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Posts tagged Lincoln
On April 26, 1865, Sergeant Thomas P. ”Boston“ Corbett shot and killed the alleged assassin of Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth in a barn in Bowling Green, Virginia.
Corbett was a eccentric character, who was born in England and made his home in New York. It is thought that his occupation as a hatter, which involved the use of mercury in production, contributed to his mental illness. Shortly after the death of his wife in childbirth, Corbett converted to Methodism and began to grow his hair long to emulate Jesus. He evidenced even more bizarre behavior when he castrated himself with a pair of scissors, then went to dinner before seeking medical attention.
As a member of the 16th New York Cavalry, Corbett had been directed by the Secretary of War to bring Booth in alive. Hovever, after seeing Booth moving inside the surrounded barn, Corbett took aim with his Colt revolver and mortally wounded him. Although he at first claimed self defense, he later stated that “Providence directed me”.
Perhaps this was an example of Karma, with mentally ill fanatics cancelling each other out.
Beware the ides of March, in November…All three Booth brothers performed in a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to benefit the placement of a statue of the bard in New York’s Gramercy Park. The performance, which took place in the famous Winter Garden Theater on November 25th, 1864 was a sold out, one night show. As the soon to be assassin had his moment in the footlights, Confederate sympathizers attempted to burn down New York City by setting fire to a building next door to the Winter Garden.
The Booth’s performance was interrupted when someone overheard a whispered warning of the encroaching fire, and a stampede nearly ensued. A police inspector in the audience, believe it or not, yelled at the crowd to keep their seats saying that the man raising the warning was drunk.
They did, and saw one of the last performances by all three Booths on the same stage.
Roger B. Taney was a 26 year old attorney practicing law in Maryland when the seminal case of Marbury v. Madison was decided on February 24th, 1803. The case involved a man who was given an appointment as a judge by the administration of President John Adams and then denied that appointment by the incoming President Thomas Jefferson. While ruling that the Supreme Court did not have any authority to enforce the appointment, Chief Justice John Marshall established that the Supreme Court did have the authority to determine the Constitutionality of any law Congress passes, making the Supreme Court a very, very powerful group of men.
However, while Taney was Chief Justice in 1861 he ruled in Ex Parte Merryman that the actions of the Lincoln Administration, in suspending the Habeas Corpus right of John Merryman was unconstitutional, as only Congress had that power. Merryman had been arrested by Federal soldiers and held without being charged, having bail, or seeing an judge. Taney, acting on his own as Chief Justice, ordered Merryman released, and issued an opinion about its unconstitutionality.
However, President Lincoln blithely ignored Taney’s ruling, and continued to suspend the rights of suspected Southern sympathizers. Although past Chief Justice John Marshall had created the most powerful court in the land to interpret the constitution, current Chief Taney had absolutely no power to enforce that interpretation.
Lincoln later defended his actions to Congress in a Special Session on July 4, 1861 saying that an insurrection “in nearly one-third of the States had subverted the whole of the laws … Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?”
First published by F.D. Benteen in Baltimore in 1840, The Blue Tail Fly was performed by many minstrel shows for the next several decades. It was one of President Lincoln’s favorites, along with (suprisingly) Dixie’s Land. It is reported that he specifically asked a band to play this tune while in Gettysburg for the Dedication of the National Cemetery.
This version is performed by the 2nd South Carolina String Band, who perform at reenactments throughout the east coast. If you ever get the chance, take the opportunity to see them.
It is also my lovely wife’s favorite Civil War era song, and immediately transports me back to holding her hand on a sultry summer’s dusk with the smell of wood smoke and the sounds of a Civil War camp.
Like a huge Jenga game, this 34 foot tower at the Fords Theater Center for Education and Leadership contains over 15,000 volumes written about Abraham Lincoln. Even at the incredible pace of a book a day, it would take over 41 years to read them all. And new books continue to roll off the presses, with no end in sight.
(Source: fords.org)
“The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.”
- Abraham Lincoln
After the tragedy that marked the doomed frontal assaults of the Battle of Fredericksburg, Va., General Ambrose Burnside attempted to mitigate the damage done to the Army of the Potomac by crossing the Rappahanock River and attacking the rear of the Confederate army. As thousands of men, horses, wagons, cannon and limbers began to move early in the morning, a warm rain fell, atypical for mid January in Virginia. By the end of the day the Army of the Potomac was mired in the deep mud of country roads, and the command structure in disarray. They never got near the Confederate line.
In the wake of what was now called “Burnside’s Mud March”, several officers were Court Martialed, and on January 26th, 1863 Ambrose Burnside submitted his resignation as commanding General to President Lincoln. It was accepted, and Joseph ‘Fighting Joe’ Hooker took command.
Incidentally, Hooker got his nickname from a newspaper reporter who telegraphed “Fighting; Joe Hooker” to his editor, and was simply listing the participants of a battle. The editor printed it as typed, and it stuck. As history records that Hooker was a reprobate who never turned down a lady of any reputation, he was thought to be more of a lover than a fighter.
GPOC
Gratuitous picture of my Pembroke Corgi taken on historic Gettysburg’s Steinwehr Avenue.
