Extra Credit Questions

[David Lockmiller]

(03-02-2019 07:48 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  IMO Tad was pampered and he wasn't someone (other than his brothers) whose intrinsic strive could overcome convenience, comfort zone and lacking extrinsic need. Robert wasn't even that pampered at all (even got slapped). If Tad had had to live with my mother, that would have cured him from pranks, mischief or lacking work attitude thoroughly. He would NEVER have dared to fail in school or steal colors to smear on White House walls. That is why I think Hohagen's did him good...(and still I wonder, David, do you have kids? Maybe you have good nerves.). Just to clarify, being spoiled from pampering doesn't have to do with being or not being good-hearted (and it's even easier to share what you don't need yourself because you have enough as well as it is easier to prank when you have endless spare time for self-amusement) - I do think he was emphatic and caring nevertheless, but a pampered lazy bone without any proper working attitude. It's OK, it was the Lincolns' policy and matter, and they consequently had to deal with it.

Now imagine Tad had had to grow up under exactly his father's conditions and circumstances, in a modest working class family and log cabin home, having to work hard physically and having to work hard for the mere option of education, losing siblings and warm-hearted mother - what would he have done?

Here's an idea: Let's pass a law and have everyone's children raised in only military schools. Let's stop all of this pampering of children. If even one person has had a difficult childhood upbringing anywhere in the world, then everyone's children thereafter should have harsh discipline as the norm. Make it a law. Our draft-dodging President would certainly sign it.

There already is such a country. It's called North Korea. But things there are a little bit reversed. Kim had is uncle executed.

And, you say: "Robert wasn't even that pampered at all (even got slapped)." Robert got slapped in the movie "Lincoln." I believe that most historians do not believe that he was slapped by President Abraham Lincoln.

And, how many young men like Robert at the time were being educated at a private preparatory school and then received a Harvard education rather than be subject to being drafted into the Army to fight in mortal combat? And, is not true that when Robert was finally granted permission to serve in the military by Mary (after many entreaties by President Abraham Lincoln), his father wrote the following message to General Grant?

''My son, now in his twenty-second year, having graduated from Harvard, wishes to see something of the war before it ends,'' Lincoln wrote. ''I do not wish to put him in the ranks, nor give him a commission to which those who have already served long are better entitled, and better qualified to hold.

''Could he, without embarrassment to you or detriment to the service, go into your military family with some nominal rank, I, and not the public, furnishing his necessary means? If no, say so without the least hesitation, because I am as anxious, and as deeply interested that you shall not be encumbered, as you can be yourself.''

Grant replied that he would be glad to put the young man on his staff as an assistant adjutant. Bob Lincoln reported the following month at City Point, Grant's base of operations in Hopewell, Va., sporting a captain's bars and paid by the Army.

(Source: "Lincoln Sought Safe Civil War Haven for His Oldest Son"
By WOLFGANG SAXON for the New York Times AUG. 22, 1988)

You say: "Robert wasn't even that pampered at all." How many other parents wrote to General Grant and made similar requests? General Grant must have had a staff numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

When you stop being ridiculous, I'll stop being ridiculous.

You write: Now imagine Tad had had to grow up under exactly his father's conditions and circumstances, in a modest working class family and log cabin home, having to work hard physically and having to work hard for the mere option of education, losing siblings and warm-hearted mother - what would he have done?

President Abraham Lincoln chose how to raise his child Tad. I think President Abraham Lincoln did a very good job of raising his child Tad given all the particular circumstances at the time.