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.

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.

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.

A recent USA Today article provides a good overview of some of the best new Lincoln books upcoming in the run up to the bicentennial of his birth in 2009.   The article features information about James McPherson’s new work, Tried by War, a study of Lincoln as Commander-In-Chief.  Along the way, the story provides some interesting new stories from McPherson about his own career and how he has worked over the years with his wife Patricia or Pat on various historical projects. 

Today I was reading over the House Divided blog, and I came across the Civil War tag. This tag provoked me to search the New York Times website for any interesting articles pertaining to the subject. I landed on a recent article from October 17th entitled, “Two Generals, Still Manuevering”. The article focused on the two prominent generals of the Civil War: Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant.

The exhibit entitled, “Grant and Lee in War and Peace,” has raised skepticism about how Grant and Lee will be depicted in comparison to each other. In this famous picture on the right by Leon Gerome Ferris, General Lee is surrendering to Grant, but this is not evident from just looking at the picture. It will be interesting to see if the new exhibit present’s Lee in the same way- it seems to be a common theme for this scene’s illustration these days.

The New York Times reports that some noted scholars such such as Milton Sernett and Kate Larson have questions about the authenticity of a moving quotation from Harriet Tubman used by Hillary Clinton in her recent speech to the Democratic National Convention.

“If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there’s shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.”

It turns out that although many authors and even the Harriet Tubman House in Auburn, NY have used this passage from Tubman, both Sernett and Larson, leading Tubman scholars, doubt its veracity and trace its origins to a twentieth-century children’s book.  A spokesman for Senator Clinton says that from now on she will only use the passage in paraphrase.

As all the major media outlets have not reported this story, I thought I would mention it here. On Tuesday (July 29, 2008) the House of Representatives approved a resolution that apologized for slavery. This resolution (H. Res. 194) notes that “the system of slavery and the visceral racism against persons of African descent upon which it depended became entrenched in the Nation’s social fabric.” The Government Printing Office has the full text available as a pdf. You can also find it by searching the Library of Congress website. For more, see this Associated Press report.

Author Fergus Bordewich’s “Bound for Canaan” traces the abolition movement from 1790 to the eve of the Civil War, primarily through the Underground Railroad. Bordewich writes that the Underground Railroad “…occupies a romantic place in the American imagination that is shared by only a few episodes in the nation’s history: the Lewis and Clark expedition, for instance, the California Gold Rush, the Indian wars, and a handful of others.” (Bound for Canaan, 3) And perhaps because of its position in the American consciousness, the memory of the Underground Railroad, like so many other prominent historical events, is checkered with truths and untruths. Was the Underground Railroad a consistently clandestine operation? Are clever codes and hiding places all there is to amaze the modern student of the Underground Railroad? Indeed, secrecy, codes, and hiding places all had their part in the Underground Railroad, but a concentration on these has served to give birth to myths clouding the truth of the movement.

Bordewich addresses the issues of myth and reality in the Underground Railroad in “Bound for Canaan,” but for a more succinct discussion of the issue, one can turn to the author’s blog. A post from July of 2005 examines the truth of the Underground Railroad in accessible, informative prose, and serves as a fine introduction and springboard for further investigation of the issue. Certainly worth reading.

The Underground Railroad: Myth & Reality

The issue of civil liberties during wartime is as crucial today as it was during the Civil War. The detention of suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay prison has led to endless debate and confusing equivocation regarding the rights of detainees and civil liberties during war time. The confusion is nothing new. Curbing civil liberties during war time is something the United States experienced not only in the Civil War, but also in World Wars One and Two. Is the introduction of internal securities measures curbing civil liberties ever justified? Is it necessary? Civil War historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Mark Neely took some time to answer these questions for the House Divided project at our June 13th workshop.

Mark Neely on Civil Liberties

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative political think-tank, examines Lincoln’s restrictions of civil liberties during the War. The Hon. Frank J. Williams uses his article to examine also the restriction of civil liberties enacted by the Bush Administration as a part of the War on Terror. Williams acknowledges the unique situation of the rebellion faced by the Federal government during the 1860s, and draws a parallel between the uniqueness of that era and that of our current war.

Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties in Wartime

Galesburg, Illinois has decided to declare this the “Year of Lincoln” in recognition of both the 150th anniversary of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. An article was released today from Knox College in Galesburg, home of the 5th Lincoln-Douglas debate. The article discusses and describes many of the events that the historic city plans to present throughout the year.