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.

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.

Yesterday at a teacher training workshop at the Lincoln Cottage in Washington, I discussed Abraham Lincoln’s use of war powers and his approach to civil liberties with a group of K-12 colleagues from the DC and northern Virginia area. We had an excellent exchange at a forum hosted by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and funded by the NEH. They still have spaces available for qualified teachers who would like to participate. The program offers a monthly series of workshops on topics related to teaching Lincoln and his legacy. Teachers who prepare related lesson plans receive stipends. For more information, contact Scott Ackerman at Scott_Ackerman@nthp.org. Also, if you’re interested in the question of Lincoln’s approach to civil liberties, we have posted an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mark Neely in the House Divided video channel that offers a thoughtful assessment of Lincoln’s civil liberties record.

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.