Abe Lincoln

Slaveholders’ Mutiny: Frederick Douglass & The Southern Insurrection

August 9, 2026 by Alan J. Singer Leave a Comment

In a July 4, 1862 speech to an audience of about 2,000 people in Himrod’s Corner, in Yates County, NY, Frederick Douglass described what we now remember as the American Civil War as a “slaveholders’ mutiny.”

As a recent New York Times op-ed pointed out, naming that war is very much a political decision that shapes and is shaped by our view of the past and American history. During the war it was usually referred to as an “insurrection” or a “rebellion.” Civil War is a more neutral term that avoids placing blame for ripping the country apart or branding the Southern actions as treasonous and ignores the future of slavery in the United States as the fundamental cause of the war. [Read more…] about Slaveholders’ Mutiny: Frederick Douglass & The Southern Insurrection

Abraham Lincoln’s Funeral Train in Albany

November 29, 2024 by Joseph D. Collea Jr. 1 Comment

Just before 11:00 o’clock on April 25, 1865, mourners waiting at the East Albany Station (in Rensselaer, NY) heard the sound of a train emanating out of the darkness to the south along the Hudson Valley. All doubt was soon removed by “the whistle of the locomotive, announcing the approach of all that was mortal of the martyred dead.” Further confirmation was added by the boom of artillery.

By order of Albany Mayor Eli Perry, a minute gun was to commence a measured fire from the moment of the train’s arrival until the President Lincoln’s casket was placed in the capitol building. Commanded by Captain Harris Parr, the battery performed exactly as directed. [Read more…] about Abraham Lincoln’s Funeral Train in Albany

Harold Holzer On The Civil War, Immigration, and Lincoln

April 27, 2024 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

Amidst the carnage of the Civil War — upward of 700,000 dead with 40,000 of them from New York, more than any other state — came not only mass-mourning, but an urgent need for additional recruits to replenish the depleted United States Army.

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln proposed an innovative solution: in his annual message to Congress that December, he called for increased immigration to fill long-vacant civilian jobs in farming, mining, and other industries. [Read more…] about Harold Holzer On The Civil War, Immigration, and Lincoln

Lincoln, Bryant, and Cooper: An Arbor Day Story

April 26, 2024 by Peter Ward Leave a Comment

There is a map drawn on the inside cover of an old book. On its handwritten pages, the book tells the story of the earliest days of Brentwood’s schools; the schools of a hamlet in the middle of Long Island, some forty miles from New York City.

On the map we see part of the first school, an octagonal building erected among the pine barrens more than a century and a half ago. Across from it, along the fence at the edge of the school yard are three circles. Each is labeled: Abraham Lincoln, William Cullen Bryant, and J. Fennimore Cooper. What do these names mean? [Read more…] about Lincoln, Bryant, and Cooper: An Arbor Day Story

West Point Foundry: Pioneer of Steam Engines and Artillery

March 22, 2024 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The West Point Foundry was a major American iron-working and machine shop site at Foundry Cove in Cold Spring, in the town of Philipstown in Putnam County, NY, which operated from 1818 to about 1911. [Read more…] about West Point Foundry: Pioneer of Steam Engines and Artillery

Abraham Lincoln’s First Thanksgivings

November 21, 2023 by Alan J. Singer 2 Comments

The fabled 1621 “First Thanksgiving” celebrated in elementary school plays across the country was reported on by Edward Winslow in Mourt’s Relation (A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England, 1622) and William Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation. [Read more…] about Abraham Lincoln’s First Thanksgivings

Sigmund Freud, Adirondack High Peaks and American Colitis

August 17, 2023 by Jaap Harskamp 2 Comments

The modern era has produced a number of great speeches that have withstood the test of time. Amongst them are Winston Churchill’s “Fight on the Beaches” (June 1940), John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner”(June 1963) and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” (August 1963), but the speech that may have had the biggest impact in the history of political thought was Abe Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” (November 1860). [Read more…] about Sigmund Freud, Adirondack High Peaks and American Colitis

A Catskills Copperhead Strikes Against Lincoln & Abolition

March 5, 2023 by John Conway 1 Comment

One of Sullivan County, NY’s first historians and most noted newspaper publishers, James Eldridge Quinlan, was a Copperhead, a pro-slavery Southern sympathizer, during the Civil War.

Anyone with any doubts about Quinlan’s leanings on the subjects of slavery, the abolitionists, and Abraham Lincoln need only peruse the pages of the Republican Watchman newspaper during the years leading up to the Civil War and during the war itself, to be convinced. [Read more…] about A Catskills Copperhead Strikes Against Lincoln & Abolition

Turkey Day History: The Two Thanksgivings of 1871

November 23, 2022 by Herb Hallas 6 Comments

For about a week in 1871, New Yorkers were in a quandary about Thanksgiving. On October 25, New York Governor John T. Hoffman designated Thursday, November 23 as Thanksgiving Day for the state.

In his Thanksgiving Day proclamation, the Tammany Hall Democrat urged New Yorkers to spend time on that day to declare “their gratitude to God for all his mercies” and to “remember especially the poor.” [Read more…] about Turkey Day History: The Two Thanksgivings of 1871

Clifton Park’s Ties to Lincoln’s Assassination

April 15, 2022 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

April 14th marked the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln‘s assassination by John Wilkes Booth in 1865. This tragic event, like the later assassination of John F. Kennedy, had a tremendous impact on the nation.

There was a period of twenty days of mourning from the time Lincoln was shot to the time he arrived by train for burial at his home in Springfield, Illinois. The first of his twelve funerals was held in Washington, then his funeral procession began by train across the land to Illinois, stopping at major cities for additional funerals. It was the mightiest outpouring of national grief the world had yet seen. [Read more…] about Clifton Park’s Ties to Lincoln’s Assassination

NYS Library Acquires Lincoln Scholar Harold Holzer’s Papers

March 4, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The New York State Library has recently acquired the complete works of Lincoln scholar and Archives Partnership Trust Board Member Harold Holzer. The collection covers his 49-year career as a writer, lecturer, and historian specializing in Abraham Lincoln and Civil War era. [Read more…] about NYS Library Acquires Lincoln Scholar Harold Holzer’s Papers

James Eldridge Quinlan: Catskills Publisher, Historian & Copperhead

February 21, 2022 by John Conway Leave a Comment

Decades of polls of the general public and of noted scholars alike have repeatedly shown that most Americans consider Abraham Lincoln our greatest president.

That was not always the case.

And it wasn’t just those living below the Mason-Dixon Line who reviled our sixteenth president while he was in office. There was a strong anti-Lincoln sentiment in parts of the North, too, including here in Sullivan County, where a number of notable Monticello men were known to be pro-slavery Southern sympathizers, or Copperheads, as they became known.

James Eldridge Quinlan, editor of one of the county’s most prominent newspapers, The Republican Watchman, was one such man. Quinlan made no secret of his political leanings, and in fact his sentiments were so well known that at one point a group of men with opposite leanings threatened to blow up the Watchman office in order to eliminate Quinlan’s platform. [Read more…] about James Eldridge Quinlan: Catskills Publisher, Historian & Copperhead

Abraham Lincoln, Religious Freedom & A New York Farmer

November 20, 2021 by John Conway Leave a Comment

On November 15, 1865 Bernhard Behrend died in Washington, D.C. He was 72.

Although there wasn’t much of a public reaction at the time of his death, Behrend is remembered today as the Narrowsburg, Sullivan County, NY farmer who challenged the President of the United States to uphold the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence. [Read more…] about Abraham Lincoln, Religious Freedom & A New York Farmer

White Supremacy and the Lincoln Assassination

November 12, 2021 by Bob Cudmore Leave a Comment

This week on The Historians Podcast, longtime historian John Rhodehamel, author of America’s Original Sin: White Supremacy, John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Assassination (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2021).

Rhodehamel argues that Booth’s primary motivation for his heinous crime was a growing commitment to white supremacy. In alternating chapters, Original Sin shows how, as Lincoln’s commitment to emancipation and racial equality grew, so too did Booth’s rage and hatred for Lincoln, whom he referred to as “King Abraham Africanus the First.” [Read more…] about White Supremacy and the Lincoln Assassination

Albany’s Thurlow Weed: Seward, Lincoln’s Election, & The Civil War Years

October 18, 2021 by Peter Hess 1 Comment

The second Republican Party Presidential election was held in 1860. Thurlow Weed wanted supporters of the recently formed Republican Party to nominate William Seward.

Working against Weed was the fact that the Republican convention was to be held in Chicago, Illinois, home state of Abraham Lincoln. Weed knew that his man, Seward, was far better known throughout the country. In addition to being New York’s Governor, Seward had been a U.S. Senator and as a leading anti-slavery proponent he had received extensive publicity. His biggest drawback was that he had been considered at one time to be the most radical anti-slavery member of the Senate. [Read more…] about Albany’s Thurlow Weed: Seward, Lincoln’s Election, & The Civil War Years

The End of the Whigs: Thurlow Weed & The Birth of the Republican Party

October 13, 2021 by Peter Hess Leave a Comment

Following his political successes in the disputed Election of 1824, Thurlow Weed was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1825 and again in 1830.

In the 1820s, like many in Upstate New York with populist, anti-elite feelings, Weed strongly believed the Masons were trying to control government using secret means. He felt that political affairs should be conducted publicly and particularly opposed the fraternal secrecy of Freemasonry. An alleged conspiracy by Masons to murder William Morgan in Western New York in September, 1826 sparked the anti-Freemasonry movement. Weed began publishing the Anti-Masonic Enquirer in Rochester, NY in February, 1828.

Soon Weed was hired as editor of the newly formed Anti-Masonic Albany Evening Journal, which began publication on March 22, 1830. The move to Albany made him a statewide leader of the fledgling Anti-Masonic Party. [Read more…] about The End of the Whigs: Thurlow Weed & The Birth of the Republican Party

List of America’s Public Monuments Reveals One-Sided History Obsessions

October 11, 2021 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Who are the 50 individuals most frequently represented by a public monument in the US? What percentage of those 50 are white and male? How many are women? And what are the dynamics that helped shape who is — and who is not — on that list?

Answers to those questions are among the findings of the National Monument Audit, a first-of-its-kind report issued by Monument Lab, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit art and history studio. [Read more…] about List of America’s Public Monuments Reveals One-Sided History Obsessions

Albany’s Ira Harris: From Rights Advocate to Lincoln’s Assassination

September 27, 2021 by Peter Hess 3 Comments

Ira Harris was born at Charleston, Montgomery County, NY on May 31st, 1802 to Fredrick Waterman Harris and Lucy Hamilton. When he was six years old, his family moved to Preble, NY where his father became one of the largest landowners in Cortland County.

Harris attended Homer Academy and graduated from Union College in 1824. He studied law for one year in Homer, New York and then moved to Albany where he assisted one of that city’s most highly regarded jurists, Ambrose Spencer. [Read more…] about Albany’s Ira Harris: From Rights Advocate to Lincoln’s Assassination

Lincoln Scholar Offers New Revelations About Mary Todd Lincoln

February 11, 2021 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The new book Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame An American Marriage: The Untold Story of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd (Pegasus Books, 2021) explores an often overlooked aspect of the sixteenth president’s life, the tragic story of Abraham Lincoln’s marriage to Mary Todd. [Read more…] about Lincoln Scholar Offers New Revelations About Mary Todd Lincoln

1861: Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth in Albany

December 23, 2019 by Peter Hess 4 Comments

Following his election as President in 1860, Abraham Lincoln undertook a train ride to Washington that took him through Albany. He arrived in the city on February 18, 1861 with his wife and three sons.

As their train passed the West Albany railroad shops, an electrical switch was turned off at the nearby Dudley Observatory, causing an electromagnet mounted on the roof of the Capitol in downtown Albany to release a metal ball that slid down a pole, signaling to military officials to start a 21-gun salute in Capitol Park. [Read more…] about 1861: Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth in Albany

Abe Lincoln

We Need Your Help Now More Than Ever

New York Almanack receives no public funds.

It’s supported only by readers like you.

Please give today (a monthly recurring gift is best)