Archive for May 2013
Thomas & Hyman
A serious biographer has a love-hate relationship with the prior biography of his subject. At least, that is my relation with the biography of Stanton by Benjamin Thomas and Harold Hyman in 1962. On the one hand I love the book because it presents a full and fair view of Stanton: the best life of…
Read MoreTop Ten
The Phillips Exeter Academy Mock Trial Team, of which I am the proud coach, just won tenth place at the 2013 National High School Mock Trial Championship. At the awards banquet Saturday night, the top ten teams are “called out” and honored, starting with tenth and proceeding to first. We knew that we had a…
Read MoreLast Full Measure
My sister called yesterday, to read to me a note I wrote to her in May 1995, when I gave her a copy of “The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers” by Richard Moe. That wonderful book, as the title implies, is a regimental history, of the first Minnesota…
Read More13th Amendment
While researching Stanton yesterday at the Massachusetts Historical Society, I came across several letters that illuminate the history of the Thirteenth Amendment. Everyone “knows” this story now: we have seen it in great detail in the movie version of Lincoln. But one of the joys of research is that new details are always emerging, often…
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