Posted on 09/18/2018 4:46:55 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Free Republic University, Department of History presents U.S. History, 1855-1860: Seminar and Discussion Forum
Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott, Lincoln-Douglas, Harper’s Ferry, the election of 1860, secession – all the events leading up to the Civil War, as seen through news reports of the time and later historical accounts
First session: November 21, 2015. Last date to add: Sometime in the future.
Reading: Self-assigned. Recommendations made and welcomed. To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by reply or freepmail.
Continued from September 17 (reply #26).
Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America
Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher
Home Letters of General Sherman, edited by M.A. DeWolfe Howe, 1909
Good grief, that is a LOT of reading to do each week. I understand that in such olden days there were not a lot of activities. TV, radio, music, movie, and a million hobbies can keep us active today. Back then it was fishing and a few assorted other hobbies when you weren’t busy working.
My hat is off to anybody who found a way to read every word of this each week. I remember having a daily newspaper years ago and perhaps this compares, but there were entire sections I didn’t read. The sports section was ignored except for my team. Classifieds and obituaries were ignored, as well as society pages and entertainment.
I am just amazed how much reading this is to do each week. I guess, if you had nothing else to occupy your time...
Fortunately our reading drops off after the seven debates are done next month. Somehow I posted the entire transcript on last week’s thread. Maybe I will ask the admin mod to remove it.
No, I wasn’t referring to today. I was surprised that Harper’s Weekly published such long journals back then. I assumed they would be 8 or 10 pages of reading. This is well over 20 pages, and jam packed with text, not adds and photos. I have newfound respect for our ancestors.
I enjoyed scrolling thru that old issue. Interesting to see the phrase “What’s up?” used in 1858. I read thru the fiction piece - melodramatic literary fiction of that era.
I have to enlarge the pages with text in order to make them semi-legible. The process involves cutting up the pages and reassembling them on a template smaller than the original pdf copy. I estimate the original magazine had pages about the size of the old Life magazine or Saturday Evening Post. I omit some of the text that appears even smaller than what I include. What I’m getting to is that I wind up with more pages than the original. I have only looked at 1858 so far, but every issue has exactly 16 pages except the final issue (Dec. 25) which has 12.
I’m amazed there’s a blow-up flotation device from that era. Would it be oilskin?
BOSTON, Sept 20, 1858.
MY DEAR FRIEND, — Yours of yesterday is at hand. I should prefer Saturday at seven P. M., if that is agreeable to Mr. Parker and yourself. If you decide on that time, please notify Mr. Parker and Dr. Howe. If you do not write me to change the time, I shall be there without further notice.
SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 515
“Text me right away if you can’t be there Saturday at 7:00.”
It must have been incredibly difficult to make any arrangements in those days.
Especially when there are 4 individuals involved (Brown and 3 of the Secret Six) and they are being clandestine.
People must have been more reliable in those days, when it was almost impossible to communicate a change in plan.
Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher
Another issue that never gets resolved.
“Mystic Hall Seminary for Young Ladies” (right column page 7) sounds like it would prepare the young ladies for higher studies in sorcery, perhaps in Europe, but advertises “Horseback riding and salt-water bathing.”
According to “Medford (MA) in the Victorian Era,” the school opened in 1855 and moved to Washington, D.C., in 1879. Thus, if you sent your daughter there in the fall of 1857, she would get only two years, at most, of the salt-water bathing and moderate climate of Medford before having either to change schools or to move to sweltering, disease-ridding Washington, just in time for some war or other that might happen.
They weren’t making it easy for parents in the 1850s, either!
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