Abraham Lincoln the Early Adopter 261
Hugh Pickens writes "On the 200th anniversary of his birth, President Abraham Lincoln's popular image as a log-splitting bumpkin is being re-assessed as historians have discovered that Lincoln had an avid interest in cutting-edge technology and its applications. During the war, Lincoln haunted the telegraph office (which provided the instant-messaging of its day) for the latest news from the front; he encouraged weapons development and even tested some new rifles himself on the White House lawn; and he is the only US president to hold a patent (No. 6469, granted May 22, 1849). It was for a device to lift riverboats over shoals. 'He not only created his own invention but had ideas for other inventions, such as an agricultural steam plow and a naval steam ram, [and] was fascinated by patent cases as an attorney and also by new innovations during the Civil War,' says Jason Emerson, author of Lincoln the Inventor. But Lincoln's greatest contribution to the war effort was his use of the telegraph. When Lincoln took office the White House had no telegraph connection. Lincoln 'developed the modern electronic leadership model, says Tom Wheeler, author of Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph To Win the Civil War. At a time when electricity was a vague scientific concept and sending signals through wires was 'mind boggling,' Lincoln was fascinated by the telegraph and developed it into a political and military tool that allowed him to project himself to the front to monitor and track what was going on. 'If he were alive today, we'd call him an early adopter,' says Wheeler."
The only president with a patent? Not true, unless (Score:5, Informative)
...unless you read the wikipedia on Thomas Jefferson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson [wikipedia.org]
There are none of Thomas Jefferson's patents on the page. In fact it doesn't even mention his involvement in the patent act of 1790, http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH40/walter40.html [virginia.edu]
He invented a Moldboard Plow Of Least Resistance, Wheel Cipher, Portable Copying Press, and an improved polygraph for copying handwritten text.
http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~meg3c/classes/tcc313/200Rprojs/jefferson_invent/invent.html [virginia.edu]
Re:Log-splitting bumpkin, huh? (Score:2, Informative)
He was probably our greatest American president ever
Very much so, and he was a hell of a killer too. As a percentage of population, Lincoln killed more Americans than all the rest of the US Presidents combined and by a fairly wide margin.
If we went by percentage of population in casualties, the Civil War, if fought today, would result in almost 7 million dead. If there were slaves in the South today, there would be more than a few people that might suggest that such titanic destruction is not worth it.
Even in absolute terms, there were casualties at one civil war battle, Antienam, than there have been in Iraq for the entire war, and Lincoln just kept right on rolling with the war.
Re:Log-splitting bumpkin, huh? (Score:2, Informative)
Lincoln did not end slavery, not even in the U.S. (Nixon did that, when he ended the draft). His public actions against slavery applied only to states over which he had no control, as any honest historian will tell you.
Lincoln introduced an income tax, suspended habeus corpus, and viciously supressed freedom of speech and assembly.
By insisting upon preserving the union, he caused the deaths of more North Americans than any president to this very day.
After the suppression of Shay's Rebellion (1787) and the Whisky Rebellion (1794), Lincoln's Civil War is the most significant advance of big government over freedom in our history.
The greatest American President ever? Hah! People should spit at his memory.
not very different eh? (Score:3, Informative)
I myself, would have gone a step further and stripped the right from the very stupid (joe six-packs)
If he was alive today he'd be busted... (Score:5, Informative)
...for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. He even wrote a letter to the Hohner Harmonica company stating how he loved to sit on his porch, smoking "sweet hemp" from a corncob pipe and playing his harmonica. He very likely smoked it even while in the Whitehouse, or on or about the Whitehouse grounds, since hemp smoking was rather commonplace in the mid-1800's.
Re:Log-splitting bumpkin, huh? (Score:2, Informative)
Exactly.
The United States holds the distinction of being the only country where a civil war was tied to the issue of slavery. To put matters in perspective, it would've been cheaper to buy all the slaves and a fair amount of land for them than to pay for the civil war.
The twisted notion that Lincoln's civil war was an act of brilliance stinks of indoctrination.
Parent is NOT a troll (Score:5, Informative)
The parent post certainly expresses what we today consider racist opinions, but they are what Lincoln thought, they are a direct response to its parent post, and it is not a troll.
Mods -- just because history is racist does not make reports on history racist.
Re:he also used the word nigger a lot (Score:4, Informative)
P.S. I just reviewed the video again. I did see ONE white face. Still not a "large amount" as the grandparent falsely claimed. Check it out for ye self. Listen to the hate speech (and yes that is the proper term): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwQWuQVE6sw [youtube.com]
"Can't we all just...get along?"
Re:Yeah, he set the stage for modern America (Score:3, Informative)
That's not quite correct. Check out Article I, Section 9, paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution:
"The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."
I think the Civil War could accurately be considered a case of rebellion.
Re:Attention! (Score:2, Informative)
200 years ago every black man in America was a slave, think on the sheer brutality that implies.
Untrue. [wikipedia.org] There were half a million free blacks living in the US at the beginning of the Civil War. "200 years ago", 14% of the black population was free.
Re:Attention! (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe someone needs to go back to Math class. 2009 - 200 is 1809 which is also 200 years since Lincoln was born and not the start of the American Civil War. Also if you reread the article you linked you'd realize that the statistics say African Americans made up 14% of the overall population and 11% of those were free if you do the math.
Now if you ignore all your errors how many opportunities were available to "freemen" in 1861? They had to fight and die on the side of the Union, (which despite not having slavery at the time) which had basically treated them like 2nd class citizens, to even gain any sort of recognition of being remotely honored.
Re:The only president with a patent? Not true, unl (Score:3, Informative)
See http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/winter2000/jefferson.html [earlyamerica.com] for info on Jefferson and patents. Note in particular:
"Jefferson, a strong proponent of equality among all people, was not sure if it was fair or even constitutional to grant what was essentially a monopoly to an inventor, who would then be able to grant the use of his idea only to those who could afford it. His feeling that all should have total access to new technology was one of the reasons he never took out a patent on his own inventions."
Check your math (Score:1, Informative)
A wpm is (within a order of magnitude) approximately equal to a bit/s. When doing rough bandwidth comparisons they're often considered equivalent (since a wpm isn't precise anyway)
If you've ever read text coming from a 300bps modem you know that even that is coming at a clip well beyond what a human telegrapher could signal. At 2400bps (that's 300 8-bit bytes every SECOND!) there's no way a telegrapher could keep up
Re:Attention! (Score:3, Informative)
Please. Even ardent abolitionists of the era would be considered racist by today's standards. Lincoln would have been raised and taught by both the scientists and the clergy of the day that blacks were inherently inferior, incapable of existing in civilized society without the firm guidance of whites. It's not fair to single him out and apply today's standards and expect him to measure up. You can't argue that he was considerably more progressive on the issue then most of his peers. Like all politicians, his actions and public words would be 5% rooted in his personal beliefs of right and wrong and 95% in the political reality of what he could actually hope to achieve. Ending slavery was a first step in a process that is still going on today. You can't change an entire society in a lifetime, especially when its cut short by an asassin.
Re:Lincoln and Bush (Score:3, Informative)
Why is secession wrong?
It gave each state a veto over all federal legislation, indeed over every other state's own internal legislation. If any state didn't like what the federal government or any other state government was doing, it could threaten to secede.
One of the main arguments for secession was by South Carolina. They didn't like the high tariffs imposed by the majority, claimed that every individual state had the power to veto federal legislation, and threatened to secede if tariffs were enforced in South Carolina. There was a nasty undercurrent to this. The main source of income for the federal government of the time was tariffs. Part of South Carolina's plan was to force a small ineffective federal government on the rest of the nation by vetoing its income source thruout the nation.
That's no way to run any organization, let alone a government.
Look at the original articles of confederation from the 1776 revolution which proved to be so unworkable that they were replaced by the 1789 constitution. One of the main complaints was that the national government had almost no powers of its own, especially taxes. All its revenue came from donations by the individual states. It simply did not work, and the federal government of the 1789 constitution was the preferred result. Secession as threatened by South Carolina would have destroyed that. Secession as practiced by the confederacy did try to destroy the constitution. And the confederacy was just as hypocritical as any bunch of politicians; they put down more than a few rebellions of their own from counties that wanted no part of the war for slavery.
Secession as proposed by the New England states in 1815 was slightly better -- they wanted negotiations, not outright unilateral secession. But it still would have destroyed the union by imposing a veto on the nation.
Re:Yeah, he set the stage for modern America (Score:2, Informative)
Why have I never heard of this? My father is full-blooded German and his family has been in the hill country of Texas since the mid-1800s.
The only prejudice they ever faced was when my grandmother answered a teacher in German instead of English by accident, got laughed at by students, and subsequently swore off ever speaking German again.
I just googled this, and apparently there was something going on in Kenedy, TX. I don't understand this. My great great uncle was a rancher and full-blooded Kraut in Kenedy, TX, precisely at the time this concentration camp crap supposedly happened. Why have I never heard of this, even within my family who lived in Kenedy at that time?
A little further reading has revealed that these camps were exclusively for aliens, not citizens of German, etc., descent. A little different from interning Japanese-Americans. Heck, the Geneva Conventions even permit internment of alien residents in time of armed conflict (albeit with some safeguards such as "not even corporal punishment is allowed").