One hundred fifty years ago today William Willey (Class of 1862) wrote to his father about whether he could remain at Dickinson College and described the conditions in Carlisle as residents prepared for war. Willey lived in western Virginia and his father was serving as a delegate at the Secession convention in Richmond, Virginia. As he told his father, “it is probable that they will not suffer any of us from the South to remain more than a day or two longer.” Willey, however, was not as concerned as other southern students. “The only ones that are in danger are the students from [South Carolina],” as Willey observed. Yet Willey hoped that he could remain at Dickinson College and graduate in 1862. “I will regret it more than any circumstance of my life, should I be compelled to go,” as Willey explained. In addition, Willey’s letter included his observations of Carlisle as residents prepared for war. “The depot is crowded with women bidding adieu to their husbands and sons, and all appear to be mad with excitement,” as Willey described. Carlisle residents even “compelled [Dickinson College] to hoist the stars and stripes,” as Willey noted. You can listen to this letter by clicking on the play button below:

Listen to William Willey’s letter:

One hundred fifty years ago today Mayor George W. Brown wrote Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew and described the riot that took place the previous day in Baltimore, Maryland. The Sixth Massachusetts Regiment had left Philadelphia in the morning of April 19, 1861, but while crossing the between the President Street and the Camden railroad depots in Baltimore they were attacked in the streets by southern sympathizing rioters. The Sixth Massachusetts reached their Washington-bound train but not before they had suffered three killed and others wounded and opened fire in response, killing thirteen rioters. “Our people viewed the passage of armed troops to another State through the streets as an invasion of our soil, and could not be restrained,” as Mayor Brown explained. As “all communication between this city and…Boston by steamers [had] ceased,” Brown noted that “the bodies of the Massachusetts soldiers” had to remain in Baltimore and that they were “placed with proper funeral ceremonies in the mausoleum of Greenmount Cemetery.” Governor Andrew later replied that he was “overwhelmed with surprise that a peaceful march of American citizens over the highway to the defence of our common capital should be deemed aggressive to Baltimoreans.” You can read more about the Baltimore riot in David Detzer’s Dissonance: The Turbulent Days Between Fort Sumter and Bull Run (2006).

Listen to Mayor George Brown’s letter to Governor John Andrew:

Listen to Governor John Andrew’s reply to Mayor George Brown:

One hundred fifty years ago today James Buchanan was at his home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and wrote a letter to New York Herald editor James Gordon Bennett in which he reflected on his administration. The Herald, as Buchanan explained, had provided “able & powerful support…almost universally throughout my stormy and turbulent administration.” Yet overall Buchanan saw his administration as  a success. “Under Heaven’s blessing the administration has been eminently successful in its foreign & domestic policy,” Buchanan noted. As for “the sad events which have recently occurred” during the secession crisis, Buchanan argued that “no human wisdom could have prevented” them. While “I feel conscious that I have done my duty,” Buchanan acknowledged that it “will be for the public & posterity to judge” if he had provided “wise & peaceful direction towards the preservation or reconstruction of the union.” After the Civil War, Buchanan continued to defend his administration’s policies in Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion (1866).

News coverage of Civil War events continued to run high this past week as the nation remembers the 150^th anniversary of the beginning of the conflict. The main event this week in history was Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration as president on March 4, 1861.

William C. Kashatus of the Philadelphia Inquirer provided a thoughtful overview of Lincoln’s first inaugural entitled “Speech that Launched the Lincoln Presidency.” The address, which was just 35 minutes, reflected the “balanced rhetoric of a shrewd politician,” according to Kashatus. Although Lincoln has become known as the “Great Emancipator,” his primary goal was to ensure that the Union was perpetual and vowed not to “interfere with slavery in the Sates where it existed.” Lincoln was both “firm and compassionate” in his first speech as president, and ended with an impassioned plea to his “dissatisfied fellow countrymen:”

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angles of our nature.”

David Jackson of the USA Today reported on a proclamation by President Obama in honor of Lincoln’s first inaugural. The President said that the “rugged rail-splitter” and “humble lawyer” helped heal the bloody divisions of Civil War through “simple eloquence and humble leadership marked by profound wisdom.”

“The Oval,” the USA Today’s project tracking the Obama presidency, also offered a concise take on the first inauguration.

Patrick Teegarden, contributing to the Colorado Statesman’s sesquicentennial column, wrote an article describing how “Lincoln’s Inaugural Addresses spearheaded our journey towards equality and freedom.”

Doug Kendall, Founder and President of the Constitutional Accountability Center, authored an interesting article entitled “Remembering the Civil War in the Tea Party Age.” As he discusses the debate about whether the Confederacy fought mainly over slavery or states’ rights, he points out that the Tea Party-infused politicians have been making arguments in favor of nullification and secession, as if the Confederacy had prevailed on its’ states rights’ platform. He says that we should celebrate the Constitution of our time, not “yearn for days long past when our Constitution, and our Union, were far less perfect.”

Andrew Glass of Politico provided a brief article commemorating Lincoln’s second inaugural address. Calling it one of Lincoln’s most powerful speeches, the magnanimous address was made even more powerful by his assassination, which occurred little more than a month after he delivered it.

In related news, Robert Redford is the director of The Conspirator (pictured above), a new movie about the plot to assassinate Lincoln to be released on April 15, 2011.

One hundred fifty years ago today Abraham Lincoln became the sixteenth President of the United States. After he delivered his Inaugural Address from the central portico of the U.S. Capitol, Chief Justice Roger Taney administered the oath of office. Newspapers throughout the country published Lincoln’s speech and debated what it meant for the future of  the country.  The New York Times, which supported the Republican party, argued that Lincoln had been  “highly conciliatory towards all who have been led to entertain unjust and unfounded apprehensions” about the new administration. Other Republican papers such as the Cleveland (OH) Herald also praised the speech. “The Inaugural of President Lincoln will take its place in history as one of the most remarkable state papers of the present age,” as the Herald explained. In addition, the Herald believed  that “the Union men of the South cannot fail to be pleased” since Lincoln had indicated that “the constitutional rights of each section of the Union shall be respected and protected. ” One southern unionist newspaper, the Fayetteville (NC) Observer, noted that “there is much in Mr. Lincoln’s words to assure the South that it need anticipate no violation of its rights from his administration.” The Observer argued that President Lincoln would not “resort to ‘coercion’” because “it would be the maddest of follies.” Some southern editors, however, were accused of distorting the text of the speech in an attempt to support secessionists. While the Republican editor of the Chicago (IL) Tribune knew from experience that “a long document [rarely] is transmitted over the wires without undergoing more or less transformation,” Joseph Medill believed in this case that some editors had deliberately included errors. “Evidently the conductors of the secession press are unwilling that the people whom they have hurried into rebellion without a cause, shall have the opportunity of learning the truth,” as Medill concluded. You can read more about Lincoln’s Inaugural Address in chapter 3 of Douglas L. Wilson’s Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (2006) and chapter 20 of Michael Burlingame’s Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2008).

The 150th anniversary of President-Elect Lincoln‘s tense arrival in Washington has provoked several evocative blog posts.

Ted Widmer, director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, provides a comprehensive decscription about Lincoln’s travels for the “Disunion” blog at the New York Times. Through several posts (see especially 2/10, 2/21 and 2/22) Widmer traces the route from Springfield to Washington and illustrates the ups and downs of the emotional journey. Though Lincoln never wrote about this trip, his secretary John Nicolay conveyed the following:

“It is hard for anyone who had not had the chance of personal observation to realize the mingled excitement and apprehension, elation and fatigue which Mr. Lincoln… underwent… during this memorable trip from Springfield to Washington.”

Historian Harold Holzer also authored a vivid post for “Disunion” on the anniversary of the President-Elect’s arrival in Washington. Holzer gathers inspiration from the close parallels between Lincoln’s trip and President Obama’s recent pre-inaugural journey. However, he says, “Most Americans overlooked a critical historical irony.” President-elect Obama enjoyed record-breaking crowds on the way to his inauguration while president-elect Lincoln was met by a single friend. “Lincoln made the final leg of his journey in total secrecy,” Holzer writes, “in the dead of night, disguised to avoid detection and at one point sleeping near a woman who was not his wife.”

In a news feature by Brady Dennis re-posted within their own Civil War blog series, The Washington Post compares the nation’s capital from 1860 to city it is today.  See  “President-elect Lincoln arrived to a less-than-monumental Washington.”

Lincoln re-enactor Fritz Kelin actually took the train ride again from Springfield to Washington.  See the article “Abraham Lincoln”  here with a funny video account here.

Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest

The Sons of Confederate Veterans’ recent proposal for a Mississippi state-issued license plate in honor Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was also an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan, has become the issue of considerable national attention. This controversy has been heightened with the refusal of Governor Haley Barbour to publicly denounce the group’s proposal.

Forrest is a controversial figure in American history; praised by some as a military genius and vilified by others for leading an 1864 massacre of black Union troops at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and for his position as the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan following the war.

When he was asked about his stance, Governor Barbour replied: “I don’t go around denouncing people. That’s not going to happen. I don’t even denounce the news media.” He went on to add; “I know there’s not a chance it’ll become law.”

On Penn State’s blog of the Civil War Era, Sean Trainor, weighed in with a passionate response. “This should not be, and it cannot be,” he said, “We cannot allow [the] approval… of remembering so odious, so miserable, so unforgivable a figure as Nathan Bedford Forrest.” Trainor characterizes Forrest as a man who earned his fortune in slave trade, who led a massacre of surrendered African-American troops, and the person who ended his “illustrious personal history” as the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

He went on to say: “Forrest’s memory is… offensive… to all Americans. No amount of military ‘genius,’ no feat or maneuver on a battlefield near or far will make Forrest anything more than what he was: a grim manifestation of America’s most hateful legacy and the author of countless sorrows.”

Bloggers who defend the Sons of Confederate Veterans have shared their opinions in defense of the proposal. In a blog posted on “The Confederate American” website entitled “Nathan Bedford Forrest: Civil Rights Pioneer,” supporters express the belief that Forrest’s name has been unjustly tarnished by the evolving impressions of the Ku Klux Klan and false accusations about his actual involvement.

“As usual, the NAACP and the news media are attempting to shape opinions rather than impartially relay facts.” These supporters state that Forrest distanced himself from the Klan once it became a purely racial organization, and went on to embrace a “radical” doctrine that was “light years” ahead of other measures of the day, even in the North. They support this with quotes from a speech that Forrest is said to have made to a prominent civil rights group at the time.

“The good name of General Nathan Bedford Forrest should not be allowed to be falsely demeaned by those with a leftist ‘politically correct’ agenda. On the contrary, he must be remembered as a civil rights pioneer who tried his best to head off the over 100 years of racial strife that followed the War Between the States.”

One hundred fifty years ago today the Charleston (SC) Mercury published part of New York City Mayor Fernando Wood’s speech that he gave during President-Elect Abraham Lincoln’s visit in late February 1861. Lincoln had left his home in Springfield, Illinois on February 11 for Washington DC. On the way he stopped at a number of cities, including Albany, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. While Lincoln arrived in New York City with his wife on February 19, he did not meet with Mayor Wood until the afternoon of February 20. The Charleston (SC) Mercury described “Mayor Wood’s address of welcome to the Abolition President” as “too good to be lost.” As Lincoln entered “office with… a disconnected and hostile people to reconcile,” Wood told the President-Elect that “it will require a high patriotism and an elevated comprehension of the whole country and its varied interests, opinions and prejudices to so conduct public affairs as to bring it back again to its former harmonious, consolidated and prosperous condition.” In addition, Wood warned that “[New York’s] material interests are paralyzed” and “her commercial greatness is endangered.” Yet Wood also supported southern Democrats and he wanted the crisis to be resolved through compromise. Wood noted that he expected Lincoln to use “peaceful and conciliatory means” to ensure the “restoration of fraternal relations between the States.” Lincoln responded the same day to Wood’s remarks, noting that “there is nothing that can ever bring me willingly to consent to the destruction of this Union.” The following day Lincoln left for Trenton, New Jersey. You can read more about President-Elect Lincoln’s journey from Springfield to Washington, DC in Harold Holzer’s Lincoln: President-Elect (2008).

Noted blogger (and teacher) Kevin Levin recently had a feisty post about Abraham Lincoln on the president’s 202 birthday that complained about a BBC plug for yet another a forthcoming Lincoln documentary.    Quoting from the press materials –“150 years after the war his reputation is being re-assessed, as historians begin to uncover the dark side of his life and politics” — Levin responds, in mock disgust, “Give me a break.”  He points out that Henry Gates did the same sort of video a few years earlier and “did a much better job.” The next day in his “Civil War Memory” blog, Levin asked the provocative question:  “Should Descendants of Confederate Soldiers Celebrate Lincoln’s Birthday?” His answer … yes.

Ted Widmer provides an elegant account of Lincoln’s actual 52d birthday on February 12, 1861 in the New York Times blog “Disunion.”  President-Elect Lincoln began the day in Indianapolis and ended up in Cincinnati where he received “a magnificent ovation.”  Widmer calls it a “good day,” before noting poignantly that on that same day, Lincoln friend and political advisor Norman B. Judd received a letter from detective Allan Pinkerton warning  that there was “a plot on foot to assassinate Mr. Lincoln” in Baltimore.

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum has a relatively new blog about Lincoln and his times called, “From Out of the Top Hat,” and while they somehow skipped an entry on Lincoln’s birthday (huh?), scholar / bloggers Richard Wrightman Fox and Tom Schwartz had two excellent posts this past week about Lincoln’s “boyishness” and a little known sketch from the pre-inaugural train ride.

We were proud here at House Divided Project on Thursday when another image from that ride appeared in the Washington Post‘s Civil War blog series.  They used a vivid Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper image of Lincoln meeting New York politicos on February 20, 1861 courtesy of our research engine.

On a less scholarly note, many blogs devoted to Hollywood noted this past week that actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead (pictured above) has signed on to play Mary Lincoln in the forthcoming feature film, “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.”  No doubt, Todd family descendants are pleased.  Not sure how Lincoln himself would have responded.

News coverage of the Civil War anniversary spiked this week as various groups commemorated 150 years since Jefferson Davis’s swearing-in as Provisional President of the Confederacy on February 18, 1861.  USA Today offered a thoughtful overview of the tensions underlying the impending anniversaries in a piece entitled, “Across the South, the Civil War in an Enduring Conflict,” February 17, 2011.  After noting that Davis’s parade route in Montgomery, Alabama in 1861 was also near the spot where Rosa Parks refused to accept segregated bus seating in 1955 and thus helped spark the modern-day civil rights movement, USA Today correspondent Rick Hampson calls the area, “the Jerusalem of Southern memory.”  Hampson then solicited a wide range of provocative comments from scholars such as David Blight and James Loewen and activists such as Mark Potok from the Southern Poverty Law Center and Tom Strain from the Sons of Confederate Veterans before reaching the startling conclusion that, “In some ways, Americans are more divided by the war on its 150th anniversary than they were on its 100th in 1961.”

Bob Martin, editor of the Montgomery Independent, provided a commentary on this division in a column that was published online by a local newspaper in Alabama.  In the column, “We can’t change history, but can attitudes,” Martin argues against what he calls attempts in the South to ignore the painful conflict, pointing out, “those who want to honor the history of their ancestors who served their country from 1861-65 are due the same respect as those in the union states who wish to do likewise.”

From the other side of the country, the Colorado Statesman, a weekly non-partisan newspaper, launched a sesquicentennial column this week by amateur historian Patrick Teegarden (and self-described “expatriate of the Border State of Maryland”).  Teegarden also commented on the ongoing divisions over commemoration and announced his plans to sketch out the history of the conflict on a regular basis.

The BBC provided their own summary of this unfolding debate in an online feature from February 18, “Civil War: Southerners Remember Confederate President,” that quotes historians such as Eric Foner and Joshua Rothman, analyzing the continuing arguments over slavery and its role in causing the war.

On a local level, the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg celebrated its 10th anniversary on Wednesday evening, February 16.  Former mayor Steve Reed received an award from The Pickett Society for his “devotion to historical correctness” and the Patriot News reported that the “media came loaded with questions.”  The focus, however, was not on the historical Civil War, but rather on the modern-day conflict that has ripped Harrisburg apart during the previous year as the city teeters near bankruptcy.  Reed refused to comment on the struggles of current mayor Linda Thompson, trying his best to steer the attention to the wonderful museum which he helped found.