Detailed "Lincoln's Tomb" Update
It is with no small amount of barely-contained terror I announce my intention to begin writing selected portions of Lincoln’s Tomb later this week. Research is ongoing and will continue during this time.
By “selected portions” I mean sections, or parts of sections, covering events and oddities I can finally cover with reasonable historic certainty, including:
1) John Parker. Even prior to 14 April 1865, Parker’s performance record left a great deal to be desired – up to and including his arriving late to work on the fateful night – and yet he was entrusted with the task of protecting a president at the conclusion of the bloodiest and most divisive war America had ever seen (or will ever see). At the moment John Wilkes Booth creeps up the stairs toward Lincoln’s box, with her Deringer and his knife, Parker was nowhere to be found. There are also points to be made about Parker’s movements the night / morning following the assassination, and the Johnson administration’s pronounced lack of interest in him despite (what I consider to be) a drastic dereliction of duty.
2) Lincoln’s acute awareness of the hatred harbored against him – he kept an envelope marked “Assassination” in his desk drawer that, as late as March 1865, contained some 80 pieces of threatening mail – and his utter indifference to it.
3) Springfield in the modern day and its efforts to preserve Lincoln’s presence there. This is intended to come at the end of the book; it will describe how neatly the history is stationed in-between modern architecture / movements, a description of the tomb and the grounds around it at Oak Ridge, et cetera.
Handwritten notes will be made, but as previously mentioned here at the Spiraling Toward Irrelevancy blog, the actual first draft of the entire book will be written on my Smith Corona manual typewriter as a bow to the Old School.
By “selected portions” I mean sections, or parts of sections, covering events and oddities I can finally cover with reasonable historic certainty, including:
1) John Parker. Even prior to 14 April 1865, Parker’s performance record left a great deal to be desired – up to and including his arriving late to work on the fateful night – and yet he was entrusted with the task of protecting a president at the conclusion of the bloodiest and most divisive war America had ever seen (or will ever see). At the moment John Wilkes Booth creeps up the stairs toward Lincoln’s box, with her Deringer and his knife, Parker was nowhere to be found. There are also points to be made about Parker’s movements the night / morning following the assassination, and the Johnson administration’s pronounced lack of interest in him despite (what I consider to be) a drastic dereliction of duty.
2) Lincoln’s acute awareness of the hatred harbored against him – he kept an envelope marked “Assassination” in his desk drawer that, as late as March 1865, contained some 80 pieces of threatening mail – and his utter indifference to it.
3) Springfield in the modern day and its efforts to preserve Lincoln’s presence there. This is intended to come at the end of the book; it will describe how neatly the history is stationed in-between modern architecture / movements, a description of the tomb and the grounds around it at Oak Ridge, et cetera.
Handwritten notes will be made, but as previously mentioned here at the Spiraling Toward Irrelevancy blog, the actual first draft of the entire book will be written on my Smith Corona manual typewriter as a bow to the Old School.
posted by Brian S. Wise | 5:34 PM
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