Extra Credit Questions

[Rob Wick]

None of the last three answers are correct. I'm having trouble coming up with clues that won't just give the answer away, so I will go ahead and reveal it.

According to Richard Carwardine's new book Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union, Lincoln proclaimed three days of fasting and humiliation and six days of thanksgiving, more than any president in U.S. history. From the introduction to his book:

"Each occasion licensed ministers, political leaders, and their audiences to consider how far the nation had fallen short in its historic and current pursuit of righteousness." Later, Carwardine writes, "Perhaps because public fasts are today inconceivable as means of bringing public pressure to bear, their wartime significance and a flood of nationalist rhetoric have attracted little analysis, though they were freighted with political meaning and stand visible in plain sight. Placed in a wider context, they provide a series of indicative, revelatory landmarks on the course of the completing religious nationalism in the Civil War Union."

Carwardine is Emeritus Rhodes Professor of American History, Corpus Christi College, which is a part of Oxford University in England. In addition to this book, he also wrote Abraham Lincoln and the Fourth Estate: The White House and the Press During the American Civil War, 2004; Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power, 2006; The Global Lincoln, 2011; and Lincoln's Sense of Humor, 2017, which is part of Southern Illinois University's Concise Lincoln Library.

Best
Rob