Category: History

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Lincoln’s 1st Inaugural

Abraham Lincoln Bobblehead On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in for his first term as President of the United States as the nation was on the verge of coming apart. As Lincoln addressed the crowd from the steps of the unfinished U.S. Capitol building, he sported a beard he had grown a few months earlier.

Lincoln grew the beard after Grace Bedell, an 11-year-old girl from New York, had written the then smooth-faced presidential candidate suggesting the facial hair.  She wrote, “[Y]ou would look a great deal better for your face is so thin.”

Lincoln’s Speech at His First Inaugural

But on this date in 1861, Lincoln had other things on his mind besides his appearance. In writing his speech, he had struggled to find the words to keep the South from seceding and to keep his Northern supporters in his corner in case of a civil war. He closed his speech with poetic words that offered a warning to those who might divide the nation (I will crush you!).  But he also offered an olive branch (We are friends!):

“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it.’

“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Hal Holbrook as Lincoln

In a previous Chimesfreedom post, we noted how most contemporary accounts of Lincoln’s voice classified it as high-pitched or squeaky, unlike many of the deep baritone portrayals we usually hear today. This short clip of Hal Holbrook giving Lincoln’s closing of the First Inaugural seems along the lines of what the crowd heard on this date in 1861.

The video is from the TV miniseries Sandburg’s Lincoln (1974-76).  Check it out.

Hal Holbrook is well-known for a number of roles, including his portrayals of Mark Twain. He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his recent role in Into the Wild (2007), which made the 82-year-old the oldest actor to be nominated for an Oscar in that category. For more, see Holbrook’s IMDb page.

Bonus First Inaugural Coverage: The New York Times has several essays about the historical importance and background behind the First Inaugural. You may also read the entire speech.

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    Last Surviving U.S. WWI Veteran Passes

    Dixie Chicks – Travelin’ Soldier Live

    {Travelin’ Soldier (live) – Dixie Chicks }

    Frank Buckles — the last surviving U.S. veteran of the World War I forces — passed away Sunday at the age of 110. He enlisted in 1917 at the age of 16, lying about his age so he could serve his country. He later told a reporter, “I thought, well, ‘I want to get over there and see what it’s about.'”

    The WWI time period is a fascinating time and is not often covered in popular culture these days. Movies and popular culture pay little attention to WWI partly because that war was so long ago and partly because it does not have the heroic triumph over evil theme that World War II has. But there are several lessons to be learned from World War I and its time, and we hope to revisit the topic in the future on Chimesfreedom, especially because I just started reading Robert Graves’s memoir of the time period, Good-Bye to All That. For today, we wanted to make sure to note the death of Frank Buckles so it is not lost in less important news like the Oscars.

    World War I

    Today, we remember Frank Buckles and all of the other soldiers who served in “the Great War.” The above Dixie Chicks song, “Travelin’ Soldier” is off their 2003 Top Of The World Tour Live
    CD. The song was written and originally recorded by Bruce Robison, and The Dixie Chicks’s studio version of the song is on their 2002 Home album. In “Travelin’ Soldier,” the singer tells about “a girl with a bow” meeting a young man off to serve in the Vietnam war who asks her if she will write him because he has nobody else.

    I cried
    Never gonna hold the hand of another guy
    Too young for him they told her
    Waitin’ for the love of a travelin’ soldier
    Our love will never end
    Waitin’ for the soldier to come back again
    Never more to be alone when the letter said
    A soldier’s coming home.

    They exchange letters and she falls in love. But then she attends a football game where they read the names of the fallen. “And one name read but nobody really cared / But a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair.”

    It is ironic that this beautiful song about a woman supporting a man off to war was the victim of a campaign in the name of some sort of “patriotism.” The studio version “Travelin’ Soldier” was number one on the country charts as the U.S. was preparing to invade Iraq eight years ago this month on March 12, 2003. Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines told an audience in London: “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” A number of country radio stations stopped playing “Travelin’ Soldier,” and the song dropped off the charts.

    Many, like Merle Haggard defended Maines and her right to speak her mind. But as of today, “Travelin’ Soldier” is their last number one country song. The three made one more album together and went on hiatus. The 2006 documentary Dixie Chicks: Shut Up & Sing
    covers the reaction to the Bush quote and the impact on the group.

    Fortunately, unlike the soldier in the song and so many others, Frank Buckles returned home from World War I and lived a long life, outliving the almost five million Americans who served in the war. Only one Australian man and one British woman survive Buckles of all of the 65 million people from around the world who served in the war. Not only did he live through WWI, but he saw more than a century’s worth of history, even serving as a civilian prisoner for 38 months when Japanese soldiers captured him in 1941 while he was traveling around the world. In his later years, he campaigned to get the government to refurbish a neglected World War I monument in D.C. and rededicate it as a national memorial. You may donate to the cause at the World War I Memorial Foundation website.

    The West Virginia Congressional delegation from Buckles’s home state is proposing a plan for his body to lie in the U.S. Capitol. Buckles already had special government approval to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. It is good that he is so honored, because this honor is really about respecting all of the people who served in World War I, and hopefully the honor will continue to the WWI monument in DC. As for Frank Buckles, he is already home.

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    George Washington’s Escaped Slave: Told By a Drunk

    Happy Presidents’ Day Weekend! In a previous post about Abraham Lincoln, Chimesfreedom noted the importance of remembering that great leaders were human because we should recognize that fallible humans may still accomplish fantastic feats. Nothing makes us more human than our stupidity, and early U.S. leaders were idiots when it came to slavery. So this post features a story about Oney “Ona” Judge, a slave in George Washington’s household who escaped when she was 23 years old from the Philadelphia President’s House in 1796 while Washington was president.

    History does not have to be boring, so we will let someone else tell the tale about Oney Judge in a funny video featuring actors Denny McBride and Tymberlee Hill. But storyteller Jen Kirkman is drunk and swears a bit (so do not play loud at work) . . .

    Not only did Oney Judge escape slavery, she escaped from the U.S. President! How cool is that? According to Wikipedia, at the time when Philadelphia was the U.S. capital, Pennsylvania had a law that prohibited nonresidents from possessing slaves in the state for more than six months. If six months passed, the slaves had legal power to free themselves. George and Martha Washington, though, worked around the law by rotating their slaves in and out of the state so none were in the state for six months or more. So even though the Father of our Country did many terrific things as a general and as a president, he also could be a douchebag. This website for the President’s House in Philadelphia features two interviews with Judge from the 1840s.

    But what about that video? My friend Mike recently introduced me to the Drunk History videos on YouTube. I am a little late coming to the party, so you may have already seen them. But if not, check out some other ones too. Drunk History videos feature a drunk person telling about a historical event while famous actors reenact what is being described. The series started a few years ago on the Funny or Die website. The series, created by comedian Darek Waters, is pretty funny, but be warned that they generally include swearing and some other drunken activities. Kids: Don’t try this at home. Not only are they funny, though, they are entertaining and educational discussions of history. Check out the links below.

    Bonus Drunk History Video    : Here is a funny Drunk History video about Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, featuring John C. Reilly and Crispin Glover. Yes, even the pigeon part is true.

    More Bonus Drunk History Video Links: Here is a Drunk History video about Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, starring Will Ferrell and Don Cheadle. Here is the original Drunk History episode, about Aaron Burr.

    Bonus George Washington Information: In case you need to be reminded of some of the great things that George Washington accomplished, check out the official White House page for a short biography.

    What do you think? Leave a comment.

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    Happy Birthday Mr. Lincoln

    Abraham Lincoln's Cabin Birthplace
    “Granny Woman,” Nancy Walters remembered:

    It was Saturday afternoon when Tom Lincoln sent over and asked me to come. They sent for Nancy’s two aunts, Mis’ Betsy Sparrow and Mis’ Polly Friend. I was there before them, and we all had quite a spell to wait, and we got everything ready. Nancy had a good feather-bed under her; it wasn’t a goose-feather bed, hardly anyone had that kind then, but good hen feathers.

    Nancy had about as hard a time as most women, I reckon, easier than some and maybe harder than a few. The baby was born just about sunup, on Sunday morning. Nancy’s two aunts took the baby and washed him and dressed him, and I looked after Nancy. And I remember after the baby was born, Tom came and stood beside the bed with that sort of hang-dog look that a man has, sort of guilty like, but mighty proud, and he says to me, ‘Are you sure she’s all right, Mis’ Walters?’ And Nancy kind of stuck out her hand and reached for his, and said, ‘Yes, Tom, I’m all right.’ And then she said, ‘You’re glad it’s a boy, Tom, aren’t you? So am I.'”

    And Dennis swung the baby back and forth, keeping up a chatter about how tickled he was to have a new cousin to play with. The baby screwed up the muscles of its face and began crying with no let-up.

    Dennis turned to Betsy Sparrow, handed her the baby and said to her, “Aunt, take him! He’ll never amount to much.”

    So on that 12th of February, 1809, was the birth of a boy they named Abraham after his grandfather who had been killed by Indians — born in silence and pain from a wilderness mother on a bed of perhaps cornhusks and perhaps hen feathers — with perhaps a laughing child prophecy later that he would “never come to much.”

    The above quote from Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln is one of my favorite quotes about Lincoln. Yesterday, we posted and discussed Aaron Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait. In that work, when you hear the great words, the building music, and Gregory Peck’s strong voice, it is easy to think of Lincoln as super human. We have this perception that he was something like Superman, flying around in perfection winning the war and freeing the slaves, when the truth is more complex.

    A Lincoln Portrait, the Lincoln Memorial, and other monuments to the man are the reasons I like the story about the crying baby. The story reminds us that Lincoln was a human who dealt with many of the same problems we do, and then some. In his own home, he faced depression, marital problems, and the loss of a child while the nation was coming apart. He was imperfect, he had flaws, and he was sometimes wrong (such as early support for colonization of slaves).

    Yet, for us today, it is good to be reminded that Lincoln was not perfect. The reminder that Abraham Lincoln was human like us serves two purposes. First, it makes us appreciate even more what Lincoln accomplished because he was not Superman. Second, because Lincoln was once a crying baby just like we all were, it reminds us that we may aspire to a little bit of greatness in our everyday lives too.

    Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln.

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    Bonus Birthplace Information: The above photo is a cabin enshrined at Lincoln’s birthplace in Hodgenville, Kentucky. I have visited the location several times over the years. Unfortunately, they do not believe the cabin is the actual one where Lincoln was born, but it is a similar one that was found in the area at the time.

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    Lenny Bruce is Not Afraid

    Lenny Bruce Carnegie Hall

    On February 4, 1961, Lenny Bruce performed before a full house at a midnight show at Carnegie Hall. Outside that cold night, a blizzard was blowing through the city, and there was also something powerful going on inside.

    The Carnegie Hall Performance

    Although Lenny Bruce’s career had been slowly building, the performance at Carnegie Hall launched him further into a career of breaking comedy and language barriers that would bring fame, legal troubles, and ultimately his death on August 3, 1966.

    Below is the beginning of his performance at Carnegie Hall.

    Persecution and Death

    Before the end of the year, Lenny Bruce was arrested in San Francisco for obscenity for one of his performances. Although he was acquitted in that case, police officers in other cities began monitoring him more closely.

    Here is part 2 (and you may continue listening to the concert on YouTube):

    The close scrutiny led to other similar arrests and arrests for drug possession. In 1964 after a performance in New York, Bruce was again charged with obscenity. This time, he was sentenced to four months in a workhouse.

    While out on bail during the appeals in 1966, he died of an accidental overdose. Phil Spector said it was an “overdose of police.”

    Five years after Lenny Bruce’s death, a similar story would be repeated. Another star would face an indecency conviction, dying while the appeal was pending from an apparent death by drugs: Jim Morrison, who died in exile in Paris on July 3, 1971.

    It would be almost 50 years after Bruce’s death before New York Gov. George Pataki pardoned Bruce in 2003.

    Lenny Bruce’s Influence

    Lenny Bruce influenced many performers who came after him. Richard Pryor said, “Lenny changed my life,” noting that “[i]t was him who said comedy wasn’t about telling jokes – it was about telling the truth.”

    George Carlin has often discussed how Lenny Bruce was his hero. One may see the Bruce connection to Carlin’s famous “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Bruce also has been mentioned in a number of songs, including R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” and Bob Dylan’s “Lenny Bruce” from his Shot of Love album:

    They said that he was sick ’cause he didn’t play by the rules
    He just showed the wise men of his day to be nothing more than fools
    They stamped him and they labeled him like they do with pants and shirts
    He fought a war on a battlefield where every victory hurts
    Lenny Bruce was bad, he was the brother that you never had.

    A bio-pic about Lenny Bruce was made in 1974 starring Dustin Hoffman, who gives an excellent performance. Lenny, which was directed by Bob Fosse and was based on a Broadway play by Julian Barry, appears to be out of print on DVD, but you may watch it streaming on Netflix.

    Although Lenny leaves out some background about Bruce’s tragic life, the movie is a good introduction to Bruce.  And Hoffman presents what Bruce’s “shocking” performances were like.

    It amazes me that Lenny Bruce was constantly harassed and faced prison for using words we hear all the time today. But I still remember seeing the Dustin Hoffman movie when I was a kid when we first got cable in our house.

    I had never heard anyone speak like that. My education on movie profanity would continue with Al Pacino’s performance in Dog Day Afternoon. But Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of Lenny Bruce was quite eye-opening. Many of Bruce’s intelligent points about censorship have stayed with me throughout my life. So, thank you Lenny and Dustin (and Richard Pryor and George Carlin).

    Bonus Website: The Official Lenny Bruce website, approved by his daughter, also sponsors a link to donate to Lenny’s House, a non-profit charity for women recovering from drug and alcohol abuse.

    Bonus Quote and Movie Reference : One of the Lenny Bruce quotes on the website is: “Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers, will allow you to satirize it which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.” In one of Woody Allen’s best movies, Crimes and Misdemeanors, a character played by Alan Alda says, “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” Allen was a supporter of Bruce and even signed a petition on Bruce’s behalf after an arrest, so I wonder if the line was inspired by Bruce?

    What do you think about Lenny Bruce and his influence? Leave a comment.

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