Seems that once more William W. Holden’s raising something of a ruckus in North Carolina, some 140 years after he was impeached and removed from the governor’s office. For now comes a story (courtesy of ASU graduate student Victoria Jackson) about an effort to grant Holden a pardon (which passed the state senate) on, of all days, April 12, 2011.
Category Archives: History News
Dr. Thomas P. Lowry Responds
It’s been exactly a month since the National Archives announced that Thomas P. Lowry had confessed to altering the date on a Lincoln document so as to make it appear that the president signed the document on April 14, 1865, hours before John Wilkes Booth shot him at Ford’s Theater. You’ll remember that Lowry recanted his confession. The story would have gone away had it not been for a certain historian’s commentary on the piece in the New York Times. There were people who were astonished by the report of Lowry’s behavior, and there were some people who stood up for him.
Abraham Lincoln Association Symposium, February 11-12, 2011
Between 2011 and 2015 the Abraham Lincoln Association will hold a two-day symposium on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Lincoln presidency. The symposium takes place in Springfield, Illinois.
This year’s theme: “Lincoln Becomes President.”
Gettysburg College’s New Journal: A Personal Note
Gettysburg College has long been known as a center of Civil War scholarship, and not just because of the faculty who teach there. The college’s Civil War Institute sponsors an annual summer seminar, and undergraduates can come to Gettysburg to be a part of the Gettysburg Semester. Now the college has gone a step further in promotion undergraduate research in the field of Civil War studies. The first issue of The Gettysburg College Journal of Civil War Studies has just appeared: you can download it here.
I confess to being particularly interested in this inaugural issue because of the lead article, “The Visual Documentation of Antietam,” by Kristilyn Baldwin. That’s because Ms. Baldwin happens to be my student, and this article was one product of her work under my supervision. Congratulations to her!
Another Arizona oops … Is that really Lincoln’s autograph?
You know, history news just won’t let me alone to write history these days. So much for that break from blogging.
This morning I arose at a reasonable hour to have breakfast while I perused our local newspaper, The Arizona Republic. You can imaging what pleasant reading that can be, between our governor’s desire to cut funding for transplant patients (talk about health care death panels … where are Obama’s health care critics on this issue?) and the continuing saga of the NFL Cardinals (thank goodness I’m a Giants fan).
There, in the Valley & State section, I came across a feature article on a display of documents related to Arizona’s territorial organization and push for statehood. The original state constitution and other documents had been set out for public viewing at the state capitol. One of the other documents was “a portion of the Arizona Organic Act of 1863.” As the article tells us: “The document, which former President Abraham Lincoln signed, was fragile: Several pieces of clear tape, which yellowed over time, held the paper together.”
Hmmm, I thought, that’s a remarkable sentence. I had never seen Lincoln referred to as “former President Abraham Lincoln,” but, given the condition of funding for public education in this state, perhaps readers needed that reminder. I could also imagine preservationists and others wincing as they found out that the document was being held together by clear tape. Obviously the state spares no expense or expertise in preserving essential documents.
