Tag Archives: Abraham Lincoln’s Office

A Small Tribute to a Short Speech

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1000 Voices at Olean High School Photo Credit: Mrs. Skrobacz

1000 Voices at Olean High School
Photo Credit: Mrs. Skrobacz

Our local high school put on a special program to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Gettyburg address.  A retired teacher put together the presentation which included videos, re-enactors from local regiments, the Bucktails and 154th NY, and period music.  I was invited to give a five to ten minute presentation.  The highlight of my presentation was my daughter’s introduction.  She is a senior and so very poised in front of a microphone.  Anyway with no further a-do here is my presentation:

Given the mythic proportion that Lincoln has achieved, there is a persistent notion that the Gettysburg Address was written on the back of an envelope by Abraham Lincoln as he made his way by train to Gettysburg.

There are several reasons to doubt this.

First off, Lincoln’s presence at Gettysburg was an afterthought. He actually had to petition the organizers of the cemetery dedication to include him in the dedication ceremony. The very fact that Lincoln called his effort an “address” indicates that he’d prepared it, not for a general delivery but for a specific occasion and a select audience.

Lincoln recognized that this gathering was an opportunity to bring the country “up to speed” –as we would put it–on the meaning and worth of the sacrifice these Union soldiers had made and all the others were making. He wanted to remind the nation that while this war was being fought at an enormous cost in lives and treasure, it was being fought for an immeasurably valuable prize. Lincoln would not take an opportunity like this lightly and he would traditionally prepare very carefully for such an event.

Secondly, Lincoln liked to think on his feet. Literally. All his life, he walked while he thought and he thought while he walked. He walked back and forth in his White House office when he was puzzling out or preparing something. That’s a little difficult on a moving train.

He also had a habit of reading things out loud –whether he was reading someone else’s writing –a funny story or a newspaper article–or was composing a letter, or a speech or a proclamation.  The cadence, the content, the impact of what he was working on seemed much clearer when he heard it spoken aloud.

Lincoln was always extremely unwilling to speak off-the-cuff. The night he arrived at Gettysburg a crowd gathered outside the house he was visiting. The crowd called for a speech and Lincoln resolutely refused to say anything but an extended version of “Good evening.” He didn’t want, he said, to say anything foolish.

This last concern was particularly important because Lincoln’s only direct access to his fellow countrymen was through the written word. So each word he spoke or wrote for the record had to be very carefully crafted. There was no radio. No television. Lincoln hardly ever left the White House. This trip to Gettysburg was one of the longest trips out of Washington that he took during his whole Presidency. Lincoln spent probably 95% of his presidency in his White House office. The country came to him. Anybody willing to wait long enough would have the chance to briefly meet and speak with Abraham Lincoln.

When Lincoln spoke for the record, reporters took his words down more or less accurately in short hand. His words appeared in the newspapers in black and white for his friends and enemies to read. It was the president’s standard forum when he wanted to “speak” to the country. Lincoln was by profession a lawyer. So he designed his speeches as a lawyer would, using precise language to develop a compelling argument.

But Lincoln also possessed the soul of a poet. He had, in fact, written some actual poetry –all of it terrible, dreary and gloomy –really bad – but when his poetic inclination was tempered by his need for lawyerly precision, the results were some of the most remarkable and carefully prepared political speeches ever delivered. The only ad-lib, the only improvised words in the Gettysburg Address, were the words “under God” in the phrase “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom…”  Lincoln was an “agnostic” meaning he was someone who did not deny the existence of God but didn’t acknowledge the existence of God either.  Apparently, somewhere between Fort Sumter and November 19, 1863 – as the war took a turn for the better with major Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, God was beginning to look pretty good.   

Lincoln had read widely and his writings had obvious influences: the Bible for sure –he could quote relevant passages from the Bible to suit almost any occasion. He was an aficionado of Shakespeare…he read the plays and attended performances of them regularly in Washington… he admired and studied classic political orators Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. One less noted but very obvious influence on Lincoln was the telegraph. The President spent an inordinate amount of time at the telegraph office, which was situated a brisk walk from the White House. It was his sanctuary from the cares and activities of the White House and it was also the nerve center of the war effort. Lincoln telegraphed constantly to his commanders in the field. These telegrams had to be short, exact and put in terms that could not be misunderstood. Lincoln developed an affinity for the blunt “shorthand” communication of the telegraph. The influence of this “compressed” language helps account for the brevity of the Gettysburg address.

The actual physical presentation of this address is interesting to visualize. Lincoln sat with dozens of local and national dignitaries on a raised platform on a breezy hillside in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. November 19th can be cold and blustery. A large crowd, thousands of people, filled acres of space to listen to noted lecturer Edward Everett, the featured speaker, give a two hour speech –which he had memorized. His talk encompassed the Gettysburg battle in some detail and he expounded on the significance of the battle and the meaning of the war.

Then Lincoln stood up and gave his two-minute address, which he read. There were no microphones. There was no amplification. Lincoln had a rather high-pitched voice but it was a voice that carried wonderfully. So the original delivery of the Gettysburg Address was not some solemn, sonorous presentation but a belted out rendition by an expert stump-speaking political pro, one of whose principal qualifications for office in pre-electronics 19th century America was a voice that carried to the farthest person back in an enormous crowd in a large open field while the wind was blowing. What distinguished Lincoln in this specialized field of orators and politicians was that the short hand reporters dispatched to document his speeches would stand listening, completely enthralled, and forget to write down what he said.

Lincoln sat down-there was prolonged applause–yet he sensed that the speech had not gone down well. “That speech didn’t scour,” was the phrase he used, meaning the speech hadn’t carried through smoothly, as a plow would. He didn’t know it at the time but he was probably feeling the effects of the mild case a small pox that he developed soon after returning to Washington. Some newspapers ridiculed his effort but Edward Everett, an old political adversary of the President, wrote to him that Lincoln’s two minute effort had come closer to the “central idea of the occasion” than Everett had in his two hours.  

In evaluating Lincoln’s stature on the stage of history – and he stands way, way up there – the Gettysburg Address is certainly important on his resume. If there can be any question of his genius, it’s merely necessary to ask who else on earth could come up with a phrase that became one of the most famous passages in the English language and that will be remembered so long as the language is spoken. What did he come up with when all he was trying to say was “87 years ago?”  Four score and seven years ago.

This is not “train ride, back of an envelope material.”

Civil War Questions with High School Students–Final Questions

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Question 12  Did you Ever consider that map-making wasn’t for you?  What do you like the most about making maps?  The least?

Once I started making maps I never looked back. It’s a very satisfying activity and I like every aspect of it. The research is fun, the drawing is fun, using watercolors is fun, deciding what to include on the reverse side of the map is fun, the process of taking the original manuscript of the map to the printer is fun (great inky smells, huge thundering printing presses) and getting paid for doing something fun is fun.

Question 13  What do you think makes your maps about the Civil War better that others?

Our Civil War maps are essentially unique. No one else has done Civil War battlefield maps that contain so much cultural and physical information and present that information is such a stylized format. The corn fields look like cornfields, the fences look like fences, the orchards look like orchards. Our maps give modern visitors to the battlefield the same view of the terrain as the Civil War armies had. That’s why when West Point does its staff rides at Gettysburg or at Saratoga, they carry our maps with them. They want modern soldiers to see the roads and lanes, the farms and fences, the rivers and bridges, the terrain, that Civil War soldiers confronted and contended with. Because these were the features that settled the outcome of the battles.

Question 14 During the Civil War, what do you this was Lincoln’s most strategic move as president?

Lincoln’s most strategic move as president was to ignore the lurid gossip about U.S. Grant, saying to Grant’s detractors, “I can’t spare this man, he fights.” Lincoln, sight unseen, intuitively trusted Grant (a fellow mid-westerner) and when he appointed Grant overall commander of U.S. forces, the Confederacy  was done for because U.S. Grant brought William Tecumseh Sherman to the fore and the Southern Confederacy was done for.

Question 15  What do you think Lincoln would have done  the 13th Amendment hadn’t passed? What would have been his next step?

The 13th Amendment passed. There are no “if’s” in history. Every “if” brings more “if’s” and one drifts away into a mist.

Question 16  Lincoln is always refered to as “honest Abe,”  yet in the movie Lincoln, you see he could be very dishonest at times. 

I don’t see Lincoln being dishonest in the movie “Lincoln.” He was contending with existential challenges and had to manage the give and take of politics in the midst of the iron contingencies of war. And throughout, he had to contend with political opponents who were in fact undermining the war effort in ways that didn’t exist in U.S. politics until the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. But in neither of the latter wars was the nation’s life hanging in the balance. At different times in the Civil War, there were Rebel flags  from the White House.

Question 17  What would you say was the most important fact or scene put into the movie Lincoln?  Meaning, what would you say is the most influential fact about Lincoln we should take away from the movie?

The best thing about the movie was its realistic portrayal of the character Lincoln. He was a consummate politician, a very real man, the wisest of the wise, and the only person in all the country that could have managed the menagerie that was Civil War era America partly with an iron will and an iron fist and partly with the most thoughtful political words ever spoken.

 

Lincoln–The Movie and the Man–Both Treasures

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I went to see the new Spielberg movie Lincoln. I’ve been an avid reader of Lincoln biographies–from where I sit right now I can see more than fifty volumes on Lincoln and I can honestly say that if I haven’t read all of them, there are some that I’ve read multiple times and will read again, including  Sandburg’s six volumes–perhaps the most wonderful biography ever written–and Benj. Thomas’s Lincoln’s New Salem which is the most charming Lincoln book of them all. I also have half again as many Lincoln volumes at home. Suffice it to say, I like Lincoln.  And I’ve written about him for publication in Civil War Times. Mine is no casual affair. Lincoln and I are for keeps.

Well…Wonder of wonders. I loved–I revered–the Lincoln movie. It was the first movie my wife and I have gone to since Primary Colors. We were startled at the cost of theater tickets ($19 !) but we were thrilled by the movie. My mental picture of Lincoln, framed for ever and ever by the staged photographs of him, has been supplemented by Daniel Day Lewis’s movie portrayal of the 16th president.

I have two quibbles with the movie. The opening scene was a little much. Lincoln, for some reason unattended to and sitting in the rain, seemed a bit unrealistic and daft (the President was a gigantic celebrity in 1864 too, and his being somehow overlooked was as unlikely then as it is now). Then the post battle-scene at the end of the movie…this is presumably in the trenches around Petersburg after the Confederate line is cracked. The movie depicts corpses stacked like the concentration camp images at the end of WWII. There are actual contemporaneous photos of the most gruesome slaughters of the war, scenes from Antietam’s sunken road, indeed photos from the Petersburg field in the battle aftermath. There is nothing like what the movie shows. Maybe modern audiences have to see a carpet of bodies before they’re impressed.

But apart from those two improbable scenes, the film makers did an impeccable job. Lincoln’s office, as filmed, was exact in every detail. The more prominent members of his cabinet (Gideon Wells, Edwin Stanton e.g.) bore a striking similarity to the real men. Secretary of State William Seward was portrayed as a more presentable figure: they skipped the magpie-like features of the actual Seward but that’s understandable. Modern audiences would probably find his looks laughable.

To sum up, considering how awful the movie could have been–and considering how tempting it must have been to go the saccharine route–makes how realistic the movie was all the more commendable. It’salso a treat to see Republicans portrayed as the good guys. People forget the Democrats obstructing role as the nation was locked in a death struggle. And they also forget that the modern Civil Rights legislation was vehemently opposed by the solid South–the South was solidly Democrat in 1964 as well as in 1864–and it was the Republican party that enabled Lyndon Johnson to push his Civil Rights agenda through. Look it up!

Thinkin’ of Lincoln

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McElfresh Map Company will be watching a new movie coming to town with more than a little interest.

We received a phone call at our office on the afternoon of August 26, 2011 from Terry Alford, a professor at Northern Virginia Community College.  He wondered if we’d be willing to share some information about Civil War map making with some folks making a Lincoln related Civil War movie.  I said certainly.

Very shortly thereafter I got a telephone call from a woman named Leslie McDonald. She was with a company called “Office Seekers.”  She was interested in having someone with a Civil War map background to answer some questions.  She was with a movie company.   I said I’d be quite prepared for that eventuality.

We talked back and forth a bit, I answered some general questions.  She said she would like to e-mail a detailed set of questions if that was all right. I said that would be fine. She also asked if I’d be willing to suggest additional questions that “they hadn’t asked but should.” That impressed me. She wanted to get things right. “So,” I said, “This is a real movie, a TV movie, or what?”

She told me it’s a movie based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals.  The director of the movie was Steven Spielberg. I  said, “Ah, this is a real movie.” She laughed. “Oh yes.”

She had some general questions regarding reference material, Civil War map resources, sample Civil War era maps and the preparation and use of maps before, during and after a battle.

That evening (6.06 PM) a list of 12 questions was e-mailed to me. The questions were mostly map specific:

How would they update troop movements and how would they do this for the President?

How did they track movements on maps?

What type of writing instruments did they use to update maps, i.e. pen, pencils, colored pencils?

How would maps in the White House differ from the field maps?

Some of the initial questions also regarded the treatment and handling of battle casualties and soldiers killed in battle:

Did they write down who died right away or after the war was over?

As per Leslie McDonald’s request, the next day I e-mailed her a brief overall perspective of the who, what, when, where, why and howof Civil War mapping.  How important maps were, especially to Union forces operating on unfamiliar ground in unfriendly territory.  I told her where to find examples of Civil War maps and descriptions of how they were prepared and used and to what effect.

I also emphasized what an immense affair the Civil War really was and how magnificently a ramshackle government inWashingtonmanaged the whole affair.  The various departments were casually organized, the army and navy operated in a very off-the-cuff manner compared to the hidebound rigidity of the modern military.  The President throughout the war never travelled more than 100 miles from Washington, wrote his own speeches, and ran the nation and the war with the assistance of two secretaries.

To provide perspective, I noted that the death rate of soldiers in the Civil War, if adjusted to the present population of theU.S.would be 3,000 soldiers killed and dying every day for four years.

I also described the topographical challenges faced by road bound, foot and horse-powered armies.  How a slight grade or a three foot deep creek could stop 50,000 men dead in their tracks. How the marching armies lived off the land and had to keep moving or starve.

I also assessed the capabilities of the Union and Confederate armies and pointed out that Union forces faced a far greater challenge than the Confederates because they had to march, fight, capture, hold, occupy, supply, and continually advance through the southland.  The Confederates didn’t have to fight pitched battles around Detroit, or Chicago or New York.  The Union had to capture and hold New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Savannah, Vicksburg et al.

Over the next days and weeks I answered questions:

How would maps be carried in the field?

Answer: Sherman, e.g. carried them in his saddlebags. Others in map canisters. Cavalrymen stuck the maps in their pockets.

What sort of maps did the President have in the White House?

Answer: Most likely Lincoln’s office contained U.S. Coast Survey maps (this organization is the predecessor of the modern National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and standard commercially printed maps (Colton’s e.g.) The maps specifically, historically, known to have hung in Lincoln’s office were a U.S. Coast Survey map of KY and TN  and a “statistical” slave map, showing by lighter and darker shading the slave population of the different regions of the country.

What sort of maps were in the War Department’s telegraph office?

Answer: What’s described as “a common U.S. map” on the wall (meaning a commercially printed U.S. map) and then there were map files, filing cabinet-like wide drawers in which maps could be laid flat and stored.

I also described the various instruments the mapmakers would be using: the Schmalcalder compasses, plane tables, field glasses, the watercolor paints that would come in blocks rather than tubes. I further informed the moviemakers that there was no way for Lincoln or Secy of War Stanton to interfere in the actual progress of a battle. I told them Lincoln or Stanton might urge the generals to “put all of your men in” but they’d have no way of knowing what was happening on the actual battlefield.

My last e-mails in early October with the “Office Seekers” crew was to supply names and contact information for locating the appropriate topographical instruments to “decorate” the movie set.

Note the a map displayed in Lincoln’s office in the trailer below.