Trivia Advent Calendar

[L Verge]

the menu at A. Lincoln's second inauguration ball here:

Please excuse as I may have posted this once before. That second inaugural ball was interesting. Carl Sandburg described it this way - "Three hundred at a time could be accommodated at the feast table, but there were 5,000 guests at the supper. This created disorder - a "crush." Many were like one gentleman "with a large plate of food, requiring both hands to hold it, no place to sit down, and no way to eat it."

Wonder what the final bill was for those groceries? At the end of a cruel war where Lincoln had chided Mary about her flub-dubs taking blankets away from soldiers, it seems a tad hypocritical to lay out a spread like that. I hope they all got indigestion!