Conference smurf::civil_war

    With malice toward none; 
    With charity for all;
    With firmness in the right,
     as God gives us to see the right,
    Let us strive on to finish
     the work we are in;
    To bind up the nation's wounds;
    To care for him who shall have
     borne the battle,
    And for his widow,
    And his orphan--
    To do all which may achieve and
     cherish a just and lasting peace
     among ourselves,
    And with all nations.


    			Abraham Lincoln
    			Washington, D.C.
    			From his Second Inaugural Address
    			March 4, 1865

Bo, do you have Sandburg's bio on Lincoln?  That may have some of the 
speeches.

Randy

    No, I haven't seen Sandberg's bio of Lincoln.  I've only been following
    the Civil War era for a couple of years, since I read the McPherson
    book.
    
    Bo

I am fortunate to have been able to visit the Lincoln Memorial several
times, and find it ver emotional to stand and read his speeches carved on
walls.  It is truly one of America's holy places, if any such places exist.

The last time I visited was with my wife Ann and my daughter Emily, who was
then eight.  Emily must have sensed the feelings that I held for this
place, as she insisted on standing with me and reading both speeches aloud.
I knelt beside her as she read the Gettysburg address, and I was choked with
emotions.  I was also aware of the other groups of people nearby who
stopped their conversations, and turned to listen as Emily struggled through
the whole speech.  It was a great moment, both powerful and very fragile.
I am still overwhelmed when I think about it.

Ben

If you ever get to SW Indiana, be sure to visit the Lincoln Boyhood National 
Memorial, at Lincoln City.  Take the Dale exit off I-64.

At the site are a memorial to Lincoln, the grave of his mother, Nancy Hanks
Lincoln, and a reconstruction of their cabin.  Nearby Lincoln State Park has
a small cemetery with the graves of related families, such as the Grigsbys.
I believe this is the cemetery where Sarah Lincoln is buried (Mrs. Aaron
Grigsby).

I believe the memorial has some of his speeches engraved in the walls, although
it has been some 30 years since I was last there.

Randy

    There is a book I've seen in bookstores that has Lincoln's key speeches and
    writings. It's a fairly large-size trade paperback that goes for around
    $12. If I can locate it, I'll post the title and editor's name.
    
    -- Bill

    
    	While conducting some Washington ladies on a tour of an Army
    hospital, Abraham Lincoln stopped to speak with a soldier who had
    been shot in a rather, er, 'delicate' spot. Later, one of the ladies
    insisted on pressing the president to reveal to her just where it was
    that the young man had recieved his wound. Lincoln demurred, but she
    kept after him until finally, in exasperation, he turned to her and
    said, "Madam, suffice it to say that ball that injured him would not
    have struck you!"
    
    						The Alabama Slammer

    I have a book published around the turn of the century called LINCOLN
    AND THE SLEEPING CENTINAL, about a young Union soldier who fell asleep
    on guard duty and was to be executed. Lincoln made a personal visit and
    pardoned him.
    
    Excellent reading and insight on the man.

    
    	There was an Abraham Lincoln on each side in the war. 
    The President, and a Confederate, Private Abraham Lincoln of
    Company F, 1st Virginia Cavarly, from Jefferson County. He was
    reported as a deserter in 1864, so that the North ended up with both.
    
    						The Alabama Slammer

Thre was a Jeff Davis on both sides, too.  The northern Davis was a 
general in -- damn this memory fade -- someone's corps.

-d

    		Oh, Dem Bones,
    			Dem Dry Bones.
    					By Andrea Abolins
    		written without permission from Civil War Times Illustrated
    
    	The National Museum of Health and Medicine, Washington, D.C., holds
    among its array of clinical odddities the autopsy remnants of slain
    Union President Abraham Lincoln. The usual specimens, including bone
    fragments, hair strands and the bloodstained cuffs of a surgeon's
    smock, have remained virtually undisturbed since their 1865
    introduction into the former Army Medical Museum's collection. Now more
    than 125 years later, the nation's medical archive is considering a
    controversial proposal to perform DNA tests on the 16th president's
    remains.
    	Submitted earlier this year by National Academy of Sciences member
    Dr. Darwin Prockop, the unsolicited proposal seeks to determine if
    Lincoln suffered from the generic disorder Marfan's syndrome. Prockop,
    chairman of the Jefferson Institute of Molecular Medicine, Philadelphia
    and an expert on hereditary diseases of the connective tissues, has
    refined a very powerful DNA test designed to identify such mutations.
    If he receives permission to initiate the test he additionally hopes to
    undertake the establishment of a library of Lincoln's genes for future
    research possibilities.
    	One of the medical museum's concerns over the project stems from
    the fact the DNA testing cannot be performed without the destroying a
    small amount of the specimen.
    	According to Dick Levinson, the museum's community relations
    specialist, the institution's federal mandate calls for its contents to
    be made available for biomedical research. At the same time, as a 
    collecting agency, it is required to preserve items of medical
    significance.
    	Though only a few milligrams of sample material would be destroyed,
    the possible loss raises questions on ow to properly balance the
    museum's obligations to both science and history.
    	Another problem contemplated by the museum is the ethical issues
    surrounding genetic tests and DNA cloning. Particularly, the questions
    of Lincoln's right to privacy and his own attitude about the disclosure
    of information on his personal health worry the museum as it considers
    Prockop's plan. 
    	In order to address these concerns, the museum has established a
    program to review the proposal. An initial group of nine experts in the
    scientific, historical and legal fields met in May to consider the
    issues. Following two days of deliberations, the panel, headed by Dr.
    Victor McKusick, a professor of medical genetics at Johns Hopkins
    University, Baltimore, suggested the Prockop proposition meets ethical
    guidelines and gave the museum a "qualified green light" to consider
    it further.
    	In a May 10 press release, Dr. Marc S. Micozzi, director of the 
    museum, said his interpretation of the panel's recommendation signaled
    a "flashing yellow light, meaning proceed with caution." The museum
    intends to further explore the ethical issues and technical feasibility
    of DNA testing, and expects no final decision to be reached until at
    least 1992.
    	Sufferers of Marfan's syndrome are characterized by their tall,
    gaunt appearence. The syndrome weakens the heart's aorta vessel,
    frequently causing its carriers to die during strenuous activity. If
    the DNA test finds President Lincoln was indeed affected by Marfan's
    syndrome, it may answer long-standing questions about his health posed
    by historians and doctors, as well as create other new questions
    regarding the potential length of his life had he not been
    assassinated.
    	A positive finding also may offer other Marfan's victims
    inspiration, considering Lincoln's place of high regard in history. It
    is estimated more than 25,000 Americans have the disease.
    	If Lincoln were still alive today, he might be amused by the 
    controversy surronding his health and the genetic testing. The doctors
    who performed his autopsy were first employed by Lincoln and his
    surgeon general, William Hammond, to study bone fragments, diseased
    organs and other medical remains to determine the causes behind
    maladies plaguing Union soldiers. The museum caring for Lincoln's
    autopsy remains originally served as the research center for those
    doctors.
    	Today, the National Museum of Health and Medicine, a body of the
    Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, is a private/public cooperative
    effort chaired by former Surgeon General C. Everett Coop. Located at
    the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, it retains in its anatomical
    collection more than 2,500 identified remains of Civil War soldiers.
    
    	Andrea Abolins is the editorial assistant at CWTI.
    
    					The Alabama Slammer
     

    Maybe this should move to a "Abraham Lincoln - his autopsy" topic...
    
    Seems to me little ethics were applied when the frozen corpses
    of those two sailors were exhumed except ensuring the tundra was
    put back in its original condition, so is it because this time
    it is an ex-president's remains?
    
    I don't see the great scientific advantage of proving Lincoln had
    that condition, nor do I see the effort/expense being worth telling
    today's sufferers, "Well, Lincoln had it, and he became president."
    I'd rather see them dig up Booth's grave to find out if he's really
    in it (tough 'though that may be).
    
    Are we starting to see a trend of "time autopsies" on the famous &
    near-famous?  
    
    							Don
    
    
    

    
    	Lincoln was the sixteenth American President, and the first to wear
    a beard. He set so enduring a precedent that, of the next nine men 
    elected to the office after him, only William McKinley was
    clean-shaven.
    	The Presidential candidate had apparently never given a thought to
    growing whiskers until, about October 18, 1860, he had a letter from a
    eleven-year-old Grace Bedell of Westfield, New York, proposing that he
    give up shaving:
    	"I have got four brothers and part of them will vote for you any
    way and if you will let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest
    of them to vote for you; you would look a great deal better for your
    face is so thin....All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease
    their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President."
    	Lincoln replied the next day:
    	"....As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think
    people would call it a piece of silly affection if I were to begin it
    now?"
    	Withn a few weeks Lincoln appeared unshaven, and stubble sprouted
    on his long chin. On November 26 he had his first bearded photograph
    made-a thin straggling line of dark hair along his jaws. On January 26,
    when he sat for his next photograph, the beard was still scraggly, and
    only by February 9, just before he left Springfield for Washington, had
    his beard grown into the familiar appendage on the most famous face in
    American history.
    	Lincoln's route from Illinois to Washington was long and tortuous.
    He was two weeks on the way, halting at whistle stops to be seen by
    curious people who stared at him as a symbol of a new, strange and
    dangerous time.
    	One of stops was at Westfield, New York, and here Lincoln paused in
    his speech:
    	"During my campaign I had a little correspondent from your town.
    She kindly admonished me to let my whiskers grow, and since I've taken
    her advice, I would like to see her. Is she here? Is Grace Bedell
    here?"
    	A little girl was handed up through the crowd, and Lincoln kissed
    her while people applauded. Busy newspaper correspondents hurried the
    story away before the train left the station.
    	Lincoln did not please all who saw him in the new guise. Not long
    after, when the President was inaugurated in Washington, his former law
    partner, William H. Herndon, kept a bright-eyed watch:
    	"He was raising.... a crop of whiskers of the blacking-brush
    variety, coarse, stiff and ungraceful; and in so doing he spoiled a
    face which, though never handsome, had in its original state a
    peculiar powere and pathos."
    
    						The Alabama Slammer
     
    	
    	

    re: 15.7
    
    
    	Most U.S. Presidents have had their public addresses assembled
    for distribution as public information at the end of their terms.
    If you go to a U.S. Government Documents Depository, I am sure that
    they would have it.  The Government Printing Office (GPO) generates
    it; just ask the librarian.  There are usually several volumes,
    kept chronologically, with an additional Index Volume that cross
    references by title/topic.
    	One drawback--I seriously doubt whether they will let it walk
    out of the library.  The practice was begun by Truman, but the GPO
    has since compiled the documents of preceding presidents.
    	Hope this helps!
    
     2
    R

    re .1
    the writer edits the 2 min speech at "..altogether fitting and proper
    that we should do this."
    The next couple lines are very important--indeed there is no
    extraneous language in the speech at all. It continues;
    
    "But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we
    cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled
    here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.
    The world will little note..." and continue as .1.
    
    This is very important, since Linclon in his masterful use of language,
    changes what was to be a Dedication of a Cemetary into the Dedication
    of a People. This speech has had an important impact on America *as a
    people* because whoever you are, whatever *group* you belong to, the
    Gettysburg Address can inspire one to pursue justice for all persons.
    
    Glenn Cook

    This is the complete text of the Gettysburg address.  The original note
    in this reply was entered by OAXCEL::KAUFMANN, but it omitted the text
    from "But in a larger sense" to the end of that paragraph.  I've edited
    it all together in response to 15.16, from USCTR1::GCOOK, whose brief
    comments therein are very much worth reading.
    
    -dick
    
    ========================================================================
    
    Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
    continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
    proposition that all men are created equal.

    Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
    or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.  We are
    met on a great battlefield of that war.  We have come to dedicate a
    portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave
    their lives that that nation might live.  It is altogether fitting and
    proper that we should do this.  But in a larger sense, we cannot
    dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.  The
    brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far
    above our poor power to add or detract.
    
    The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it
    can never forget what they did here.  It is for us, the living, rather,
    to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here
    have thus far so nobly advanced.  It is rather for us to be here
    dedicated to the great task remaining before us--
  
    that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause
    for which they gave the last full measure of devotion;
     
    that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in
    vain;
     
    that this nation, under God, shall have a  new birth of freedom;

    And that government of the people, by the people, and for the people,
    shall not perish from the earth.

    				Abraham Lincoln
    				Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
    				November 18, 1863

    RE: Booth's grave
    
    Didn't they sink his body in the Potomac or some river somewhere?
    
    RE:  the Soldier that was protecting Lincoln
    
    I thought Paul Harvey told me that the guy who was supposed to be
    guarding Abe was a habitual offender of most work poliices and a 
    drunk, and he was eventually given a job that even he couldn't screw
    

    RE .17:
    
    	I'm not sure who you mean by "the soldier who was protecting
    Lincoln".  Lincoln was accompanied to Ford's Theater by Major Rathbone
    (and his wife or fiancee, I forget which); Rathbone was not a guard,
    just a guest - invited when General & Mrs. Grant declined.  Rathbone
    received a slash on the arm from Booth's knife.
    
    	There _was_ a hired bodyguard for Lincoln, who was supposed to be
    sitting outside the door of the box, but he was a civilian, not a
    soldier.  A vague memory says he was an ex-policeman, but that could
    easily be wrong.  He was not, however, very dedicated, since he was
    across the street having a drink when Booth came up to the box.
    
    	The really tragic "might-have-been" here is that if Grant _had_
    accepted the invitation, he probably _would_ have had soldiers (and
    good ones) acting as _his_ bodyguard; they might have been more of an
    obstacle for Booth.
    
    MikeR