What did Mr. Lincoln enjoy doing?

[RJNorton]

Joseph G. Cannon, an Illinois political leader who served 46 years in Congress, reported that after Willie died Lincoln read from Shakespeare, finishing with the passage in King John where Constance bewails the loss of her son. Then Lincoln said, "Did you ever dream of some lost friend and feel that you were having a sweet communion with him, and yet have a consciousness that it was not a reality?....That is the way I dream of my lost boy Willie."

[LincolnMan]

Sounds like it was a great comfort to him as a grieving father.

[Troy Cowan]

It seems to me that Lincoln's age would be important consideration.

When Lincoln was a child he enjoyed fishing, as an adult he would not go near a fishing pole.

As a teenager just learning to read, he read anything he could get his hands on. As an adult he read to obtain information. He did not read for pleasure. He did not read the popular books of his day.

In his twenties he wore a arm band of white cloth around his arm indicating he was willing and ready to fight.

In his thirties and forties he wrote and rewrote essays and speeches to obtain the maximum impact.

In his fifties I believe that he enjoyed anything to get his mind off the war, like attending the theatre.

There is one thing he enjoyed doing his entire life, and that was telling stories. He even enjoyed telling dirty stories.

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[Gene C]

A good post Troy,
Where did you find that out about fishing? That's an interesting detail.
I hadn't heard that about white cloth around the arm either.

I'll disagree with you about one minor point, the reading. I think he read some for pleasure to relieve stress and just because he enjoyed it. He enjoyed the writings of Petroleum Nasby (David Locke) He probably just didn't have much time for casual reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ross_Locke

[RJNorton]

(06-15-2013 08:37 PM)Troy Cowan Wrote:  He did not read the popular books of his day.

I have read there is no evidence he ever read Uncle Tom's Cabin. I do not know if this is true. But, if so, I find it a little surprising.

[Eva Elisabeth]

In his "Lincoln" biography, D. Donald writes:"...Mary would entertain her husband with accounts of the latest novel she was reading - he did not read fiction - ..." (p.158)

[Liz Rosenthal]

(06-16-2013 04:48 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(06-15-2013 08:37 PM)Troy Cowan Wrote:  He did not read the popular books of his day.

I have read there is no evidence he ever read Uncle Tom's Cabin. I do not know if this is true. But, if so, I find it a little surprising.

I've read that Lincoln supposedly read something called the "key" to Uncle Tom's Cabin. I don't know what that is exactly, unless it's a guide to the real-life events that the book was based on.

But I think Uncle Tom's Cabin was written for the "masses." People who were already interested in and concerned about the slavery issue probably sought out other forms of information - the abolitionist newspapers, for example, which I understand Lincoln read. Also, there was a book published, from what I can recall, by the abolitionists the Grimke sisters and Theodore Weld, which provided testimonial after testimonial from slaves and others about the horrors of slavery. It's possible that Lincoln read or looked at this volume.

Also, I'm pretty sure that Lincoln read Hinton Rowan Helper's book about slavery, as he referred to it in at least one speech during the late 1850s. When it came to learning about something, Lincoln probably preferred to read the facts rather than a fictional account. If the "key" to Uncle Tom's Cabin did, as I suspect, provide a guide to the real-life events that inspired the story, then it would make sense that Lincoln would have read that rather than the novel itself, as he would have gotten more information from the "key" than from the novel.

[LincolnMan]

Why do you suppose Lincoln would not go around a fishing pole as an adult? Was it an aversion to killing the fish or something like that?

[L Verge]

I can't answer the fishing pole question, but in googling to see what I could find about Lincoln and Uncle Tom's Cabin (I would not think that Lincoln ENJOYED reading about slavery!), I found this excellent speech given eleven years ago by our very respected Maryland State Archivist. Thought y'all might enjoy it:

http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/educ/speeche...21502.html

[Bill Richter]

Nice assumptions, Liz.

I cannot say more about Lincoln and "Uncle Tom's Cabin" except that he supposedly said to Harriet Beecher Stowe at the White House in 1862, "So this is the little lady who made this big war?" (Donald, "Lincoln," 542) So Lincoln obviously knew of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and it impact of the nation, indeed, the world. Not surprising in an educated man of hi time.

I agree that Lincoln might have been more interested in Hinton R. Helper's "Impending Crisis." But Helper was a white racist uninterested in black rights except that slavery allegedly made it harder for white farmers and shopkeepers to exist in the South. That has been challenged by historian Frank W. Owsley and his numerous students and followers of his "Plain Folk in the Old South," who find a thriving white middle class, despite slavery.

Lincoln actually sides with Helper in Lincoln's actual plan for ending slavery in 1912 (introduced in Congress in Dec 1862) and his willingness to allow slavery to exist in the South but not in the territories, pledged in 1861 inaugural. Lincoln wanted a free West, not a free South. But the South demanded its right to take slaves west under the concept of extraterritoriality from Art 4, Sect 2, Cl 3 of the US Constitution. And according to William J. Cooper, Jr., "The Critical Signpost on the Journey toward Secession," Journal of Southern History, 77 (Feb.2011), 3-16, and his "'We Have the War upon Us': The Onset of the Civil War, Nov 1860-Apr 1861" (2012), this was the single key issue upon which Lincoln and the South could not compromise.

Lincoln's lukewarm stand against slavery otherwise was evidenced in his introduction of several antislavery measures in the Illinois state legislature for "style," allowing them to lapse with little effort made on his part after their introduction. In reality Lincoln was a Henry Clay man in this as well as many other policies. Like Clay, he wanted to free blacks and get them out of the country and made many efforts to do this to Africa (Liberia), the Caribbean (Isle d' Vache in Haiti), Panama (called Lincolnia by the cynical press), and even in separate colonies in Southern Florida or West Texas.

All of this failed, in part through opposition to such plans by Frederick Douglass and the willingness of 180,000+ blacks to fight the Civil War as part of the Union Army, which ultimately guaranteed them a permanent place in America. Whether that place was to be first or second class has been the problem of modern America.

One wonders where Lincoln would have stood on this when he allegedly told Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens, a friend from Lincoln's congressional days when he was a fellow Whig politician, when Stephens asked him at Hampton Roads aboard the River Queen in 1865, you have freed the black people, now what are you going to do with them? Lincoln's answer: "Root hog or die." One place to find this reluctance of Lincoln to end slavery and then provide for the freed slaves is to read Lerone Bennett, Jr., "Forced into Glory." But he has been conveniently dismissed by Lincolnites as a "black radical."

[Troy Cowan]

Young Abraham Lincoln hitting a ball with a stick and running the bases did not happen.

Lincoln did play a game of fives in New Salem. My understanding of the game Lincoln played is different from the handball game that comes from England where you have to slap the ball with your hand. To play fives in New Salem, first you would get a small block of wood and whittle it into the shape of a sphere. Then you would throw the ball above some point on a wall and try to catch it before it hit the ground. The ball was not perfectly round and the wall was not flat making the trajectory off the bounce difficult to determine. If you were fortunate to have an opponent, he would throw the ball and you would have to catch it. Throwing the ball as fast as you caught it, made a fast paced game. When the ball hit the ground, the person making the successful throw got a point added to his score.

Why Lincoln stopped hunting and fishing is a mystery. At Pidgin Creek Abe went hunting with the men. The men took their rifles and young Abe took his bow and arrows. One story says that one day Abe noticed some turkeys near the cabin. He picked up one of the rifles and shot one of the turkeys. Watching the bird die depressed him to such an extent that he gave up hunting and fishing altogether.

Another story is that hunting and fishing reminded him of the family's poverty and difficulty of day to day survival. Hunting and fishing was absolutely necessary for subsistence then, and he did not want to be reminded of those days.

People that believe that he was one of the early animal rights activist and a vegetarian cannot be supported. He continued to eat meat and wear hats made of coonskin and beaver, wear deerskin britches and patch the holes in his pants with fox skin. He slept on a bed made from bear skin.

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[My Name Is Kate]

Two book reviews of "Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream", one pro and one con.

http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=173

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/linc...steers.htm

I read them both. I think Lerone Bennett, Jr. found certain quotes, or alleged quotes by Lincoln, unforgivable, and went from there in building a case against him.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Troy,
Michael Burlingame writes:"Lincoln's only other recorded episode [the first was about farm work] in his Kentucky youth dates from the War of 1812: 'I had been fishing one day and caught a Little fish which I was taking home. I met a soldier in the road, and having been told at home that we must be good to soldiers, i gave him my fish.'"(The quote was reported by Nicolay and Hay).
So, from where do you know how he felt about it?

[LincolnMan]

Eva: that is the reference to Lincoln and fishing that I also recall. It will be interesting to hear of another.

[Troy Cowan]

He cared little for amusement, and hunting, which was the chief recreation of young men of his age, had no attractions for him. In his brief autobiography, which was prepared for the newspapers the day after his nomination for the Presidency, he says,—
" A flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin, and Abraham, with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through the cracks and killed one of them. He has never since pulled a trigger on any larger game."

William Curtis, The True Abraham Lincoln, 18