Transcripts For CSPAN2 The Presidency David Kent Lincoln - The Fire Of Genius 20221120

Welcome. Welcome to the september meeting of the Lincoln Group of the district of columbia. Im david j. Kent on the president of the Lincoln Group of district of columbia. And this is kind of a special night because not only is our first meeting since june, but we also have zoom. We have a video being recorded and this is my official book launch for my new book, lincoln the fire of genius. So thank you. I know a lot of people like when are coming in and i really appreciate that. Im going to give a talk tonight about about lincoln and the fire and basically look at well, i just let me look at just the the the subtitle because that i think that really describes the book. Its however ham lincolns commitment to science and Technology Helped modernize america. So thats what im going to talk about tonight. And just to give you a little background, im going to talk about, i guess start with the book is really kind of the kind of piece set out in the three different sections. The first is like, well, what did lincoln know about science . You know, what did he understand about technology . And where did he learn that . So im going to talk about that. But then in the middle, theres really like, well, how do they implement this . Especially in his two major career as a politician and as a lawyer . And then finally, how did this get implemented and what did he do . What did he do as far as science, technology, during the civil war, which is very critical to the north, winning a civil war. So tonight, im not going to spend too much time on the civil war because im going to be giving several talks over the future and suddenly i just lost my screen. Im going to be giving several talks into the over the future. In the future, two civil war roundtables. Im okay now and the in those talks im going to talk more about the civil war. So im not going to talk too much about the civil war tonight. I will talk about how lincoln institutionalized science during a civil war. So if you want to come hear more about the civil war, come to one of the civil war. War. The civil war roundtable talks that theyll be giving. And you can hear more about civil war tonight is more of a big picture thing. So the idea is to kind of give an overview of the book and and cover why i think this is important now to get started. I guess i should start with a little bit of background and why im talking about lincoln and science because they dont you know, most people dont really think of those two things together. And part of that goes back to my hometown. My hometown used to bill itself as i still bills itself as the birthplace of american independence. And its a long story, but it has something to do with complaining about taxes in the 1600s. This is a massachusetts. So the town itself is steeped in history. And i being kind of the odd man out, wasnt so interested so much in the revolutionary war and the prequel in the colonial times. I got interested in Abraham Lincoln very early, so i was pursuing lincoln, but at the same time, this town is a seacoast town and has a long, beautiful beaches and miles and miles of of saltmarsh and forest and at the time when i was growing up all over the television was this really cool guy named jacques cousteau, french oceanographer. He was on all the time, it seemed. So he won me over and i ended up going into science as my as a field. So my my degrees are all in science. My work was in science. I actually worked as a marine biologist for for several years before somebody burned down my laboratory. No. Another long story. Not going to go into that. I was in an aquatic toxicology and i was eventually hosed down here in d. C. And doing regulatory science both here and in europe and and doing that for over 30 years. So most of my career, my pain career has been science. But all through this time, ive been pursuing Abraham Lincoln. And those of you know about my obsession that i have almost 2000 lincoln books and my house probably more than that because ive got all the Lincoln Group. Lincoln books in my house right now to so im always reading so this was really a way for me to blend. The two. And i think the prospect from the perspective of a scientist, i was able to see things that lincoln scholars wouldnt necessarily see. So thats thats how this whole thing whole got started. So if i could make this work. So one of the things ill talk about is this lincoln has a fragment. Its called a fragment on Niagara Falls. Its something that he wrote never finished, stuck at the desk. Nobody ever knew about it until after he was gone. And they started going through his papers. But he wrote this thing in 1848 because he had you know, he was just one term in congress in 1848 was between the two sessions of congress. And back then people talk about congress doesnt work very much. Well, back then, they really didnt work very much. The only work for like three months. Then they went home and they had their day job until they come back for the next session, which is three months. And thats your two years in between those two sessions, lincoln went up to massachusetts since my home state did a lot of lectures and stomping for zachary taylor. As for president and to help Zachary Zachary taylor when they when the election went on his way back, he went through upstate new york, went to buffalo and then took his family to Niagara Falls, saw his beautiful, beautiful Niagara Falls. And i have information that says he got a haircut while he was there and then he got into a steamship and they went through the great lakes back to chicago, through illinois and michigan canal, which ill mention a little bit back down to springfield and then worked until the next session of Congress Several months later. So on this cruise, on this steamship, this is where we think he wrote this fragment. And when you look at this fragment, you can see theres tons and tons and tons of science. So he starts off in this fragment talking about, well, you know, the physics of it is no great wonder, you know, you have a river. Its flowing along nicely. And then he hits a perpendicular jog. So basically he finds a cliff, falls off of it, crashes into into that river below it sends up a lot of mist and if its sunny, youll get perpetual rainbows. Okay he says thats no big, big stretch. And Everybody Knows that i actually and i talk about in the book how i think he really he understood how rainbows are formed more than most people because he does he talks a lot about how the eye works. So i think he understood that rainbows are formed when the sunlight hits the water droplets which act like prisms and split the light into its component wavelengths. And you get different colors. So theres that. And i talk about, well, you know, whether or not he actually knew that, but i think he did. But he definitely knew some things because he talks about the geology and the erosion of the falls. So he understands that some rocks are harder than other rocks and those rocks that are not quite as hard, they erode faster and that that the falls have eroded back from where they originally were by several miles. And he calculate its now talking to a second about he was a math guy he calculated that the age of the world according to how long the it took for these for these the river to to erode backwards. And he came up with at least 14,000 years now i think Everybody Knows the world is longer is older than 14,000 years. But. 15,000 years is about the end of the last ice age, which is when Niagara Falls started to form, when that day the glaciers were going back. So we know some about that. He understands hydrological cycles. He talks about how the water evaporates from the river and goes up into the atmosphere and cycles around and eventually falls back down. And it doesnt just fall back down on the river and the lake. It falls back on this much wider watershed on the land and drains off into the into the lake and the rivers and eventually goes back down over the falls. And he calculate it again. Well, i think this is should be between 200 and 300,000 square miles. The correct answer is 265,000 square miles. So hes pretty close. So he understands that. And he even talks about paleontology. He says, you know, when all of this was happening and he gets the timelines a little messed up because he starts talking about adam and eve and moses and a few other things. But but but he says that the they mammoth ithe mastodon roamed the earth. Well mammoth or mastons are giant elephants that are extinct. They no longer exist. And we only really know about them from fossils. So we had at least some understanding of fossils and that concept of, of, of science. So this is what i started seeing this and started thinking, you know, this guy knows a lot more science and he lets on. And then most people think the other thing that got me thinking about lincoln and science is this lincolns lecture and discovery and inventions which he wrote right after the lincolndouglas debates and actually gave about half a dozen times in 1859 to never varying levels of audiences and varying levels of of, of applause. Some people said it was not his best work, but when you look at it, it shows an understanding of technology and the growth of man and the development of man. So, of course, because everybody back then, most people had bibles, but not necessarily any other books. He starts, he talks a lot about the bible as using them as time lines. And he talks about the adam and eve and lanham and eve, you know, after the fall, realize, well, wait a second, we need to have some something. So they invented this fig leaf. April and he makes kind of an off color joke later on about about adam and eve and the fig leaf apron, but which i wont go into. But he he talks about that and that leads to clothing and you. Okay, hold on one second. I cant share my screen. He has to tell me how to share. He has to let me share the screen. I cant do it. Yes. Okay. Im going to go back and keep talking. And so he talks about clothing. And initially, clothing is is wearing animal skins. And then they people learn, well, you know, maybe we can just take fibers from an animal like sheep and take wool and make that in the clothing. Or we can take fibers from plants like cotton and make that in clothing. So thats an improvement. And in order to do that, of course, you have to invent things like looms, heirlooms and sewing and and other instruments to be able to to make this clothing out of these fibers. He goes on, he jumps forward. Hes now into talking about iron tools. He talks about steam, which combined with iron, you know, you can power boats and railroads and use it for manufacturing. So youre seeing all of this growth in and man and Building Technology even get to the point where he starts talking about wind power and water power. And now you have to share. This one. I think thats a. No, its this one. Okay. Hopefully were sharing the right screen now and hopefully i can i can see what im doing. Okay. So he talks about wind power and water power and. All right. And so is way ahead of his time talking about these things. So these are all of progression and of man in the building of things. He then talks about how he does that with communicate ocean. So originally were just sort of grunting at each other and pointing and saying, you know, watch out for that mammoth. And we have speech where you can say, you know, that mammoth out at dusk every night, you know, be careful. And then we have writing so you could write it down and hand it around. And people can see that, you know, you should stay away from mammoth set, not at dusk. So you know writing really does allow the communication to expand beyond just a couple of people but writing is difficult because only a few people can do it and only a few people can see what you write, especially when you look at us. People spend time in the in the archives and in other places. A lot of these people have horrible handwriting, so its hard to read the writing anyway. So the next scan in the Printing Press and the Printing Press is really something thats a great equalizer. Prior to the Printing Press, you had to find some monk in a monastery to handwrite and hand copy or your book. Not many people did that, but now you could print this and put it in a book or just print a flier and distribute it wider. Initially, you were doing things like with woodcuts and printing that and then you had movable type. So you could start printing things like books and newspaper versa and that sort of thing. The other aspect of this, besides disseminating it out to a wide audience, is that you started being able to do this in the laymans language prior to this, when you had monks copying, copying bible passages, it was mostly done in things like latin, which most people couldnt read, even if they could read anything. So by printing, printing, press, you can now get it down into the common peoples vernacular. And lincoln starts to realize and he talks about how all of this growth, this technology, science and all this can benefit more people, not just the wealthy people that had benefited before. So, of course, by the civil war, the telegraph is big and he uses that in the civil war. And the telegraph and the railroads may have been more critical to winning the civil war than advanced weaponry today. If he were around, hed be texting and taking phone calls from people on the zoom call that that that are trying to get connected. So lincoln looks at all of this and this is all in his discoveries and inventions lecture which you know a lot of people they said it wasnt that great but he says all of this advancement is done by discoveries, inventions and improvements. So he says earlier on that, you know, man isnt, the only animal who labors. But hes the only animal who improves upon that labor and well, how do you improve upon labor . Th is a text observation, reflection, an experiment. So you see something you think about how it might work and you maybe even like try out Different Things to experiment for those who arent scientists, thats essentially the scientific method. Lincoln was one of those people that all of his colleagues when he was out on the on the circuit, the judges, the lawyers and people that knew him constantly over and over in in the records that we have say, you know, lincoln had a scientific mind. You know, lincoln had a technical mind. You know, lincoln could understand that technical, Technological Advancement better than anybody. He definitely and it was quite logical as well, which comes from from some of families. So lincoln understood that these technological advances were a way they were they were already doing. And he encouraged that democratizing government economy, the economy, education was also part of this. So with hand at hand with it that this was not something that could just benefit the upper class. I mean, you look back, you look at somebody like Thomas Jefferson. Thomas jefferson actually invented several things. He just never patented them. So lincoln still the only president a with a patent, but jefferson invented things. But mostly there were things like a clock and a nice little turntable and and a portable desk. They were all things that made things easier for him. He also had several hundred people. He was enslaving to do all the labor. Lincoln was like, i dont have that. Im the one doing all the labor. I think that these things can benefit me and farmers and other people like like me. So he came to the conclusion that this science and technology, and education would allow all americans to better their condition and it would allow all americans to have an equal chance and the race of life. So this was basically the idea that the government should take an active role in facilitating these things to do for people what people could not do by themselves or could not do as well as the government could do for them to make it easier to give access to everyone. So thats kind of the big picture things that lincoln was looking at. So i will talk one more thing about this discovery and inventions is that in the end, he gets to the very end and it ends very abruptly, but he gets to the very end and he talks about the patent system and says prior to the patent system, if you invented something, your neighbor could steal it, make make copies of it, sell it. You had no you had no recourse. But the patent system changed this. So now for at least a short period of time, in the time varies for a certain period of time, you had the legal protection. So nobody could steal your your your invention or your idea. And that that patent system added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius and discovery and production of new and useful things. And then a kind of a quickly ends the fire genius, of course i took for the court at the title of my book because that is the the ingenuity, the innovation, the inventiveness to creativeness, but justice important is this fuel of interest, which is the fuel of financial interest. So you could be protected and you could market, you could commercialize your idea. And by having that capable entity that put you in a position where you had an incentive to to innovate, to come up with new ideas, and that was critical. So through all all of this and before i away from just one more thing, before i go away from the discoveries, inventions, its really kind of complicated. What exactly the lecture and discoveries inventions actually is. There are two pieces of and when when they first looked at them, they just said, well, you know, he must have just rewrote it for the second piece because theres a little bit of overlap. But then when you look at it, it looks like its its the front and back of the same lecture. And then you look at it and said, well, wait a second, newspapers are talking about things. So he didnt say this, probably a middle piece. And then to make it all even more confusing, there probably was a reading copy in a folder that Robert Lincoln had and lost. Robert had a habit of losing things and he knows, i guess, you know, i had this i know i had, but i cant find it. So i talk about all of that history as well. But lets go back to the science idea. You know, where did lincoln get the science . What did he know . And, you know, i cant go through all of it here because it is quite a lot. But really, there are three ffent areas where lincoln was learning everything but learning and technolog so the first is obviously on the farm. He grows up on a farm. And kenckhe grows up and works on a farm in indiana, basically till hes 21 plu years old. Hes working a farm. Hes doing other things on the side, but he is basically working a farm. And you would think, well, a farm on the frontier. Ye, at cant be much science. When you think about it. It really is. I actually used to work on a farm when i wayoger. My father grew up on fm,o ive done more than my share of farm work and i would never want to do it again. But when you look at at the picture here, i have as a john deere steel plow, which not get invented until after lincoln had said goodbye to farm work and didnt want to have anything to do with it. So he didnt get the benefit of the steel plow, which he could he used in illinois, but he did use earlier plows systems. When you look at the science, you could see that theres things like hydrology. Theres a theres a neat little story when hes seven years old and knob creek in kentucky that year that he just before they moved indiana and his father was planting corn seeds and hes hes dropping pumpkin seeds into the ground and covering them up. And then a week later, theres a huge, huge rain that falls on the hills, none of it on the fields at all, washes down, washes out the soil, washes up seeds, washes out everything. He learned pretty quickly that, you know, the weather and how water moves is pretty critical to survive all that summer. Also the summer with the the year without a summer. So there wasnt there was freezes and it was a horrible summer freeze wise as part of the reason why they left so learns all of that stuff from there. But when he gets indiana, he says okay. I was handed an ax because hes seven years old but hes very tall, seven years old. He was handed an ax and a very rarely put down that most useful instrument for the next 20 years. Why do they have an ax . Because they moved into an unbroken forest. If you ever been to a real unbroken forest, there were dozens and dozens of different species of trees, very dense, a lot of wild animals running around as well, a lot of understory. Its a lot of work to clear that in order to plant your crops. But all these trees are different obviously you get a little small tree. You can cut that out with an ax. If you get a pretty big tree now. So not so easy. They all have different types of roots. Some of them pretty deep. And its hard to get them out. Some trees are hardwoods, some are soft woods. Some have a very dry, fairly dry already. Others are very sappy and very wet, which makes a difference, because if you use something that that is wet as it dry is, its going to crack and twist break. So you need to know the difference between all of these Different Things because youre at some point going to have to use trees to build your log cabin and you dont want it leaking. There were some Civil Engineers when you build a log cabin, you dont want to make sure that when it rains, it doesnt all just flood into your living room. And so there was that kind of science he was learning. Its also learning some. Some food ecology. So while all these things are the crops are growing, you need to know what to what you can forge for any thatll be nutritious versus what you would forage for and eat and kill you. He grew up with learning about disease as mother dies of milk sickness, so they knew what had something to do with milk, but they didnt know really why. But they were understanding, picking up on all these things. A of it being passed down from father to father or father, father, son. The son. So there was a lot that was going on there. And it was also things like soil, nutrition. That was a big, big thing and actually becomes a major issue that increased slavery. So there were a lot of things he was learning on the farm. He didnt, of course, sit and says, im learning hydrology, but he does learn the basis of science. The other aspect is of course, he had formal schooling, but he says, well, i only had less than a year of formal schooling where we learn to read, write and cipher to the rule of three. So, okay, once you learn how to read and write, its just a matter of practice. So any practice in practice and practice and he ran a lot the cipher into rule three. The math side takes a little bit more effort and when you look at this, this is one of the leafs from his some book that herndon got from lincolns stepmother. When you look at tt that those lees there are about 12 sheets that are still in existence. T s stepmother said there were 100 of essheets and all wn together into a book. But by the time that herndon got them, there werent that many left. Even looking at those set you could see that it was a little bit more than what he suggested. Theres you kn, oioly theres addition and subtraction of math and and division, but theres Long Division and i see remember this early on. So some i think some other people remember long divisn down by a method that we dont longer use anymore. Once you get to the answer, have to prove it. So you have tba calculate it all the way back to the original numbers, which i remember doing. And its very frustrating when you get through the proofing and it comes out with totally Different Number than youre supposed to get. So that so he was learning that, but he said he says in his in his autobiography, you know he says, you know i read all the way through pikes and there were some other math books that he looked at. So i said, okay, let me see whats in pikes arithmetic. And i get pikes arithmetic from that time period. And i look at it and theres a lot more in there than just deciphering to the rule of three. And even on the sheets, you can see theres, theres, theres single rule of three, a double rule of three in verse rule of three, theres discounts, theres an Interest Rate calculations. And you can see on and this in the top right there, its a shilling you had a british currency units and you had american or state currency units. You also had the same for british weights and state weights. So all of this conversions back and forth. So there was a lot more there than than he adms d i go deeply into the book about what is in these these other books that that he read. Finally you get to the selfridge reading you know, the his selfstudy lincoln was an autodidact which means he studied on by himself and he read he learned on his own. And he was very much capable of being able to do that, which some people arent. So this obviously for those people whove been out there to new salem, this is a picture i took of the top part of the surveyor statue thats out in new Salem Lincoln h become a surveyor, amongst other things that he did. You think, well. Well, what what do you need to be auryor . Its not just a compass and a chain. You dont just look through there and just say, okay, thats, you know, 50 meters. And, you know, the compass. You haveo asure it and you mark it down. Heays he had to learn how to be a surveyor and he had to do that by reading a oflint and, some of of of another author whose name i could forget. And so i looked at those books. And when you go through flint, one of the things that jumps out the big things that jump out is obviously he was learning geometry because geometry, the science of shapes, the mathematics of shapes, those are thats important to surveying. But he was also learning trigonometry. I dont know how many people took trigonometry in high school or college, but its its signs cosine is tangent sequence. I mean, the inverse of all of those things, its as, you know, figuring out angles. Its its its you think itd be itd be its fairly simple. Theres only so many angles, right . Its actually quite complicated. And he was learning all of that. But there was also much, much more that he was learning and that those books. So he when it comes to mathematics, he was way ahead of his peers when it came to mathematics and this of course, was long before he studied and nearly mastered the six books of euclids geometry. Euclids elements, which i also went through. And theres some complicated stuff in there now. Im you know, i was scientist, but i was an environmental scientist, not mathematician. So a lot of that stuff is out of my league. But you know, lincoln was was learning all this stuff, so hes gaining this knowledge. Hes gaining some science knowledge and ecology some hydrology. Im not quite sure where he picked up the paleontology yet, but, you know, hes learning a lot of math. Hes learning a lot of things. So from there, i go into really the second main section, i guess in the sense that, you know, how do they implement this in his life . So he was a politician and he was a lawyer was his two main jobs as an adult. So as a politician he was in a the Illinois State legislature. For four terms eight years. And he, the whig leader and, the whigs and lincoln, push this american system of, economic development, the american system was basically believing in the modernization of the nation through government supported, which is a key point. Government supported in improvements, which is we might call infrastructure today. Now there also push the idea of a National Bank to help pay for it and protective tariff to protect innovations from from cheap foreign imports. The main thing was this internal imprudence. So what was internal improvements at that time when it began with roads . Now it didnt. The roads they were building did not look like this. This is Dwight Eisenhowers internal Improvement Program in the 1950s with the entering the interstate highway system. Lincoln was a little bit like, lets just have a road thats packed down. And as it is is raised so that it wont flood and turn in the mud like ive been used to, on moving from farm the farm and moving from, you know, riding my horse the on the circuit. Russell making navigable rivers, this was a little selfserving because he was living in new salem. The Sangam On River runs through the mill, past the mill in salem. Lincoln worked and the salmon river is this very small, narrow, meandering river that if you went with us when a group went to out to illinois in 16. Youll know that river doesnt even go by the mill anymore. Its its its changed direction and its not there. He wanted that to be nap made navigable so you can get steamships up the river. It didnt work for for the salmon but it did for other rivers. So that was a big a big issue. Another one was canals. You know we just cut across some of these meanders, make a straight straight shot. We can have canals and the big one that he pushed was the illinois and michigan canal. Those are know something about the internal Improvements Program illinois and. You know in hindsight it was of a disaster they had come up with all these programs for all these things i mentioned, including railroads and then wall kind of created a financial crash that rippled across the United States illinois, went into into terrible and it couldnt afford these and Infrastructure Projects anymore. But lincoln kept pushing. He said, you know, we can get the federal government to help us. We can get this to help us. You know, we can get financing, you know, and and he finally it kept getting narrowed down. Eventually, one of the biggest projects that did get built was this illinois and michigan canal that lincoln just kept insisting on. The illinois michigan canal is a pretty critical canal. Lincoln had told his friend joshua speed, i want to be known as the Dewitt Clinton of illinois. Now, those who who Dewitt Clinton is, he was the governor of new york when the erie canal was put into service and he had been instrumental prior to being being governor in getting the erie canal built. The erie canal runs from new york, from the hudson river, albany, over to lake erie. And it was gangbusters for the new york economy, the new york state economy and the new england economy, who could now more easily get products all the way through to lake erie and through the great lakes to chicago, the illinois, michigan canal did get built, and it goes from chicago to lasalle on the illinois river, which then goes to the Mississippi River. So finish that connection. So you much more easily move product across across by land instead of having go down the coast or having to put them on on, on wagons and move them the muddy roads. So this was it was it was critical to making illinois grow and chicago went from a few, you know, very small village, a few hundred people to tens of thousands within a couple of years. It was very quick growing. And then of course, its millions now, although the illinois michigan canal is only there for in pieces now. Its not mostly not there. So this is one area where he pushed it and he did things when pushing Infrastructure Projects when he was in in congress and when even when he was president , to get financing for this. One of the things that lincoln did, he was in illinois. And after this financial crisis that caused a lot of problems paying for these projects he was proposing ways for the federal government to either sell land and give the money to the states, not just illinois, but other states, to help pay for these projects or to give the land to the states and let them sell it. And then or buy it cheap and then sell it for higher in order to pay for these projects. So he was always working and he always set knew that, you know, the federal government and the state governments had a role in these Infrastructure Projects and bringing this technology forward. Okay. So what was the other thing he did as on the other side and his legal career . So as a lawyer, you know, early on hes doing mostly debt cases, hes doing divorces and. And when you look at the total, the majority were actually those times, small cases he would charge 5 and that would be but later, especially in the 1850s, he began doing more and more cases that were to science and technology. So he was doing more patent related cases. He was doing medical malpractice cases where he had to learn medical jargon and medical issues. And he was doing a lot of these Technology Cases where new machinery that was being built. So all of this stuff was going on in that time period. It was a huge in technology during the early 1800s. And what lincoln did is he encouraged that and then later on all to say how he set up to go even further beyond after his death. So this this picture actuay kind of reminiscent of the after in case was just one of the bigger more important cases that did related to technology and science. And its kind oa mix of everything. So the ap after him was a steamship, him out of saint louis, heads north on the Mississippi River and promptly decides promptly, i dont know if they decided promptly crashes into the very First Railroad bridge across the missisppi river. Its only been up for two weeks now. This railroad actuly if youve been to rock island and its pret cool to go to rock island and on the on the davenport, iowa side of of there, theres a really cool statue of of lioln. And the lincoln talking to a kid out this case. And theres really two bridges. One goes from illinois to the island and, one from the island across the rest of the place to whats now iowa. So this this this the steamship crashes into the bridge, catches fire, burns down to its hull. Luckily, none of the passengers were injured, but they lost millions of dollars of cargo in the course of the ship itself. It also damaged the bridge to the point they couldnt run trains over it and theyd only just started running trains over it. So lincoln takes this case. Hes working for the railroads and he did quite a lot of work for the railroads and so i something just popped up my screen. So goes out there and he is you know, you can see where he writes here. Hes about to look speak of the angular position of the piers he went out to. There. He took his own experience on the flat boat. But also had don and i talked about earlier in the book about he was a pilot of a steamship pilot in the sangam on the river. He built canals, personal. He helped build canals. So there was a lot of of a background he had that he could bring to it. Plus he hired an engineer and the two of them went out there and they worked out the speed of the river, the speed of the ship, any kind of the angular position work as it curves little bit. And then the bridge goes across all this information and even eddies that circle around from the pierce. And he argues very technically to the jury that there was no way that this was an obstruction. This was either, you know, negligence on the part of the steamship captain or it was intentional is no way it would have hit another. And he convinces eight of the 12 jurors. So because he convinces eight of the 12 jurors, its a hung jury. And and that the trial is over for that it that time at least and eventually goes it goes on and they retry it. But it doesnt anymore because by this time the railroads have rebuilt this bridge and are running trains across it. So what this really does both from from two perspectives. One, it shows how really understood the science and technology. And he really got into it, but also how he could that technical aspect. And then rephrase it in a way that the jurors could understand. Because most jurors remember the o. J. Simpson trial, where there were a lot of Technical Details and the jurors, you know, couldnt understand a lot of it. And, of course, it went on for so long. But this is he he he summarizes in a in a very simple way so the jurors could understand. So that was important. But the other part of this thats really important is the idea that the steamships which were supported by the Steamship Companies they had a monopoly on most of the commerce going west because they had to go go down the river to new orleans and then they would go out to the gulf. Youd have to get it off the steamship crossing across the panama or costa rica, get it back on another steamship and out to the west coast. So this commerce was being dictated. The Steamship Companies, they didnt the railroads. Railroads could go east or west. And if they could go all the way across, get a bridge across the Mississippi River, then they could go all the way to the west coast, which they eventually did, because of lincoln, the transcontinental railroad. So this was a critical kind of juncture in in our developing end that lincoln essentially set the precedent that allowed the railroads to spread the way that they were able to spread. And you look around, we have a lot of railroads carrying a lot of a lot of product, not so many steamships. So, you know, certainly one for the railroads. Okay. So the last part of this, the book, the last four chapters, i look at the civil war, various aspects in the civil war. So one, as i look at the technology and look at weaponry and things like that, another as i look at science issues and i even look at the assassination and things like embalming and and like that. Now, this is not a science book. Its not its not something have to worry about it being too technical. Its a book about lincoln. So i focus on what Abraham Lincoln did. And when you geto the war, im just going to show pictures. But im not ing to talk about this because do im going to talk about these in depth when i do the civil war roundtable later. So basically, lioln, though, encouraged and had the increase in technology and the advancement of technology in weaponry and in other eas during, the war, eecially the use of the telegraph, the railroad. So ill talk about that. Ill do a whole lecture on that. So im like, i spend much time, but i do want to spend the last part of this on how lincoln of institutionalized science prior to the civil war, there really wasnt much science institutionalized at the federal level. You know, the british had the royal society, the french had their royal academy, you know. There were other countries had things we basically didnt have much of anything other than some private clubs. What we did have with the smithsonian, thanks to a british guy named smithson who gave all this money to the u. S. , even though he had never beenere and said, you know, make a smithsonian institution. So smithsoni hadeen doing research, Scientific Research and writing scientific reports. Thats basically all it had been doing before, prior to the civil war. During a civil war, lincoln really relied on the smithsonian to begin with. But especially this guy who is the is joseph henry, the first secretary of the smithsonian. The smithsonian had been around maybe operational for eight or ten years or so prior to the civil r. They laid the framework for it that the cornerstone for wn lincoln wasn the congress in 1847. He actually saw them laying the bill starting to build this this castle. D this was the only thing the smithsonian was at the time. But joseph had became kind of an informal sence advisor to lincoln and lincoln always count on him is that hhas science or technology issue. He would call Joseph Henry Joseph Henry up being the head of this something that lincoln and well set up called the Permanent Commission of the navy. So lincoln i think everybody here knows lincoln had an open door policy, kept walking in and theyd say, you know, ive got new gun. Ive got this new weapon. Lincoln, as it showed in the last slide. Lincoln went out and tested some of these himself the spencer repeating rifle. He almost got his head blown off testing a high rocket out of navy yard. He didnt and he skipped the next which which was even worse. So so he set up this Permanent Commission the navy to formally look at all of these inventions. So people kept coming to lincoln because they knew, especially if it got turned down, that they the permanent they would say, wait a second, im going to go talk to lincoln. They would talk to lincoln and they try to get him through the back door. So he was still doing this stuff. So joseph, henry did that. Lincoln also signed into law the National Academy of sciences in the middle of the civil war. Now National Academy, theres some argument as to how much lincoln did. Rather, he just signed the bill and he didnt know what it was. I show that he knew a little bit more than that, and he probably was the senator from massachusetts visits henry wilson to to make sure that this happened. But he also had spoken with with the scientist who agassi who was the one who was pushing the national and of course, joseph henry was on the charter member of the National Academy. One of the things National Academy did in the civil war is they started looking at things like accomplices, ships, which did really well on wooden ships with with with sails not so well. You surround it with ironclad material. Doesnt do too well for a compass. So they had to work that out. In fact, you know, as as ironclad skull. When i talk more in the other in the other lecture lincoln was was critical to getting ironclad ironclad spill. Another issue that he clearly had more of an input on the department of agriculture. Lincoln went to congress in his very firual message. Congress december 1861, and which is the st the union. And he said, know we need a departf agriculture. All weve got now is a desk in a back room, some old guy where some. Guy thats looking at some statistits about it. We need to do this. I think everybody in tows that lincoln hated farm. He wanted he couldnt waitet off the farm. But he did understand that at this point, people in the United States were still employed in farming north and south, even though the north had much more manufacturing, they still were still mostly so he pushed this idea and got it made. And the Congress Quickly passed a bill and he signed and he got a commissioner of of the department of agriculture. And the idea was to collect. Do some Scientific Research on seeds, on nutrients, soil, nutrition, and then communicate this all back to farmers. So this was a pretty radical thing that was that was started at that time. And in fact, it exists i mean, in my formal career, i worked with the Agricultural Extension service today. And while ten years ago and and on these Different Things. So this is something a still exists so the final thing ill ill mention because im talking about how lincolns institute analyzing science is this last piece which is this is Yosemite Valley lincoln signed into into law the cemetery grant. And what it did is it took ral land in california gave it to the state of california and said, okay, you could keep this land, but you have to keep it as a natural area. You have to keep it maintain it all men and women, you cantf change that. So well well let you have it. So its the first time federal land given to in case a state for permanent protection as a park system now later on after lincoln was gone the park service the National Park system was created and yellowstone became the very first National Park in california. That now well, just give it back give the land back to to the federal government and it went back to the federal government and the federal government made it the third National Park. So Yosemite Valley, and the Mariposa Grove of big trees. The big and redwoods became the third National Park. And and ill just tell you right now, if anybody asked me what the second National Park is between yellowstone and and yosemite, i dont know somebody looks at up wall and just case somebody else it so anyway there just to reiterate you know lincoln knew a lot of science he understood the idea of technology and a lot more than people know and a lot more than he let on. But he definitely knew a lot more. And in the book, obviously, i go through all these details and and talk more about it. And like i said, its not a science book. Its a its a history book and are few here who might have read it already. So you can ask them. But basically he saw science and technology and education, which goes hand in hand with science. Technology as a way for the the everyday people benefit. I should add that in addition to these things i just mentioned, he signed into law the homestead act, which allowed people to get land moving west the land grant act, which gave land and money and to states to create colleges that would teach science and an engineer right and. He also signed Pacific Railroad railway act determined the beginning of of where that would start to have a railroad go all the way across to california. Remember a lot that in the middle was still not yet. So he did all of this because he felt the federal government was critical to things that that people be able to better their condition. But in order to have a to do that you needed to the burdens that were out there for people so that people everybody could benefit not just the wealthy elites, the educated, but everybody farmers. Somebody starts a factory, somebody has their own, your shoe making business or or blacksmithing business that everybody benefit from it. So i will in there and take questions obviously this is my book so you know there are books over there i have copies of my old book over there as theyre very, very different books. One is the older one is just filled with graphics. The new book, no graphics. But i think that i think it does okay on its own without pictures and i will stop there and i will take whatever questions you have for as long as you guys can put up with it. The exact reason. You got knocked off your internet. Do we lose you just for 5 minutes . Okay. I need to get back in somehow. Yeah, i probably to. I probably need to go back here. Why cant i see my. There is. I guess, zoomers lost my fantastic last 5 minutes, but. So anyway, have any any questions . I have to stay here because the know adrienne you come across i mean. 41 dan did we get a microphone. Oh yeah. Yeah. Theres one here in your refrigerator. Yeah. Now i was. How did you discover that fragment about his trip to Niagara Falls and the stuff he wrote after that . What about the fragment . How did you discover that . How did i discover it . Everything. Yeah, i didnt. I didnt discover it. Somebody else discovered it a long time ago. It actually i about a year ago we had ron white here to talk to us while on zoom to talk to us and ron white had a book came out year called lincoln in private. And the whole book is all of these little fragments of things that lincoln would write. Some of them are fairly long, some of them are very short, and they basically never saw the light of day. There were a couple that he might have cribbed from for later on lectures the second inaugural was a lot. One of the things he wrote but the very first he took ten of them and passed them out the very first one that he passed out is the fragment on Niagara Falls. He looked at it totally from a position of a linguistic position, its literary benefit. You know, im a scientist, so i so im looking through and im seeing science pop out, you know, i didnt i, i think the literary part was that that great, you know, its not his best work but its what i saw the science so, you know, thats one of the things that i started thinking about and and that that this wasnt that there was science involved in what lincoln was doing. One of the other things i didnt talk about it today much, but if you saw on the opening screen that little picture in, the very bottom right of patent, i think in this room probably knows that lincolns the president with a patent. Hes not the only president who invented Thomas Jefferson invented things that Thomas Jefferson invented things that helped Thomas Jefferson. Lincoln invented, he thought would help commerce and transportation. So when you look at this model of of what lincoln invented, which is a method for ships steamship over shoals over a low you shallows it didnt it it doesnt he didnt know it at the i havent seen anything that suggests he understood that he using the archimedes principle which is a scientific principle of and displacement. So you things that are sit in the water pushed down in the water and displace it and how much they displace it is as a of its weight but also buoyancy. So lincoln understood that concept that scientific probably not by name but he understood concept and developed this thing these bellows that you could fill up with air which would increase the buoyancy and raise the ship up so thats that thats one of the things he talked about and i actually i go through it when i started with niagara we got through Niagara Falls and he takes a steamship through the great as hes going what was called the Detroit River from help me out with the lakes, huron and and superior. Somewhere in there you going through this fairly narrow area and he runs they go to his his ship his steamship passes another steamship thats stuck in the shallows and the captain is sending all this, all his crew overboard with barrels and and boards and whatever they can get to get it underneath it. That give it some some lift buoyancy because theyre lighter. So he watched that. And you combine that with his earlier experiences getting on the mill dam in new salem on second boat trip and combine it with some other things he had learned and probably also some of his reading. And thats how he came up with his patent. So he did understand the scientific principles behind this, even though he was not a scientist, he didnt study scientific texts so much, but he read read a lot. One thing ill mention is he read the annuals of science, which herndon had brought home a copy of the annual of science, which basically every year they would put out a book and. It would summarize all the different scientific studies that were being done. And in very short summaries. Lincoln read that and he read through it, and then he told her to go and buy all the rest of them, you know, because they would come out for ten or 12 years at that point and they went out and bought the rest of them. So i think thats where he got a lot the science where i cant find a specific that that he read. Yes. David thank you for a wonderful presentation. I learned a lot. What whats the most surprising thing that you learned about lincoln through all your research there . Most most surprising thing that i learned about lincoln about through all of this. Its its a its hard to tell. Ive been ive been studying it now for so long that im trying to remember what i was surprised at. I guess overall, i was surprised just generally how much he knew, because when when you look at you read that fragment, Niagara Falls, theres a lot of science and you know we dont know when he wrote that but presumably hes writing this on a steamship on the way. You know, time on the way back to illinois. You didnt have any source material. But we do know even by that point that he had been reading a lot of these technical books, the math books, especially. He understood those a a and i talk about some of the other books that he he you definitely read. And then there are some books that not sure if he read but you know, those books have the information that he seems to understand. So i think thats the biggest thing is that there were just so much there because, you know, i think we all know lincoln, this little autobiography and he gives it to yesterday i guess several versions to different people and they build it into biographies for his president ial run and in those he very he what he writes he downplays is the we dont need to see that he downplays the fact that his background he basically is talking about the science as if you know while all i learned was reading and referring to the role three, it was like, well, you know, but i studied flint and i looked at flint and i was like, thats a thats a thats a big math course. Thats not just flint. I mean, thats thats a big math course. And even when you go through pikes arithmetic, which is know a basic arithmetic, i can guarantee you a lot of people in this room cant do a lot of that stuff in there. I know i cant. And you know, i dont know what they teach in high schools and colleges today, but there are some there are some pretty interesting in there. And he went the way through it. He also you know, he downplays it. He said, well, you know, the there wasnt really any stand words for teachers, you know, a teacher was, anybody who basically could come in there and claim that he understood, you reading, writing. And so referring to the role of three and could convince parents to pony up some money to pay for a subscription then to make it worth his while to teach their kids. She if if if if someone wandered into town or sojourner into town. Claiming to know latin, then he was looked upon a wizard. The standards were not very for teachers out there and in fact, one of the things that in fact, i guess was this was surprising he had very, you know, that very little schooling. But by the time was at the last bit of schooling, he was probably just walking his sister because they had to walk five miles to school. He was probably just walking his sister, their because he knew more than the teacher did because he was he was he was ahead of the teachers and he had teacher that would the other spelling book in the spelling books. You know i went through all the spelling books and the grammars and everything. Spelling books i gave you. You know, you start with a three letter, one syllable words of three letters, four letters, five letters and once you get to the end, if there were students that got that far, he said, well, ill know what to do with you. Just start from the beginning. So he would send the advanced students to the beginning to start again. So, you know, he learned most of what he learned from on his own. I think this is one of the big takeaways from lincoln as far as lessons for us today is he never stopped learning the just how he went to congress and he said, you know, these guys are smarter than me. I better learn some. I better study euclids geometry and he gets to that. The civil war and doesnt know a whole lot about the military. He had a very short time in the in the black hawk war when he was 23. And thats thats it didnt any real service so he gets the civil war and hes like i dont know whats going on i better go to the library of congress. And he takes books out including, you know, alex book strategy and on on strategy of war and he takes all of these books out and he learns about you know, how do you wage war . Whats the strategy . What kind of materials do you have . And learns all the way through it, at least until grant took over. And then he said, well, i dont need these books anymore. And he gave them back. Thats when he gave them back right after our grant was made, put in charge. So yeah, its pretty interesting how he how he learned over time and kept learning over time. And i can relate to that because i, you know, i learned the science and in order to live in science and consulting like i was in, youve got to learn a new thing every night. You know, youve got to be an expert on something. And by the next morning for your client and youre in order to stay in business, you had to keep adapting. And then i quit that and i wrote a book on nikola as well. Now ive got to learn there is about nikola tesla and Electrical Engineering and meet all these you know, build a whole new network of people. And that worked out pretty well. And then i was like, okay, edison. Well, edison wasnt so hard because i had already learned a lot of the stuff for tesla. And then and then by that time, i was like, you know, i need to get into lincoln. You know, i, you know, i really was into lincoln long before that. And ill give you a little bit of. I gave you a little bit of Insider Information this for this book i had been running my head for many, many, many years. I pitched the idea for this book, a bunch of asians at a writing conference in january of 2012, which was the same that i joined the Lincoln Group of dc. And they were like, oh, this is a really cool idea. And i ended up writing a book about nikola tesla and then i wrote a couple other little ebooks and then i wrote book on on Thomas Edison and im like, i want to write this book about lincoln and science. And then i wrote this the earlier book about lincoln, and then i said, i am not writing another book until write this book about like it and science its actually a good thing that it had taken a while to do because not only did i get ten more years of research in and i did a lot of road trips and drives to go around the places where he grew up and lived and and worked. But i spent a lot more time in the library of congress and at the archives before they locked it up. And a lot other libraries. So i was able to really refine the idea in that time. Right. So, so this, this is a book thats been a long time, a long time coming. The next book wont take so long. Thank you, don don. Mckenna, the other mike, john, the matt Mackinac Island was the second National Park in northern michigan, but ill come back. I dont think i can think we lost some connection and lost. Yeah. Youre gone. Anyhow. So because of being at this smithsonian, i talk about the lincoln flotation device a lot. And apparently the problem was it was too hard to connect it. Do you know if anybody ever did perfect . The thing and do they ever work . Im going to go back out there right. Yeah. So john whelans asking if anybody ever out this thing and and the answer is, is, well, they tested it. Did perfect it. No, but they did test it. And i dont know if anybody saw this podcast a couple of weeks ago now or Something Like that. I was actually interviewed and quoted in a salon article by guy was writing an article lincoln and this and this invention is his patent and i him a link to the the Abraham Lincoln Association Journal had an article in there in 2018 where an engineer went into that into his patent and he even built pieces of the model and tested them in in water troughs and everything and he came to the conclusion that, well, it might have worked and which was the conclusion i had already reached anyway. But, you know, it, it was ungainly. It had a lot of poles and a lot of ropes and, pulleys. It might have worked, maybe on some on some boats, but probably for bigger ships. It wouldnt have worked with the technology at the time. There was a way for him to like either you could pump air into these inflatable bladders that would come down either hand pumping or on some ships. They might have steam and they could take the steam and and steam engine and use that to pump up these these bladders. So i guess the bottom line is it was possible it wasnt very practical though two other things about that as far as the possible and the practical the the concept of inflatable bladders and is actually used today by the navy as part of how they race like if a ship sinks, how raise it they get an inflatable bladders under it and they pump in air and they can lift it. That way in part to get to get guidelines on direct from from cranes and things like that. But. So the concept is actually being used today. But when other part of this that i look at is, you know, when just think about we always think, wow, that was kind of a strange little thing. And kind of cool. I dont have it on that screen. Ill go all the way back to the beginning saying on the bottom here, theres whats not on this model are all the ropes and pulleys. So hes using not only this archimedes, that that the raising the the ship buoyancy and displacemt. Hes using the idea of leverage and levers and because of the ropes and pulleys and being able to get more power. By the way, you connect these ropes and pulleys. So, you know, hes hes a little bit further up than than a lot of people at the time. I wouldnt expect to see this actually being used out on the Potomac River anytime soon, though. But if you do, id like to see it if you decide to build one. And the other question. Okay, i think weve were all tired out now. My throat is tired out for sure. So hopefully at least own people got got some of this and thank you all for coming out tonight