to the bottom of the CDV. Use a period appropriate font or write it in by hand.

Original from National Museum of American History. Modified by Sam Weisman

After the Civil War, larger cabinet cards replaced CDV. A cabinet card usually featured the photographer’s name on the front and an elaborate design on the back.

• How to make a cabinet card:
• Buy thicker card stock or thin cardboard.
• Download and resize a 5.5″ by 4″ portrait or landscape photo.
• Download and resize a 6.5″ by 4.25″ blank background.
• Find a graphic back to the card.
• Leave space at the bottom to insert the photographer’s logo.

Henry Spradley cabinet card (front) Courtesy of the Dickinson College Archives

Henry Spradley cabinet card (back)   Courtesy of Dickinson College Archives

A CDV can easily be adopted into a cabinet card and vise versa just by resizing and adding the photographer’s information.  With some period costumes, students could even make their own CDVs or cabinet cards.

The House Divided CDV display

Read more:

Harding, Colin (June 27, 2013) “How to Spot a Carte de Visite (Late 1850s – c. 1910)” National Science and Media Museum Blog

Harding, Colin (September 5, 2013) “How to Spot a Cabinet Card (1866 – c. 1914)” National Science and Media Museum Blog

The American Museum of Photography (2004) “A Brief History of the Carte de Visite” 

Digital Scholarship Lab.  University of Richmond, 2014.  http://dsl.richmond.edu/projects/

Reviewed by Leah Miller, Dickinson College

DSL Projects gateway

The Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond uses technology to digitize and present historical data in a way that reveals hidden patterns.  The lab consists of eight main projects which present various insights into American history:

• Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States
• Virginia Secession Convention
• Hidden Patterns of the Civil War
• Mining the Dispatch
• Visualizing Emancipation
• History Engine
• Redlining Richmond
• Voting America

While the data covered by these projects spans all of American history from Columbus to the present, particular focus is devoted to the nineteenth century.  Rather than presenting the large-scale, political history which is available in the average classroom textbook, these projects analyze the movements and actions of the common person.  The result is a series of new stories about the experience of the average American—white, black, male, female—who worked, migrated, fought, and suffered for their freedom.

The most recent project is the digitized Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, originally drawn up in 1932 by U.S. naval historian Charles O. Paullin and geographer John K. Wright.  The print edition of the atlas—which includes over 700 maps on 166 plates that cover American history from 1492 to 1930—has greatly impacted many historical publications even to the present day.  Recently for the New York Times, project director Robert K. Nelson explained that “Paullin’s maps show ordinary people making a living, moving across the landscape, worshipping at churches, voting in elections.”  This new, digital edition changes the way we can interpret these maps.  Each map has been georeferenced and georectified to provide accurate and optimal web-viewing, but the viewer can switch to a high-quality scan of the original plates.  The user can also toggle a sidebar with Paullin’s original text and legends, as well as zoom in and out and adjust the transparency of the map overlay.  Permalinks save all these preferences and ensure they can be accessed in the future.  Series of maps that show progression of movement or activity through time have been animated.  For example, the animation of slave populations from 1790-1860 shows the concentration of southern slave power and its expansion westward concurrently with gradual emancipation of slaves in the North.  Furthermore, the statistical annotations provided for this map declare the exact numbers and percentages of slaves in each county, and by 1820 provide a breakdown of the slaves’ genders.  Some maps are accompanied by additional analytical blog posts.  “Vanishing Indians,” by lab director Robert K. Nelson, discusses the atlas’ shortcomings when it comes to portraying Native Americans in their relationships to each other.

The Visualizing Emancipation project is another interactive map which highlights slavery’s end during the Civil War.  The map “presents a history of emancipation where brutality is sometimes easier to see than generosity and where the costs of war and freedom fell disproportionately on the most vulnerable in the South.”  Users can filter through different types of emancipation events (i.e. African Americans helping the Union, their captures by either army, fugitive slave-related incidents, etc.), as well as different types of sources, including books, newspapers, official records, or personal papers.  Like the Atlas, this map is animated, so as the user toggles pins and filters on and off, she can follow the relationship between emancipation and the position of the Union army, or the agency of slaves in obtaining their own freedom.  The project also features certain events and figures as starting points for understanding emancipation, with the ability to pinpoint each event on the map.  I only wish that there were at least one featured example where a person or group were involved in multiple events, so a user could follow their physical journey using the map.  For those teaching emancipation, there is an accompanying lesson plan and worksheet.  Students are encouraged to contribute by submitting information they find in primary source documents, since the map, which covers “only a small slice of the available evidence documenting the end of slavery,” could never be complete.

Voting America also makes use of animated maps to show changes and differences in voting preferences for presidential and congressional elections (1840–2008).  The key factor is scope, which illuminates different patterns and trends.  For example, changing popular votes at the state level show which parties won each election, while at the county level show how each state was politically divided.  The dot-density maps are even more democratic, as 1 dot=500 votes in an area; this way, more third-party votes are recorded.  For these types of maps, every legend shows important political events in history; so, one can watch the progression of voter turnout since 1840 and note the effect the Fifteenth and Twentieth Amendments had.  The user also has the option to view individual elections in each of these capacities.  Population maps show the location and movements of black Americans (represented—a bit stereotypically—as black dots) and white Americans (represented by pink dots).  Unfortunately there is no option to view these populations together, nor is there any representation of immigrant populations.  The project is accompanied by an interactive map which can be used to compare presidential election years, but my computer, running Adobe flash player version 12.0.0.38, was unable to open it.  An alternative version is available through Google Maps, but currently this feature is down.  Finally, a “Scholars Corner” provides expert analysis by DSL staff on certain voting trends.

Three other projects in the lab focus on the American Civil War.  Mining the Dispatch uses topic-modeling, a computerized method of pulling together multiple documents that have the same key words within them.  This can reveal interesting categories and patterns among texts.  In this case, Nelson ran every issue of the Richmond Daily Dispatch from November 1860 to Lincoln’s death in April 1865.  Some of the more interesting topics are fugitive slave ads, anti-northern diatribes, military recruitment versus conscription, humor etc.  Nelson juxtaposed line graphs showing the frequency of similar topics, and, tentatively, relationships emerged.  This project is still in its preliminary phase and because of its algorithmic collection process, the data is imperfect.  Still, it is a good jumping off point for research questions.

The Virginia Secession Convention project seems to diverge from the site’s aim to tell the average American’s story.  It seeks to explain the decision of the VA delegates to secede from the Union through their full-text searchable speeches and the Convention’s proceedings.  However, as the Data Visualizations page shows, their decisions were likely influenced by their constituents.  Each county is annotated with statistics about the constituents: percentages of slaveholders and the enslaved, average farm value per acre, and pro- or anti-Union stances.

Finally, though Hidden Patterns of the Civil War largely highlights many of the projects already discussed, it also includes other mini-projects and tools, like a collection of maps that shows the migration patterns of black Virginians who married after the war, a Google Earth tour of the Richmond slave market developed from a sketch by painter Eyre Crowe, and a full-access digital database of the Richmond Daily Dispatch during the Civil War.

While the two remaining projects are less relevant to the nineteenth century, they are great tools for the classroom.  Redlining Richmond maps and annotates the racist categorizations of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (a New Deal agency) in the late ’30s.  The assigned value of each neighborhood is based on race and nationality, and shows the lingering effects of slavery in the Jim Crow era.  The History Engine is a “moderated wiki” where students generate three-paragraph “episodes” (rather than arguments) about people, places, or events in American history, drawing on local university or online archives and secondary sources.  Because registration is required, each submission is carefully screened for quality and accuracy.  The project’s aim is to place students from around the world in conversation with each other and their work.

The eight projects of the Digital Scholarship Lab thoughtfully and extensively explore the individual experiences of Americans during the nineteenth century.  The Lab’s innovative use of technology illuminates otherwise obscure patterns of growth, contest, suffering, and change.  This is an invaluable resource for studying the social history of our nation, and a must for anyone teaching or learning about the American Civil War.

The reaction to President Obama’s appearance on Between Two Ferns was swift. 32,000 viewers clicked through the video to HealthCare.gov, more than 1,000 tweeted about the segment, and health plan enrollments skyrocketed as the final deadlines approached.  None of those suggestions of effectiveness, however, prevented Fox News host Bill O’Reilly from leveling a pretty tough criticism. O’Reilly was blunt and authoritative as always:  “all I can tell you is Abe Lincoln wouldn’t have done it.”

Putting aside the question of whether Abraham Lincoln really would have refused to appear on Between Two Ferns, there are a few important issues to consider when comparing President Obama’s stated goals for his unusual interview with the political experiences of President Lincoln. Those comparisons can begin with O’Reilly’s criticism itself, which actually sounds quite similar to some 19th-century commentaries about Lincoln. Ralph Waldo Emerson, writing in his diary, once accused Lincoln of “cheapening himself” as a public figure, noting that:

“He will not walk dignifiedly through the traditional part of the President of America, but will pop out his head at each railroad station and make a little speech, get into an argument with Judge A and Squire B,  he will write letters to Horace Greeley, and any editor or reporter…or saucy party committee that writes to him…”

The letters Emerson was referring to – public letters – particularly rankled some 19th-century American opinion leaders. Douglas Wilson, a historian and two-time Lincoln Prize winner, notes in Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (2007), that Lincoln’s unprecedented use of public letters was viewed by some as “undignified.” Lincoln was about as compelled by that criticism then as President Obama is now. The two presidents seem to share a desire to avoid, in Obama’s words, the “Washington echo chamber.” They both sought out mediums and messages that would do just that, resonating with everyday people and conveying a highly personal touch. In attempting to quench the desire to directly connect, Obama has the internet and Lincoln had the public letter. Beginning in 1862 with his letter to Horace Greeley and continuing in 1863 with longer missives to Erastus Corning and James Conkling, Lincoln shaped popular opinion and shared his views with constituents by “corresponding” through newspapers. His messages, on slavery, emancipation, and federal power, were circulated and read widely. The Conkling letter, which we recently annotated on Poetry Genius, includes Lincoln’s famous line stating that, “there can be no appeal from the ballot to the bullet,” and employs shifts in tone and argument to convince a broad swath of the political spectrum about the wisdom of the Emancipation Proclamation. Wilson, again in Lincoln’s Sword, argues that these public letters demonstrably helped improve the president’s popularity and support for the Union cause.

A public letter to the editor of a newspaper or a political leader is a long way, however, from appearing on an internet comedy show hosted by the actor from Hangover 3. And it is worth noting that Lincoln’s public letters rarely employed humor in any substantive form. He was far from unfunny, though; in fact, in connecting with political leaders and laymen alike, Lincoln employed a similarly eclectic sense of humor that was also subject to criticism. In fact, some public figures attacked Lincoln for his humor in a way that will sound familiar to keen observers of the Between Two Ferns debate.  Historian Louis Masur has a great short post (“Lincoln Tells a Story”) at the New York Times Disunion series which details both some of Lincoln’s story-telling habits and the uneven reaction.  He quotes Richard Henry Dana, a prominent nineteenth-century writer and attorney, who spoke for many New Englanders when he complained during the war that Lincoln “does not act or talk or feel like the ruler of a great empire in a great crisis.” In a scholarly article titled Lincoln’s Humor: An Analysis, Benjamin Thomas fully chronicles the 16th President’s flair for pith, wit, and tall tales. The article is a treasure trove of Lincolniana, ranging from yarns and one-liners to comic biography and commentary on 19th-century humor. Thomas notes that according to Henry C. Whitney, one of Lincoln’s friends from his Illinois years, “any remark, any incident brought from [Lincoln] an appropriate tale…he saw ludicrous elements in everything.” Thomas’s analysis is instructive, at least in one sense. After all, it is hard to imagine that the man who asked whether a Nebraska river named Weeping Water was called Minneboohoo by the Indians (“because Minnehaha is Laughing Water in their language”) would not have enjoyed at least some of Two Ferns banter about strange spider bites and 800-ounce babies.

Lincoln didn’t lampoon Nebraska’s American Indian population in a public speeches or documents, though. Much of the humor Thomas describes appears to be drawn from personal interactions described in diary entries or recollections.  The historian argues that after 1854, Lincoln’s public persona became more serious. O’Reilly, who has written a book on Lincoln, might have this fact in mind when he criticizes President Obama. O’Reilly could argue that as Lincoln ascended to power, he acknowledged the seriousness of the moment and changed the tone of his rhetoric. It is true that Lincoln’s  rhetoric during the late 1850s and 1860s lacks some of the Springfield lawyer’s earlier folksy-funny style, but this shift did not help him shed a humorous public countenance. In the House Divided research engine, we feature several anti-Lincoln cartoons, like the one detailed above  (“Columbia Demands Her Children”), which take him to task for not being serious enough (See also “Running the Machine” and “The Abolition Catastrophe” –all from the 1864 reelection campaign).  These images seem to indicate that there were personal and political dimensions to Lincoln’s humor that extended well into the years of his presidency.

It is never simple to compare different moments in history, but what is at the heart of President Obama’s appearance on Between Two Ferns – the desire to connect directly to citizens and convey a persuasive message – is familiar to all who study the history of American politics. Lincoln shared President Obama’s interest in communicating directly with the American public, and doing so in a way that was original and compelling.  While his humor and desire to connect with voters do not converge in his public letters, Lincoln used both humor and public correspondence in the same way that President Obama used Between Two Ferns: to develop a personal rapport with constituents, and bolster their support for a national agenda. Few things are more presidential than that.

To honor Lincoln’s 205th birthday, we are tweeting out the top ten Lincoln resources from House Divided.  But here is the full list:

#1    Lincoln’s Writings: The Multi-Media Edition

Created by participants in the “Understanding Lincoln” open online graduate course (offered in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History), this site (still in development) features 150 of Lincoln’s “most teachable” documents and offers a full array of multi-media resources designed to help teach them in the K-12 and undergraduate classroom.  This site is especially useful for Common Core alignments.

#2   Building the Digital Lincoln (Journal of American History)

Created as part of the Lincoln Bicentennial anniversary, this site offers a snapshot of where the “Digital Lincoln” stood as of 2009, and includes a host of examples of research and presentation tools, especially designed for serious student and academic scholars.

#3   Emancipation Digital Classroom

Created in part to help transform insights from James Oakes’s prize-winning study, Freedom National (2013) into use for the modern-day classroom, this site presents an array of primary and secondary source tools for studying the complicated but fascinating subject of emancipation and abolition.

#4  Unofficial Teacher’s Guide to Spielberg’s Lincoln

This “unofficial” guide includes access to Tony Kushner’s script, a full cast of characters (with photo comparisons to actual historical figures), and extensive analysis of the artistic license in the film and the historical reaction to Steven Spielberg’s important movie project.

#5  Lincoln-Douglas Debates Digital Classroom

This site offers a clickable word cloud of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates and host of other rare primary sources for use in studying these critical texts.

#6  Abraham Lincoln in the House Divided Research Engine

The House Divided Research Engine is a Drupal-based content management system that contains over 12,000 public domain images and tens of thousands of documents and other historical records.  The link above takes users directly to Abraham Lincoln’s main record page and offers a well-curated gateway for Lincoln research.

#7  Lincoln’s Gettysburg Addresses (Google Cultural Institute)

This short but compelling exhibit came together as part of the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address and helps visitors understand the evolution of the document, including a sharp analysis of all five manuscript versions of the address in Lincoln’s handwriting.

#8  Lincoln’s Autobiographical Sketch (YouTube & RapGenius)

Dickinson College students Leah Miller and Will Nelligan helped create short but engaging tools for studying Lincoln’s most important autobiographical writing –a sketch he produced in late 1859 to help launch his presidential bid.  There is a six minute YouTube video of the sketch and an annotated edition of it through the new platform at RapGenius.

#9  Burlingame’s Lincoln Biography (Teaching Edition)

Michael Burlingame’s prize-winning Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2008) is the most important new multi-volume study of Lincoln, but it is difficult to teach because it is so lengthy.  With permission, however, from both the author and the publisher (Johns Hopkins University Press), we have created short visually enhanced excerpts from the work that focus on the election of 1860 and include clickable footnotes, allowing teachers and students to “see” Burlingame’s sources directly.

#10  Mash Up of Collected Works, Lincoln Day-By-Day, and Lincoln Papers

Created by technologist Rafael Alvarado, this mash up includes an integrated interface allowing users to see the online edition of Lincoln’s Collected Works (his known writings), Lincoln Day-By-Day (his daily schedule), and The Abraham Lincoln Papers At the Library of Congress (the bulk of his extant correspondence) for the essential “one-stop” shopping experience.  There is nothing else quite like this “timemap” available on the Internet –a must-see for serious and aspiring scholars.

“Beyond the Log Cabin: Kentucky’s Abraham Lincoln” is a great online exhibit created by the Kentucky Historical Society. This interactive site includes manuscripts and artifacts from over 40 repositories nationwide and the content is divided into four overall categories – Themes, Timeline, Treasures, and Resources. Themes include topics such as “Frontier World of Abraham Lincoln,” “Lincoln’s Rise,” “Lincoln and Kentucky at War,” and “Remembering Lincoln: Then and Now.” Each one has a short essay as well as relevant documents, images, and other relevant artifacts. The Timeline section explores Lincoln’s life in Kentucky as well as how the state has commemorated the Sixteenth President after April 1865. The Treasures section allows visitors to explore all of the photographs, manuscripts, and other artifacts in an interactive display. Resources include a Teacher’s guide, a bibliography, and an essay originally published in the Kentucky Historical Society Chronicle.

“The war was a good time for the study of the conflict between Athens and Sparta,” Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve (1831-1924) wrote in 1897.  “It was a great time for reading and re-reading classical literature in general, for the South was blockaded against new books as effectively, almost, as Megara was blockaded against garlic and salt… The Southerner, always conservative in his tastes and no great admirer of American literature, which had become largely alien to him, went back to his English classics, his ancient classics.  Old gentlemen past the military age furbished up their Latin and Greek.  Some of them had never let their Latin and Greek grow rusty.”

Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and received his first schooling from his father, who was a Presbyterian clergyman and newspaper editor.  Young Gildersleeve was reading ancient Greek fluently at the age of twelve, and at nineteen had graduated from Princeton (class of 1849) and had set off for Göttingen, Germany, where he earned a doctorate in classical philology in 1853.  He was a professor of Greek at the University of Virginia from 1856 until 1876, when he left to become the first professor of Greek at the new Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. 

From 1861 to 1864, Gildersleeve served as a staff officer with General John B. Gordon.  A staunch supporter of the Confederacy, he also contributed regular wartime editorials to the Richmond Examiner, edited by John Moncure Daniel, which have been collected by Ward W. Briggs, Jr. in Soldier and Scholar: Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and the Civil War  (University Press of Virginia 1998).  Gildersleeve’s service with the Confederate army ended in September 1864, during the Valley Campaigns, when a bullet shattered his leg. 

“I lost my pocket Homer, I lost my pistol, I lost one of my horses and, finally, I came very near losing my life,” he later wrote.  General Gordon, in his memoirs, praised Gildersleeve’s “courage and composure” under fire, and Gildersleeve claimed that the general’s praise meant more to him than any of the academic honors he had received.

At Johns Hopkins after the war, Gildersleeve founded the prestigious American Journal of Philology, wrote a Latin grammar that would become a standard for generations to come, and reflected on the Civil War in essays like “The Creed of the Old South,” which promoted the idea of the Lost Cause. (Writing about Demosthenes in the American Journal of Philology in 1906, Gildersleeve called the Greek orator “a champion of a lost cause,” and added, “some of us who have championed lost causes are not so enthusiastic about other people’s lost causes.”) In “A Southerner in the Peloponnesian War,” quoted above, Gildersleeve reflects on the American Civil War in light of the Peloponnesian War, the conflict in the fifth century BCE between the northern Greek Athenians and the southern Greek Spartans.

“States rights were not suffered to slumber,” he wrote in that essay.  “The Southerner resented Northern dictation as Pericles resented Lacedaimonian [i.e., Spartan] dictation, and our Peloponnesian War began.” 

For more on Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve online, see James Stimpert, “Hopkins History: First Greek Prof., Basil Gildersleeve,” The Johns Hopkins Gazette, September 18, 2000; and Michael Dirda, “To Understand Ourselves,” Johns Hopkins Magazine, August 27, 2009. Both “The Creed of the Old South” and “A Southerner in the Peloponnesian War” can be read on Google Books.

Louis Maurer (1832-1932) lived to be 100 years old—fulfilling one century’s worth of accomplishments. The New York Times described Maurer in his obituary as a “lithographer, painter, cabinetmaker, shell expert, wood and ivory carver, anatomist, crack shot, winner of a blue ribbon in the first New York horse show, and the first to ride a horse in Riverside Park.” Maurer, the son of a cabinetmaker, was born in Biebrich, Germany, but immigrated to the United States in 1851.  In New York, Maurer worked as a wood carver until Charles Currier, the brother of the publishing house co-owner Nathaniel Currier, discovered Maurer’s talent.  Maurer worked as a lithographer for Currier & Ives for a decade beginning in 1854.  Currier & Ives published 27 of Maurer’s lithographs in a ten-year period, including 17 cartoons of the presidential election of 1860.  Though today, Maurer’s 1860 cartoons are some of the most recognized Currier & Ives prints, he left the firm to break out of his own, and in 1872 founded his own lithographic company Heppenheimer & Maurer.  Maurer officially retired in 1884, but did not stop gaining new talents or experiences. Maurer began studying the flute at age 80, and on his 100th birthday, performed for his family and friends. The New York Times reported that Maurer was still full of vigor even at towards the end of his long life: “in 1930, at Green Pond, N.J. he stopped a mounted policeman and prevailed on the officer to let him ride the horse a while.”  Louis Maurer passed on his artist talents to his son Alfred, one of the three children he had with his wife Louisa.

To view a slideshow of a collection of Maurer’s cartoons in Flickr, click on any of the images below: