New Letters and Papers of Lincoln (original) (raw)
At the start of the Civil War Worcester was a prospering city growing in population and leading the way with manufacturing goods, both importing and exporting. It took good hardworking and dedicated people working together for the city to become what it was. During this time too, Worcester did house some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the Commonwealth, one of those families being the Lincolns. The focus of my research is on Levi Lincoln Jr. and his family, and the roles they played during the Civil War. At the onset of the Civil War, Levi Lincoln Jr. was nearing the end of his life. However, this did not stop him from doing everything he could to contribute in the effort of keeping the Union whole. Retired from public service for almost twenty-years, Lincoln made every effort to speak at engagements on the need to ensure the Union survived. And if failing health prohibited him from speaking, he made sure his voice was heard through letters that would be read to the public. The values he instilled in his children and grandchildren are seen too, as all served in the military, and most were dedicated to public service as well. Lincoln had one son and two grandsons who fought in the Civil War, one grandson marched through Baltimore in 1861 at the onset of the war. Levi Lincoln Jr. Died in 1868, three years after the Civil War came to an end, he had lived long enough to see the Union succeed, and fellow Americans reunite. The Lincoln’s of Worcester, as can be seen with this research played a very active role in the Civil War, and much dedication should be awarded to this family for their service and roles with saving the Union. The primary sources used for this paper were the Worcester Historical Museum, American Antiquarian Society, Massachusetts Historical Society, along with the aid of the digital collection through the Library of Congress, and scholarly articles. It was clear through my research of the Lincoln family and their love for the United States, the abolishment of slavery along with upholding the laws, and their dedication to public service.
Levi Lincoln, Jr., Stephen Salisbury II, and the Politics of Business
Not yet a city until 1848, Worcester experienced a growth spurt, not only in population but industry as well. The industrial period of the mid-nineteenth century is where we see Worcester placed on the map of a growing and prosperous hub of exporting manufactured goods. However, this did not happen overnight, and it took many people to make this happen. The focus of my research was on two people who helped in the growth of Worcester and how it became one of the leading exporters of manufactured goods in the nation, Levi Lincoln, Jr. and Stephen Salisbury, II. Both Lincoln and Salisbury were involved in politics, very wealthy and two of the most influential people in the community. My research also focused on how their influence and connections with their status may have aided in their own personal wealth, too. The focus of these two men was their involvement with the creation of the Blackstone Canal and the Railroads. The primary sources used to help aid me in my research were through the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester Historical Museum, and the Massachusetts Historical Society, along with the aid of the digital collection through the Library of Congress, and scholarly articles. Some of the connections with the influence these two men had over Worcester were quite evident in my research.
2014
In 1860, most Americans agreed that the West, with its abundant lands and resources, would secure prosperity and freedom for years to come. But whether wage labor or slavery, industry or agriculture, or some amalgam in between was to embody the new, modern America remained unresolved. At the heart of the Republican Party's imperial design stood Chicago. The city, fueled by a decade of development in rails and commerce, epitomized a nation of dramatic growth, wage labor, and interconnected markets. A small town of about 30,000 in 1850, Chicago more than tripled its population in the next ten years. With a horsecar line, public sewer system, and university, the city had begun to attract women and men, such as George Pullman, who looked to capitalize on the region's growth. They filled the gas-lit western metropolis with an infectious can-do spirit, one that the Republican Party no doubt hoped to emulate when it chose Chicago for a national convention. As Republican delegates and supporters arrived in May 1860, they gathered in the Wigwam, a building on Market and Lake Streets (today the southeast corner of Lake and Wacker). The party backed free homesteads, tariff reform, and internal improvements-they were adamant that slavery remain confined to states where it already existed. Such policies, they believed, were the foundation of American progress.
Abraham Lincoln: The Observations of John G. Nicolay and John Hay
2007
In this slim collection a distinguished editor and biographer presents eleven brief excerpts from the ten-volume Abraham Lincoln: A History, by his devoted secretaries John G. Nicolay and John Hay. The introduction, Nicolay and Hay: Court Historians, appeared in the Winter 1998 Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. Readers of that masterful summary may have no need of this book. Burlingame displays his usual sensitivity to male relationships, comparing the affection between Lincoln and Hay to that between George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, though he errs in making Hay, an Ivy League snob, nineteen years younger than his boss; he was actually the junior by twenty-nine years. Non-specialists are apt to be misled by much of the content of the fewer than 65 pages Burlingame has cherry picked from the mammoth biography. Partly serialized in the Century Magazine, 1886-1890, and published as books in the latter year, few today, even among Lincoln specialists, have read the entire 4,709 pages. Scholarly assessments changed almost completely from the late 1880s, when James Ford Rhodes praised it, to 1939 when Allan Nevins condemned it. Burlingame argues that Carl Sandburg could not have begun his own life without it. Other biographers had to rely on it until the opening of the Lincoln papers in 1947, followed two years later by the publication of Hay's diary and Nicolay's memos of presidential conversations. Now, except for hardcore Lincoln idolaters, including the current clique of court historians, most readers will find even the brief excerpts from this panegyric hard to stomach. The contrast between Burlingame's scholarship and Nicolay and Hay's hagiography is often jarring.
Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx in Dialogue
2017
Allan Kulikoff's slender book designed for undergraduate college courses draws on selected writings of Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx to construct a transAtlantic dialogue on various aspects of mid-nineteenth-century labor, class, and politics. Kulikoff's concise introduction, "The Corporate Lawyer and the Revolutionary," plus head notes to the documents, suggest how the great republican and the great communist agreed and differed on subjects central to the Civil War's bigger meaning. Although Lincoln and Marx never met, the tumult of their times necessarily brought them together intellectually.
Oral History Review, 2007
This article narrates the role of oral testimony in the field of Abraham Lincoln studies from 1865 through the 1930s. Collected in the form of letters, affidavits, and face-to-face interviews, this mounting body of "eyewitness evidence" dominated the discourse for two generations and reflective, public practice culminated in the organization of a "Lincoln Inquiry" in the Midwest during the 1920s and 1930s. For a time, practitioners successfully defended themselves against increasing positivist assaults on the credibility of oral testimony. Their interests and efforts resonate with later oral history practice and theory about method, authorship, performance, and memory, and their story highlights the contingency inherent in the development of oral historical practice in America.