Method and Memory in the Midwestern "Lincoln Inquiry": Oral Testimony and Abraham Lincoln Studies, 1865 1938

This article narrates the role of oral testimony in the fieldof Abraham Lincoln studies from 1865 through the 1930s. Collectedin the form of letters, affidavits, and face-to-face interviews,this mounting body of "eyewitness evidence" dominated the discoursefor two generations and reflective, public practice culminatedin the organization of a "Lincoln Inquiry" in the Midwest duringthe 1920s and 1930s. For a time, practitioners successfullydefended themselves against increasing positivist assaults onthe credibility of oral testimony. Their interests and effortsresonate with later oral history practice and theory about method,authorship, performance, and memory, and their story highlightsthe contingency inherent in the development of oral historicalpractice in America.     

Between friendship and justice: on Lincoln’s political thought

Reading Aristotle and applying his notion of philia, or political friendship, across 26 centuries sheds significant light into Abraham Lincoln’s career. It is precisely in Lincoln’s embodiment of the Aristotelian notion of friendship that we come to understand his unique greatness. Perhaps he alone of all Americans proved capable of such extraordinary feats as leading the Republican party to victory in 1860, holding the Union together through the secession crisis and four long years of bloody civil war, ending slavery without white backlash, and offering reconciliation with the incredible magnanimity expressed in the ringing phrases of the Second Inaugural address. The basis of Lincoln’s preternatural political genius proved to be his ability to comprehend all sides, a comprehension that can only come from a profound belief in the importance of friendship. Americans, Lincoln argued throughout a terrible war as he had his entire life, were not enemies but friends who shared a commitment to nature and nature’s law as expressed in the Declaration.     

Identifying King Stephen’s artillery

References to artillery in sources for English history from 1066 to 1189 are typically vague. Eschewing the technical Latin terms ballista, mangonel or onager, medieval writers in the period tended towards generic words like machina. This habit prohibits the positive identification of specific weapon types present at Anglo-Norman/Angevin sieges and thus full interpretations of the engagements themselves. This essay suggests an alternative, contextual methodology. After first assessing the physicality of a siege zone (landscape, topography and fortification architecture), it applies knowledge about artillery type and operation (range to target, trajectory, shot type and size) in order to see what weapons could and could not have been deployed in the zone. When such contextual information is available, the method can help identify weapon type in the absence of specific terminology. The examples presented here are King Stephen’s sieges of Lincoln in 1141 and Faringdon in 1145.     

Stiffening Abe: William Pitt Fessenden and the Role of the Broker Politician in the Civil War Congress

The difficult but by no means dysfunctional relationship between President Abraham Lincoln and Congress remains an understudied aspect of Civil War history. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at a comprehensive or convincing explanation for Union victory until that relationship is limned more precisely. This article contends that U.S. Senator William Pitt Fessenden (1806–69) played a critical mediating role in the wartime Congress. He did so firstly in his capacities as chair of the Senate finance committee and close associate of U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and secondly as a public supporter of executive war powers. Although the influential Maine Republican had serious doubts about the effectiveness of the Lincoln administration, his determination to quash the southern rebellion and considerable powers of self‐restraint enabled him to act as an important and constructive broker between the White House and the fractious Republicans on Capitol Hill.     

Report of the Committee on Ancient Earthworks & Fortified Enclosures

The recent identification of two original drawings of the excavated remains of the east end of St Hugh’s choir at Lincoln Cathedral adds new information to that first published in 1887. A review of this information and fresh survey of the site, which includes information from grave slabs, will enlarge our understanding of what was discovered, including the fact that the foundations had been badly damaged by grave digging. The drawings themselves are revealed to be part reconstructions rather than accurate representations of what had actually survived. Nevertheless, they do allow a more accurate plan of the remains to be drafted and a new reconstruction of the building to be attempted. This is the aim of this article.     

Heroes and the renegotiation of national identity in American history textbooks: representations of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, 1982–2003

ABSTRACT. American history textbooks for the USA's public schools act as quasi‐official loci for the renegotiation of national identity and are, as such, subject to much controversy. The choice of heroes and the way in which textbooks depict them display the interplay between competing visions of popular ethno‐history and scholarly historiography. This article examines contemporary renegotiation of the national narrative through an analysis of the evolving representation of the USA's two most prominent traditional national heroes – George Washington and Abraham Lincoln – in history textbooks for elementary‐school students published from the early 1980s to 2003. This period marks the development of the multiculturalist movement and its subsequent conservative backlash, with debates intensifying in the wake of the events of 11 September 2001.     

Robert Grosseteste and the simple benefice: a novel solution to the complexities of lay presentation

That pastoral care was the main focus of Robert Grosseteste's theological work and correspondence is well established: Grosseteste is often characterised as the vehement, uncompromising promoter of the pastoral ideal in the face of strong opposition, ecclesiastical and lay. Less close attention has been paid to whether the records of his diocesan administration demonstrate the practical outworking of his pastoral theories. Although narrow in compass, his administrative rolls for the English diocese of Lincoln are not entirely sterile. They show Grosseteste experimenting with a novel form of parish organisation, using grants of simple benefices (simplex beneficium) to ensure appropriate provision for a parochial priestly function whilst offering a constructive compromise to the laity who had the right to nominate clergy for churches (the patrons) when their candidates were deemed inadmissible. The practical working out of these proposals reveals that they had both educational benefits, particularly for potential clergy, and allowed Grosseteste to focus his educational and pastoral efforts directly within the parishes.     

President Obama,the Bible,and Political Rhetoric

Abstract

How has President Obama made use of the Bible in his political rhetoric, especially as it relates to public policy debates? This article addresses Obama's religious origins, his work as a community organizer in Chicago, his coming to Christian faith under the leadership of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the development of his understanding regarding the relationship between faith and politics. In particular President Obama has emphasized the notion that we are all our brothers' and sisters' keepers. He also stresses the present generation of black Americans as "the Joshua Generation." The article considers President Obama's hermeneutics, as well as the important context of the black church for his own use of Scripture. The lenses of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr are also addressed as they relate to Obama's use of Scripture in political rhetoric.     

Abraham Lincoln and the Movies

Comparatively little work has been done on how Abraham Lincoln has been represented in American cinema. Yet movies have been a major – and during the first half of the twentieth century probably the major – influence on how his memory has been constructed in American popular culture. This article analyzes changing representations of Lincoln on screen, showing that differing cinematic constructions of the sixteenth president were shaped by a range of factors, including popular biographies and the biases of directors. They also echoed salient issues of the era in which they were produced and more general changes in American attitudes.     

The Danish St Croix Project: Revisiting the Lincoln Colonization Program with Foreign-language Sources

Working from previously unknown sources in Danish archives, this article establishes for the first time the important role that the island of St Croix played in the Lincoln administration's considerations on colonizing African Americans abroad. This article argues that U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward, commonly viewed as an anti-colonizationist, was at least a mild proponent of colonization in its earliest stages. The article demonstrates further that in the summer of 1862, the St Croix colonization project was an important stepping stone in the Lincoln administration's legal justification for emancipation, and that it was recognized as such by high-ranking Confederates. The negotiations failed for reasons that had little to do with Lincoln or his opinion on the matter. Rather, the plan fell through because the Danes slowly turned against it for economic and political reasons. The substantial conclusion of this article is that, contrary to earlier perceptions in the historiography, African American colonization during the Civil War was not led and directed entirely from Washington. Rather, in this case, the Danish minister proposed a colonization plan and then worked with the U.S. Government to attempt to see it through.