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Gettysburg College

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Assassination

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in History

What If Abraham Lincoln Had Lived?, Allen C. Guelzo Apr 2015

What If Abraham Lincoln Had Lived?, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

The lead .41-calibre bullet with which John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln on the night of April 14, 1865, was the most lethal gunshot in American history. Only five days earlier, the main field army of the Southern Confederacy had surrendered at Appomattox Court House, and the four dreary years of civil war were yielding to a spring of national rebirth. But by then, the man to whom everyone looked for guidance in reconstructing the nation was dead. [excerpt]


Does Lincoln Still Belong To The Ages?, Allen C. Guelzo Jan 2012

Does Lincoln Still Belong To The Ages?, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Edwin M. Stanton gets only a footnote in John Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, but the phrase is one that many know by heart, words this normally irascible and overbearing powder-keg of a man uttered at Abraham Lincoln’s deathbed: “Now he belongs to the ages.” That, at least, was how John Hay recorded Stanton’s words. Dr. Charles Sabin Taft, who had been boosted awkwardly from the stage to the presidential box in Ford’s Theatre and who accompanied the dying Lincoln across Tenth Street to the Petersen House’s back bedroom, thought that Stanton had said, “He now belongs to the ages.” James …


Holland's Informants: The Construction Of Josiah Holland's 'Life Of Abraham Lincoln', Allen C. Guelzo Jan 2002

Holland's Informants: The Construction Of Josiah Holland's 'Life Of Abraham Lincoln', Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Abraham Lincoln's coffin had lain in the receiving vault in Springfield's Oak Ridge Cemetery for less than three weeks when a dapper, walrus-mustachioed New Englander stepped off the train and checked into Springfield's St. Nicholas Hotel. He was Josiah Gilbert Holland, one-time editor (and still part owner) of the Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican, a nationally popular writer of advice books, and (what would turn out to be most memorably) part of a small circle of admirers and encouragers of an unknown Amherst poet named Emily Dickinson. None of those attributes, however, provided the slightest qualification for the task that brought …


Holland's Life Of Abraham Lincoln, Josiah Gilbert Holland, Allen C. Guelzo Jan 1998

Holland's Life Of Abraham Lincoln, Josiah Gilbert Holland, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

"Soon after the assassination of President Lincoln in April 1865, newspaper editor Josiah Gilbert Holland traveled to Illinois to talk with people who had known Abraham Lincoln “back when.” In 1866 Holland published the earliest full-scale life of the fallen leader. A great popular success, Holland’s biography introduced American readers who were hungry for personal information about Lincoln’s early life to some of the most famous and enduring Lincoln stories. From Holland the reader learned about Lincoln making restitution for a ruined book, the railsplitter earning his first silver dollar, the millhorse’s kick to his head, the wrestling match with …