ATTORNEY-GENERALS OF THE CIVIL WAR: BORING WITH TOO BIG AN AUGER

It's been a while since I posted to this blog, so I thought I'd update. It seems like the last century when I decided to write a book about the lawyer-generals of the Civil War, and I actually began by writing some mini-biographies of a few generals, but I soon found that I had two huge problems. First, I didn't know enough about the Civil War. Second, there were too many lawyer-generals. Four things have happened since I made these twin discoveries.

First, I have boned up on the Civil War, and I am continuing to study it as much as possible. It is a depressing study.

Second, my study has destroyed my working hypothesis that lawyers had unique skills which made them good generals. I still think that trial lawyers have skills which could translate to military leadership, but I see now that they also have major defects (arrogance is one) which make it difficult to overcome a lack of military education. As a result most lawyer-generals were miserable failures as generals, and the successful lawyer-generals had military educations (e.g. Henry Halleck, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Patrick Cleburne).

Third, I have scaled back my ambition. As we say in the North Florida Piney Woods, I'm boring with too big an auger. I need to put it down and get a smaller one. I can't write about all the lawyer-generals without the book becoming a multi-volume encyclopedia. I have lowered my aim to write only about the lawyers who were colleagues of Lincoln. The working title will be "Lincoln's Attorney Generals: The Eighth Circuit Goes to War."

Fourth, I have embarked upon another project which is consuming my time--a professional biography of Francis L. Wellman, the author of "The Art of Cross-Examination." I've got to finish with Wellman before I get back to "Lincoln's Attorney Generals." It may be a while. Several of Wellman's cases merit treatment as stand-alone books.

Wish me luck with my literary endeavors. I'm going to need it.

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.