ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S ALMANAC TRIAL: WHEN WAS THE FAKE ALMANAC ALLEGATION FIRST MADE?

There's an old saying that a lie can go around the world before the truth gets its boots on, and that is certainly true about the charge that Lincoln used a forged almanac in his cross-examination of the prosecution's star witness against Duff Armstrong. The witness said he saw the murder by the light of the moon high overhead, and the almanac showed the moon was on the horizon at the time of the murder. The false charge has been rebutted and refuted numerous times over the years, but it never seems to die.

Beginning of the 1860 Campaign Article on the Almanac Trial

I wrote in "Lincoln's Most Famous Case" and again in "Prairie Defender" that the charge was first made in the 1860 presidential campaign after an account of the Almanac Trial was published as campaign literature under the title "Thrilling Episode in the Life of Abe Lincoln." This account was soon rebutted with the fake almanac allegation. As I was preparing for my visit to Illinois next week, I discovered that there was a tradition which held that the fake almanac allegation was made against Lincoln in his 1858 senatorial campaign against Stephen A. Douglas. I doubt that the allegation was made this early, and here is why:

The story of the trial hit the papers immediately after Lincoln was nominated. It played as a heartwarming human interest story but it was exaggerated to make the almanac show no moon at all when actually the moon was on the horizon. It’s hard to see why Lincoln’s handlers would have gone with the story if they knew of the fake almanac allegation. Second, the story was immediately answered by a sneering rebuttal entitled "Sensation Story Spoilt." It was supposedly written by someone who had intimate knowledge of the case, but he made no mention of the fake almanac. Third, there would be no suspicion of a fake almanac until someone fact-checked the no-moon detail of the pro-Lincoln propaganda against an almanac, which likely happened after the publication of "Sensation Story Spoilt." If the fake almanac allegation had already been made in 1858, it would have been featured in "Sensation Story Spoilt." None of the references I have seen which say the allegation was made in 1858 have footnotes or endnotes, so we don't know where they got their information.

Until I can see contemporary evidence of faked almanac allegations being made in the 1858 campaign, I’m going to believe that fading memories of long-ago events retrojected the 1860.

If anyone knows of a contemporary reference which supports the allegation being made in 1858, please bring it to my attention. I'd like to see it.

The Rebuttal to the 1860 Campaign Article

RON DeSANTIS'S CASE OF FOOT-IN-MOUTH DISEASE

A while back I was making a point that nobody is indispensable, and I used an old North Florida aphorism: "Don't one monkey make a show." One of my listeners chimed in and said that she was going to be using the saying in the future. I cautioned her that she should make sure that she added "You need some giraffes and elephants, too," to make it clear that she was referring to the circus and not making a racist comment. You can never be too careful about word choice. 

Too bad Ron DeSantis wasn't a party to my conversation. If he had been, I'm certain he would never have said Andrew Gillum would "monkey up" the state's recent economic success with his socialist agenda. An obviously innocent remark aimed at the economic system championed by Gillum has been twisted to make evidence of racism, and the news media is having a field day over a poor choice of words.

Why don't we talk about the real issue: whether socialism is preferable to free-labor capitalism? 

TRANSCRIBING THE LINDBERGH KIDNAPPING CASE

I have completed the transcript of the testimony of Frank J. Wilson, the 27th LKC prosecution witness. You can access the transcript here: FRANK J. WILSON.

You can access an index to transcripts of all the transcribed witnesses here: ***LINK TO INDEX OF ALL WITNESSES***

POLITICAL MUDSLINGING

My grandfather was always involved in politics in some way or another, and his activity had a profound influence on me. When I got my driver's license, I used to chauffer him around Union County as he canvassed for votes, and later he gave me a job running the sound equipment for the political speakings held by the Democratic Committee in our small county. The most dramatic job he ever gave me was election monitor in a hotly contested city election he was involved in. Then was when I learned that politics was a full-contact sport, as there were all sorts of behind-the-scenes shenanigans going on. Things were so heated that each candidate was given the privilege of putting a monitor in the room where the votes were counted to make sure that the supervisor of elections counted them right. With so many partisan eyes watching the count, you know it had to be right.

I also learned about the anonymous smear sheets that would be circulated in the week leading up to the election. The sheets were usually full of scurrilous lies, but the authors were unknown and the time was too short to mount an effective reply. There was no such thing as Facebook and Twitter back then.

I'm sad to say that the smear sheets are still a feature of politics, but they don't wait until the last minute any more, and they put out much more polished products now. The authors are still anonymous, hiding behind Political Action Committees with high-sounding names which usually include the words "truth" or "fact," something that the sheets are sorely lacking in.

My mailbox has gotten a number of these smear sheets on various candidates, filled with venomous innuendo. And what little fact they contain is so twisted that the truth is unrecognizable. One smear sheet I got the other day had a very poorly photoshopped picture of the target appearing to stand among a group of people whom the authors of the sheet believe to be anathema to North Florida voters. The first thought that came to my mind was "Whoever put this out must think voters around here are too stupid to exercise a little critical judgment." 

It makes me long for the good old days when they waited until the last minute to put out such tripe and distributed it in the dead of night.

CONTEMPORARY POLITICS

Germanic Tribesmen Celebrating a Political Victory

When I was in college back in 19[mumbledy-mumble] I read a description of a form of democracy practiced by wild Germanic tribes living outside the Roman Empire. Whenever there was an important decision to be made, the tribe would gather together with the tribesmen favoring one solution on one side and the tribesmen favoring the other solution on the other. They would then begin yelling. The issue was decided by whichever group yelled the loudest. All you had to do was recruit enough allies with loud voices, get them to yelling, and you could carry any issue. I remember thinking “What a stupid way to decide important issues. I’m glad we here in American have a much more enlightened form of democracy.” Which goes to show how naïve I was.

Twenty-first century America is ruled by whoever can yell the loudest, and the news media (especially video and radio) has a profound effect on who can yell the loudest. You can scream at the top of your voice and nobody will hear you if the media ignores you. But if you are shouting something that coheres with the agenda of a particular media outlet, your voice can be magnified above the sonic boom level.

Something I have noticed over the years, is that when I am shouting, I’m not doing my best thinking. I don’t think I’m unique in that respect; I think it is true of all of us. The louder we shout, the less we think. Emotion is the enemy of reason, and emotion has almost completely driven reason from the marketplace of ideas here in America. The moment a thinker voices an idea, others begin to shout the idea down. Much as Socrates was shouted down when he suggested that people should think for themselves, as Galileo was shouted down when he suggested that the Earth revolved around the Sun, and as Reverend Monsignor Georges Lemaître was shouted down when he suggested the Big Bang,* anyone who voices an unpopular idea today is shouted down by those with access to the loudest megaphones.

As Aristotle said over 2,000 years ago: 

It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity-one might as well warp a carpenter's rule before using it. (Rhetoric, Book 1, Part 1)

Unless we get control of our emotions, modulate our shouting, and start addressing our problems with good sense rather than bad sophistry, we might as well go back to wearing animal skins and horned helmets.

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* In case you're wondering why Rev. Lemaitre's proposal got shouted down, it was because it sounded too much like "Let there be light." (Genesis 1:3). Lemaitre was accused of trying to sneak religion into science through the back door. The distinguished astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle labeled Lemaitre's theory the "Big Bang Theory" as a term of ridicule. How, indeed, could such a well-ordered Universe have come from an explosion?