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.1 (2002): 63 70.9.William D.Pederson, Lincoln s Legacy Goes Beyond U.S.Borders, Washing-ton Times, October 5, 2002, B3; Pamela Oldham, The Legacy of Lincoln (New York:Alpha, 2005), 298.10.Michael R.Hall, The Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy in the Do-minican Republic, Journal of Third World Studies 23, no.1 (Spring 2006): 13 16.11. Contrarian Congressman Charles O.Porter, Washington Post, January 6,2006.12.The first international conference, Lincoln and Democracy, was held in Tai-wan in 1989; see Y-Tang D.Lew, ed., The Universal Lincoln (Taipei: Chinese CultureUniversity Press, 1995).Several symposia have been held on Lincoln s legacy abroad:in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 2005; in Barcelona, Spain, and Udaipur,India, in 2006; and in Lima, Peru, and Washington, D.C., in 2007.13.The Times of India, June 12, 2007, and The Hindu, June 20, 2007.129 14 edward steers jr.Tell Me What You Want to Believe, andI ll Tell You What You Will Believeike most individuals, I was first exposed to Abraham Lincoln while aLstudent in grade school.It was the 1940s, and World War II seemed todominate everything from school activities to playtime with patriotism as anunderlying theme.My earliest recollection of Lincoln is typical, I suspect, ofmost children who grew up during that period.Above the blackboard weretwo large framed portraits, one of George Washington, the other of AbrahamLincoln.That Washington was the father of our country and Lincoln was itssavior was too abstract for young minds to understand.Rather, I was taughtthat Washington never told a lie (the cherry tree caper) and Lincoln washonest to a fault (walking several miles to return two cents to a poor womanhe had inadvertently overcharged when clerking at his store in New Salem).These simple examples that every schoolchild could understand alwaystell the truth and be honest in all dealings with other people sometimesproved hard to follow as I grew older.The real Lincoln did not attract my interest until many years later when Iwas a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.It all began with aused copy of selected writings by Lincoln.Lincoln students will appreciatemy fascination with his skillful use of words and his ability to explain themost complex problems in simple terms.By the time I graduated and startedworking at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, I was a Lincoln buff on my way to becoming a Lincoln scholar. To anyone interested in the Civil War, Washington is an ideal place to live.Within a half-day drive, one can find the sites of most of the major battlesof the Army of the Potomac and its vaunted enemy, the Army of NorthernVirginia.But little did I know that Washington is ground zero for Lincoln sassassination.Beginning with Ford s Theatre in downtown Washington, onecan follow the escape of Lincoln s assassin over the same roads and past manyof the houses and farms where he hid out or lingered in his dash to escape hispursuers.It was while retracing the footsteps of John Wilkes Booth and his co-hort, Davy Herold, that I became hooked, so to speak, on the assassination.130 Tell Me What You Want to BelieveMy story begins in July 1977, when I attended a Civil War show in Gettys-burg.During an afternoon lull, I struck up a conversation with an old friend,Dave Zullo.Dave had recently retired from the Air Force and decided to tryhis hand as a bookseller.Books were what Dave loved most, and he eventuallybuilt his effort into a respectable business, including publishing importantreference works under the name Olde Soldier Books, Inc. As we talked about the show what items impressed us and what trea-sures we did or didn t find Dave asked me what I knew about the missingpages from Booth s diary. Not much, I answered.What I learned camea few years later.When Booth was killed at the Garrett farm on April 26,1865, one of the items taken from his body was a little memorandum bookhe used as a diary during his twelve-day escape into Virginia.The book wasturned over to Secretary of War Edwin M.Stanton by Booth s captors.The diary was never introduced at the trial of the eight defendants accused ofLincoln s murder.When it did appear two years later during the 1867 trialof conspirator John Surratt, people noticed that several pages were missing.Some claimed the missing pages held the key to a greater conspiracy in-volving prominent members of the North s political, military, and businesscommunities, including Lincoln s own secretary of war.In 1937, amateur Civil War historian Otto Eisenschiml published a revi-sionist account of Lincoln s assassination in a book entitled Why Was LincolnMurdered? Eisenschiml, without directly accusing Stanton of complicityin the assassination, filled the pages of his book with innuendo implicatingStanton.This left the reader with the impression that Stanton was behindLincoln s assassination, just what Eisenschiml intended [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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