America's Worst Winter Ever

By Ray Raphael
In January 1780, fighting in the Revolutionary War came to a standstill as Mother Nature transformed America into a frigid hell. For the only time in recorded history, all of the saltwater inlets, harbors and sounds of the Atlantic coastal plain, from North Carolina northeastward, froze over and remained closed to navigation for a period of a month or more. Sleighs, not boats, carried cords of firewood across New York Harbor from New Jersey to Manhattan. The upper Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and the York and James rivers in Virginia turned to ice. In Philadelphia, the daily high temperature topped the freezing mark only once during the month of January, prompting Timothy Matlack, the patriot who had inscribed the official copy of the Declaration of Independence, to complain that "the ink now freezes in my pen within five feet of the fire in my parlour, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon."


The weather took an especially harsh toll on the 7,460 patriot troops holed up with General George Washington in Morristown, N.J., a strategic site 30 miles west of the British command in New York City. On January 3, the encampment was engulfed by "one of the most tremendous snowstorms ever remembered," army surgeon James Thacher wrote in his journal. "No man could endure its violence many minutes without danger of his life." When tents blew off, soldiers were "buried like sheep under the snow…almost smothered in the storm." The weather made it impossible to get supplies to the men, many of whom had no coats, shirts or shoes and were on the verge of starvation. "For a Fortnight past the Troops both Officers and Men, have been almost perishing for want," George Washington wrote in a letter to civilian officials dated January 8.

The winter at Valley Forge two years earlier is a celebrated part of America's Revolutionary mythology, while its sequel at Morristown is now largely forgotten. And therein lies a paradoxical tale. The climatic conditions the Continental Army faced at Valley Forge and a year later at Middlebrook, N.J., were mild compared to those they endured at Morristown during the harshest winter in American history. "Those who have only been in Valley Forge and Middlebrook during the last two winters, but have not tasted the cruelties of this one, know not what it is to suffer," wrote Baron Johann de Kalb, a German soldier who served as a major general in the Continental Army.

So why do we remember Valley Forge and not Morristown? The answer, in a nutshell, is that Valley Forge better fits the triumphal story of the Revolution passed down from generation to generation, while Morristown is viewed as an embarrassment. At Valley Forge, the story goes, soldiers suffered quietly and patiently. They remained true to their leader. At Morristown, on the other hand, they threatened to mutiny.

Nobody celebrated either Valley Forge or Morristown during the Revolution itself. The sorry plight of the poor men and teenage boys who comprised the Continental Army was a guarded secret, kept from the British, who must not know their vulnerability, and from the French, who might deny aid to a weak ally. Further, the failure of civilian governments to supply troops was just that—a failure, not to be publicized.

By the early 19th century, however, writers who looked to the Revolutionary War to inspire a new wave of patriotism developed a storyline that transformed the troubled winter at Valley Forge into a source of pride. Soldiers had endured their sufferings without complaint, drilled obediently under the instructions of Baron Von Steuben, and emerged strong and ready to fight. "How strong must have been their love of liberty?" Salma Hale asked rhetorically in a romanticized history written in 1822 for schoolchildren as well as adults. If Valley Forge was the low point of the war, the story went, it was also the turning point. After that, things got better.
For the Valley Forge story to work, a climatically normal winter was transformed into one of the most severe—something akin to the one soldiers experienced at Morristown two years later. Historical memory of Morristown was conveniently suppressed, in part because it revealed that the soldiers' hardships continued throughout the war, virtually unabated. Even worse, Morristown afforded clear proof that the soldiers' suffering was not always so silent.


At Morristown "we were absolutely, literally starved," Private Joseph Plumb Martin recalled after the war. "I do solemnly declare that I did not put a single morsel of victuals into my mouth for four days and as many nights, except a little black birch bark which I gnawed off a stick of wood, if that can be called victuals. I saw several of the men roast their old shoes and eat them, and I was afterwards informed by one of the officers' waiters, that some of the officers killed and ate a favorite little dog that belonged to one of them."

The prospect of mass desertions worried General Nathanael Greene. "Here we are surrounded with Snow banks, and it is well we are, for if it was good for traveling, I believe the Soldiers would take up their pack and march," he reported on January 5. The following day, Greene's fears were almost realized. "The Army is upon the eve of disbanding for want of Provisions," he wrote. Although the army did not break up as Greene feared, men deserted almost daily, about at the same rate as they had been leaving throughout the war, including the winter spent at Valley Forge. The rest toughed it out, and most of those survived.

Ironically, the largest threat to the continued existence of the Continental Army came in the spring, with the passing of harsh weather. Then, soldiers hoped for better fare at their mess, and they did get some food—but not with the regularity they would have preferred. The army's supply line continued to experience periodic lapses. When nature was to blame, soldiers found the inner strength to endure, but when human error was the cause of their discontent, they were less tolerant. So when little meat turned to no meat in the middle of May, many felt it was time to force the issue.

"The men were now exasperated beyond endurance; they could not stand it any longer," Private Martin recalled. "They saw no alternative but to starve to death, or break up the army, give all up and go home. This was a hard matter for the soldiers to think upon. They were truly patriotic, they loved their country, and they had already suffered everything short of death in its cause; and now, after such extreme hardships to give up all was too much, but to starve to death was too much also. What was to be done?"

Finally, on May 25, Martin and his fellow soldiers in the Connecticut line snapped. It was a "pleasant day," Martin recalled, but as the troops paraded, they started "growling like soreheaded dogs." That evening they disregarded their officers and acted "contrary to their orders." When an officer called one of the soldiers "a mutinous rascal," the rebel defiantly pounded the ground with his musket and called out, "Who will parade with me?" Martin reported the response: "The whole regiment immediately fell in and formed" with the dissenter. Then another regiment joined in, and they both started marching to the beat of the drums—without orders. Officers who stepped in to quell the incipient mutiny found bayonets pointed at their chests. Meanwhile, the defiant troops continued parading and "venting our spleen at our country and government, then at our officers, and then at ourselves for our imbecility in staying there and starving in detail for an ungrateful people who did not care what became of us."

Two days after the men had so dramatically registered their complaints, a shipment of pork and 30 head of cattle arrived in camp. The immediate crisis was over, but a series of escalating protests occurred in and around Morristown the following winter as well. Throughout the war, American soldiers did not suffer in silence, as the Valley Forge myth suggests. They kept themselves fed and alive however they could, even when that meant speaking out. By remembering Morristown, we acknowledge the can-do, rambunctious spirit that characterized Revolutionary soldiers and helped them carry on.

Ray Raphael is the author of Founding Myths and Founders.

America's First Women Aviators

By Ernest B. Furgurson
The homespun movie star and aviation buff Will Rogers couldn't help laughing as he watched eager pilots rev up to start the biggest women's air race the nation had ever seen. When a couple of them glanced into their mirrors before climbing into the cockpit, he wisecracked, "It looks like a powder-puff derby to me."

The nickname stuck, but there was nothing frivolous about the 20 fliers who took off in August 1929 in the first Women's Air Derby, an eight-day race from Santa Monica to Cleveland that included 15 stops they had to locate using only road maps and dead reckoning. The women all wanted to prove they could fly as fast and as far as men. Likewise, there was nothing frivolous about the rough country and inevitable mishaps that lay ahead. Pancho Barnes collided with a spectator's car when she landed her Travel Air biplane in Pecos, Texas, and Ruth Nichols crashed into a tractor with her Rearwin K-R in Columbus. Both women walked away with minor injuries, but Marvel Crosson, who had previously spent six years flying in sub-Arctic Alaska and Canada, was not so lucky. She apparently succumbed to carbon monoxide fumes in mid-flight and her body was found in the Arizona desert next to her wrecked clipped-wing Travel Air.

The sentimental favorite of the race was Amelia Earhart. She had made headlines the year before as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic—as a passenger, not a pilot—and would later attain legendary status when she mysteriously disappeared while attempting a solo flight around the world in 1937. Earhart placed a respectable third among the 14 pilots who finished the Women's Air Derby. But she was far from the most accomplished pilot in the race. That distinction belonged to Louise Thaden, who was already the holder of simultaneous women's records for speed (156 mph), altitude (20,260 feet) and endurance (22-plus hours), and easily took first in the Air Derby, completing the 2,700-mile zigzag route in a total of 20 hours, 19 minutes flying time. Nor was Earhart the most daring aviatrix of her era. A host of other women, whose exploits are now largely forgotten, were just as brash and, in some cases, a lot more foolhardy.

Earhart had just turned 13 in 1910 when an adventurous young New Yorker named Blanche Stuart Scott headed west to become the first woman to drive a car from coast to coast. It took Scott 69 roundabout days, and her biggest inspiration was not the scenery, but what she saw at Dayton, Ohio. There she met the Wright brothers, teaching flying seven years after they made the first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C. She was hooked. On returning east, she signed up for lessons with another aviation pioneer, Glenn H. Curtiss.

"In those days, they didn't take you up in the air to teach you," Scott recalled years later. "They told you this and that. You got in. They kissed you good-by and trusted to luck you'd get back."

On September 5, 1910, Scott climbed into what she called "an undertaker's chair" in front of "a motor that sounded like a whirling bolt in a dish pan." The wooden pusher propeller blew her bloomers and three petticoats like sails as she started along the runway. Curtiss had fixed a governor to the engine; she was supposed to practice taxiing only. But either the governor failed to keep the plane from being lifted by a gust of wind—or she intentionally flipped it away—and she was suddenly airborne. She rose 40 feet before settling safely back to earth. It wasn't much of a flight, being officially undocumented and apparently accidental. But it was first.
Scott's status as the nation's lone woman pilot lasted only 11 days. That summer, another New Yorker, a musician, dentist, painter, linguist and trapshooter named Bessica Raiche, was finishing a plane that she and her husband built in their living room. On September 16, without ever taking a flying lesson, she went aloft at Hempstead Plains, Long Island, in her frail, homemade bamboo-and-silk craft. Her flight was the first officially credited to any woman by the Aeronautical Society of America. Before the year was out, she had done it 25 times, cracking up once but walking away intact.

A year after Scott and Raiche took flight, a magazine and screen writer named Harriet Quimby did them one better by becoming the country's first female licensed pilot. In 1912, to avoid tipping off rivals, she secretly traveled to England to fly across the English Channel. Doing so earned her another women's first, but in the press her feat was buried by news of the sinking of the great ship Titanic a day earlier.

That did not diminish Quimby's celebrity value: When the famous aviator Calbraith Rodgers died in a crash, she was hired to replace him as flying spokesman for Vin Fiz, a popular grape soda. Wearing a purple satin costume, she entered the Boston Aviation Meet at Squantum, Mass. Just 11 months after she earned her pilot's license, she was flying in a new Blériot monoplane with the event's organizer as a passenger, when the craft pitched forward and tossed both of them to their deaths.

Quimby's friend, Matilde Moisant, had two brothers who were fliers, one of them killed in a crash. She got her pilot's license within days of Quimby; the next month Moisant outdid her by reaching 1,200 feet to win an altitude trophy. They toured together, staging one of the first flying exhibitions in Mexico. But Moisant's air career was cut short after only eight months. When her craft burst into flames on landing at Wichita Falls, Texas, she was pulled out with her clothes afire. Though she was not seriously hurt, she bowed to her family's wishes and grounded herself.

If frequent crashes in aviation's first decade made simply flying seem a reckless adventure, World War I lent both romance and cold calculation to the chance of death in the air. Tales of Americans flying for the French in the Lafayette Escadrille, of the German ace Manfred von Richthofen, of the American Eddie Rickenbacker, with their famed Spads, Fokkers and Sopwith Camels, lit the public imagination.

The demands of war had boosted the power and capacity of aircraft as the nation headed into the decade of bobbed hair, bootleg whiskey and, above all, speed. After the Wright brothers wobbled into the air at a calculated rate of 6.82 mph in 1903, the world record was boosted to 68 mph in 1910, to 194 in 1920, and jumped to 407 by 1931. Every one of these records was set by a man. For years, women were thought incapable of piloting the hottest aircraft—after all, planes were rated by horsepower, which suggested to many that they were like mighty steeds that had to be controlled by brute strength.

But women like Bessie Coleman proved that indomitable spirit could prevail against prejudice. Born in rural Texas, one of a sharecropper's 13 children, she struggled until becoming a manicurist in a Chicago barbershop. There she heard so many stories about the exploits of war pilots that she fantasized she could fly too. But she had no money, and even when clients offered to finance her lessons, no U.S. flight schools would take her because she was black. Coleman was undeterred. She studied French at Berlitz, went to Paris for flying lessons, and on June 15, 1921, became the world's first African-American woman pilot.

Back in the States, she became "Queen Bess," a star attraction at air shows, doing stunts in mostly war surplus planes like the Curtiss Jenny, pushing them and herself to the limit. In 1926, she went up with her mechanic while preparing for a show at Jacksonville, Fla. She did not hook her seat belt because she was leaning over the side, planning a parachute jump. Without warning, the plane went into a tailspin and she was thrown to her death. A wrench left behind had jammed the controls.
Coleman's life and death contrasted drastically with that of Earhart, who also became a pilot in 1921. Only a year after getting her license, Earhart set an unofficial women's altitude record of 14,000 feet. But at first, flying was just a hobby for her; for a while she was a social worker in Boston. Then in 1927, the vast celebration of Charles Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic solo flight fired her ambition to become just as famous. Success in events like the Women's Air Derby gave Earhart the will to reach even farther, and in 1932 she set a transcontinental record and finally soloed across the Atlantic.

Her flight from Newfoundland to Northern Ireland took 14 hours, 56 minutes—almost 18 hours and 1,600 miles shorter than Lindbergh's from Long Island to Paris. But such performances opened the way for women to be admitted at last into some of the big-money races that proliferated in the 1930s. They could even fly specially built speedsters, like the notoriously troublesome Gee Bee series, produced by the Granville brothers of Springfield, Mass., and raced by renowned pilots like Jimmy Doolittle.

Florence Klingensmith had to work her way up to flying a Gee Bee. Inspired by a Lindbergh visit to Fargo, N.D., in 1927, she started taking lessons—and helped pay for them with sky diving exhibitions, which almost got her killed. Once licensed as a pilot, she persuaded local businessmen to buy a plane christened Miss Fargo to promote the town, and began breaking records. She easily cracked the unofficial women's mark of 39 consecutive inside loops, but then Laura Ingalls set a new record of 344, then 850. Klingensmith finally topped her, landing exhausted after going around 1,078 times. That kind of grit got her into top races like the 1932 Nationals, where she won the Amelia Earhart Trophy. The next year, she was the only woman who entered the unlimited $10,000 Philips Trophy race at the Internationals at Chicago.

Her stubby, overpowered Gee Bee No. 7 seemed to be all engine as it whirled around the far pylon and streaked past the grandstand, reaching more than 220 mph between turns. Almost two-thirds of the way through the 100-mile closed course, Klingensmith was in the middle of the pack, ahead of four male pilots, when suddenly a strip of bright red fabric ripped away from a wing panel and floated to earth. For three miles, she fought to hold the Gee Bee steady. Then, at 350 feet, it nosed over and plunged to the ground. She apparently had tried to jump; her parachute was found tangled in the debris.

Klingensmith died because her plane's owner, in his eagerness to win races, had installed a souped-up 450 hp engine in a craft designed for 215 hp. She was not at fault. Nevertheless, officials used her death as an excuse to bar women from competing against men in sanctioned air races.

That ruling would not last long. In protest, Earhart refused to fly movie star Mary Pickford to Cleveland to open the 1934 National Air Races as planned. Under such pressure, officials relented by 1936, opening the transcontinental Bendix Trophy race to all comers—and with restrictions lifted, women swept to convincing victory. The redoubtable Louise Thaden, flying with Blanche Noyes, finished first. Laura Ingalls, who earlier had flown across the Andes and circled South America, came in second.

Amelia Earhart, flying her twin-engine Lockheed Electra, placed fifth. In that same plane, she would wing out across the Pacific the following year on her way around the world, to be lost in an unsolved mystery that makes her still the most celebrated woman in aviation history.

Ernest B. Furgurson, a former Baltimore Sun correspondent, is the author of Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln Museums - An Overview

By Jay Wertz
The Bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth is heightening worldwide interest in the life of the 16th American president. However fascination with the leader who led the country during its deepest crisis has been ongoing for the more than 150 years since he came to public prominence. It is said only Jesus Christ has had more written about him. Scholars, collectors, educators, students and others interested in his life have examined the lore, legend and truth in many forms. Museums and historic sites associated with Lincoln have received many millions of visitors during their existence.



Four Lincoln museums, each different in character, are examined here in detail. While collectively they present a significant portion of the artifacts and literature associated with this great leader there is far too much Lincoln history available to include in one survey. Some resources are presented at the end of this article. These four facilities are principally dedicated to his life and leadership, and each and every one provides a unique glimpse into the man, his life, what he accomplished and stood for.

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
Springfield, Illinois was Lincoln's home for many years and is his final resting place. Here he married, fathered his children and rose to professional and political prominence. He left Springfield in 1861 to take his place as president, never to return during his tragically shortened life. Much of the Illinois state capital is dedicated to Lincoln; many places associated with him still exist and two of the museums reviewed are here. For a total immersion in Lincoln's life, a visit to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is a good first stop.

This museum opened in 2005 and the library in 2003 under the auspices of the State of Illinois. The library is a well-known resource for Lincoln study. It is both larger in size and different in scope from the libraries of recent presidents. Besides the research library, the facility includes the museum, sculpture gardens and a visitor center in a restored late 19th century train station. Accessibility might be a single word descriptive of the museum's aim to introduce people of all ages and levels of understanding to the life of Lincoln. Museum leaders take pride in the theme park theatrics used in the presentation of most of the displays.

Exhibit halls branch out from a large central rotunda, the Plaza. Upon entering this area, the first impressions are of a life size log cabin and a slightly less than life size South Portico of the White House, the Executive Mansion in 1860. These provide entrances to the two Journey exhibits which span Lincoln's life. There are also life size wax figures of Abraham and Mary Lincoln and three of their sons, Robert, William and Thomas "Tad" (no photos are known to exist of Eddy, the child who died in 1852). They are out in the open for size comparison and picture taking. Many static figures appear throughout the life-size dioramas of the Journey exhibits.
The first Journey takes visitors through Lincoln's pre-Presidential life. Full-size dioramas include a New Orleans slave auction, New Salem store, a Lincoln-Douglas debate and a room in the Lincoln-Herndon law office, among others. Visitors are guided through important aspects of Lincoln's early life with reproduced and a few original artifacts, oversized documents, wall panels and the dioramas to illustrate events and characterizations. Toward the end visitors are introduced to television coverage of the 1860 Presidential campaign in a news control room set with the events reported by the late Tim Russert, to whom this exhibit is now dedicated.


While this Journey exhibit suite does a credible job of detailing in timeline fashion the factors and events shaping Lincoln's life before the presidency, the second Journey into the White House is less effective. An unlikely pairing of life-size wax figures, generals McClellan and Grant standing together on the portico, with a leering John Wilkes Booth standing on the lawn nearby, is indicative of the incomplete and disjointed presentation of this period. More attention is paid to Lincoln's family life while at the Executive Mansion – a dress display of Mary Todd Lincoln and her Washington women rivals, a poignant scene of the Lincolns in despair in the bedroom of gravely ill Willie – and less to his role as the main political figure of the time and commander-in-chief of the U. S. military.


Full use of multi-media techniques is in evidence here. Whispered voices in a hall full of political cartoons recite detractions of Lincoln's leadership. Other comments are whispered as one enters the room built to represent the Executive Mansion kitchen. Holographic images in a later galley shout criticisms of the Emancipation Proclamation. The impact of these audio montages seems to be decidedly negative in questioning Lincoln's judgment. A full-scale diorama based on Francis Carpenter's painting of the First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation is impressive, as are the group of original oils and artifacts in the God Grant Victory gallery and the display of Lincoln's casket lying in state in the Illinois Capitol. However, most of the Civil War themed displays, including the "Civil War in 4 Minutes" with its "odometer of death" are much less impressive.

The other main exhibit halls feature a multi-screen presentation of Lincoln's life, "Lincoln's Eyes," an interactive display "Ask Mr. Lincoln" and "Ghosts of the Museum," illustrating in dramatic fashion the importance of historic study. The Treasures Gallery features artifacts from the library's hefty collection including a copy of The Gettysburg Address in Lincoln's hand. Currently on exhibit in the Illinois Gallery is "The Agricultural Vision of Abraham Lincoln." Mrs. Lincoln's Attic features hands-on period costumes and toys and is designed for kids, although at least one adult couldn't resist constructing something from a table full of Lincoln Logs.
Back to accessibility; this museum does open the complex book of Lincoln's life to a wide-ranging audience. A testament to this is the number of foreign visitors observed on a summer visit to the facility. It succeeds in capturing the intellect and emotions of the man, the melancholy of his family tragedies, the strain of leadership on his countenance. As previously mentioned, his leadership in military and political affairs during his presidency is underserved, and serious scholars will want to spend much more time at the library across the street. But the museum here serves as an important beacon for guiding the Lincoln legacy through present and future generations.


Lincoln Home National Historic Site
A short distance south along the historic streets of the Illinois capital is the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. The neighborhood character is immediately evident as the streets surrounding Eighth and Jackson are closed to modern traffic and retain a 1860s appearance. In fact, it is the largest neighborhood of original historic homes in any United States park. Anyone wishing to tour the interior of the Lincoln home must first stop at the visitor center to obtain a free tour ticket. As Robert Lincoln specified in his donation of the house to public trust, no fee must ever be charged to anyone wishing to see the house.


Among the many historical areas of Springfield which feature ties to Lincoln, this is the most important. The Greek Revival cottage on Eight Street, purchased in 1844 for $1500, was the only home the Lincolns owned. The family occupied the house for 17 years and made quite a few improvements, including a major addition of a full second story in 1856. The silent beauty of the restored house, with original and reproduction furnishings, is quite a different experience from the sensory absorbing exhibits of the museum previously described.

The visitor center has a diorama of Springfield in the 1860s and a film that traces Lincoln's life in Springfield, "Abraham Lincoln: A Journey to Greatness." Interpretive rangers lead guided tours of the house. Among the original furnishings are black, horse-hair upholstered furniture in the front parlor and the desk in Lincoln's bedroom. Other furniture and décor were carefully researched to reproduce the home's period look. The work has paid off as the impression seems complete except for the absence of the famous residents. A popular guide story is told as visitors climb the front stairs to the second story. Touching the original handrail is "almost like shaking hands with Mr. Lincoln."

The neighboring homes are in various stages of restoration. The first floor of the Mary Dean house across Eight Street has exhibits about the Lincolns in Springfield. There are artifacts here from a significant archeological dig in the yard of the Lincoln home conducted in 1952. It is appropriate that conservationists and the Park Service chose to retain and restore not only the house, but the surrounding community. The Lincolns had close relations with their Springfield neighbors and Springfield felt an enormous sense of loss upon the death of their favorite son.

Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum at Lincoln Memorial University
A completely different perspective on Lincoln is available at the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum at Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee, nestled in the beautiful rural setting of the Cumberland Gap. The university was founded in 1897 on Lincoln's suggestion to former Army of the Potomac general Oliver Otis Howard to help the loyal people of East Tennessee, an area of the South where many residents wanted to remain in the Union. The museum itself was established in 1977 with a matching grant from university trustee and Lincoln enthusiast Col. Harlan Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken. It is geographically the southernmost library/museum dedicated to the study of Lincoln.
This collection of more than 30,000 items (much of it printed matter) was begun with the school's inception and first managed by R. Gerald McMurtry, Lincoln scholar and former LMU professor. Other items and collections, including McMurtry's, were added over the years. USS Monitor skipper John L. Worden's collection of objects and writings is a prized acquisition and new items arrive frequently. Because the museum is in an academic setting – liberal arts students at LMU are required to take two courses on Abraham Lincoln using museum facilities and staff – the exhibits are traditional; the emphasis is on artifacts, rather than design. Special programs, educational conferences and a Lincoln publication highlight the outreach agenda.

The museum building is a two-story structure at the entrance to the campus. Exhibits are on the first floor though the ceiling is high, allowing for the display of many large original oils of Lincoln and other period figures – one of the collection's strengths. Also prominent are miniature and oversized carved marble and bronze statues of the president. A mezzanine is dedicated to transitional exhibits. In October, "Lincoln and the Presidency" opens—an intriguing presentation of how Lincoln's conduct of the office was influenced by those who came before him, and how his presidency shaped men who have held the office since. The museum places emphasis on tracing Lincoln's family, who passed through the nearby Cumberland Gap on their way to the frontier. A fine example of Thomas Lincoln's carpentry handiwork is a large inlaid cabinet on display. Lincoln's father fostered the skills, but not the desire, for hard work in his son this exhibit tells us.

The museum also features a series of miniature dioramas of major events in Lincoln's political career, as well as exhibits on his role as commander-in-chief and his assassination. Other items of interest, not in any particular order, include a prized walking stick, an 1858 senatorial campaign flag, china from the Lincoln White House and Springfield home, a carriage that belonged to his secretary of state William Seward and a Civil War ambulance – all original. Though this museum lacks the panache of the presidential library or the walk-through history of the Lincoln Home, it does have a quiet scholarly charm in an idyllic setting. Additional major acquisitions and improved exhibits are forthcoming and the senior staff will enthusiastically provide personalized guided tours when called upon because they think that much of their museum.


Ford's Theatre National Historic Site in Washington, D.C., is in the midst of an ambitious renovation. Like the Lincoln Home, its strength is in the history of its buildings but the focus, which has been on the assassination and death of the president, is being expanded. The position of Ford's Theatre in the annals of history is unique. Not only is it the site of the first successful assassination of a U. S. President, it is the place where the vision of one man who saw the promise of American democracy like no other was extinguished. Whether his legacy became even greater once he was martyred here by John Wilkes Booth's bullet will never be known. But the might of his influence in death began here. The expanded focus includes attention to examining this question along with many others about Lincoln's life and
Reopening in February 2009, Ford's Theatre has been upgraded in its capacity as a working theater, and in visitor amenities. However the Presidential box will remain as before, outfitted as it was on April 14, 1865 and capturing that moment frozen in time as a fitting shrine. The museum in the theater basement will reopen on July 15 with familiar items such as Lincoln's rocker and shawl, Booth's diary and the derringer that fired the fatal shot. New exhibits will also tell about Lincoln's time in Washington, including a recreation of his Executive Mansion office. The Petersen House across 10th Street from the theater, where Lincoln was carried after being mortally wounded and where he died, will still evoke emotional connections to that sad time. It is open now but will undergo refurbishing shortly. The small rooms, period décor and bed where Lincoln died impress the events of that night, and the memory of the saddened faces of officials, friends and Mrs. Lincoln. Ford's Theatre and the Petersen House stand as silent sentinels to the history that unfolded there. The additions here can only enhance their roles as way stations in the life of American's greatest leader

An American Pilot Encounters the Ghosts of Buchenwald

By Andrew Carroll

Soon after American soldiers liberated the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 4, 1945, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower inspected the camp himself. "The things I saw beggar description," he cabled to Gen. George C. Marshall. "I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda.'" Ike's troops were equally incredulous—and determined to record for history what they saw.
On April 21, 1945, 1st Lt. James Carroll Jordan, a 23-year-old pilot from St. Paul, Minnesota, with the Ninth Army's 109th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, typed a three-page letter to his wife, Betty Anne, just hours after visiting Buchenwald. Troops normally refrained from describing the most horrific details of war, but Jordan—like many other soldiers who observed the concentration and extermination camps—chronicled in graphic and unflinching detail the true brutality of Hitler's Final Solution. The letter's original spelling has been preserved.

Dear Betty Anne,
I saw something today that makes me realize why we're over here fighting this war.

We visited a German political internment camp. The camp had been liberated only two days and the condition of the camp has changed very little. The American Red Cross just arrived.

The inmates consisted of mostly Jews, some Russians, Poles and there were six American pilots that they shot almost immediately.

When we first walked in we saw all these creatures that were supposed to be men. They were dressed in black and white suits, heads shaved and starving to death. Malnutrition was with every one of them.

We met one of them that could speak English so he acted as a guide for us. First we saw a German monument that stated 51,600 died in this camp in three years. They were proud of it. Second we went in the living barracks. Six sq. ft. per six people. Hard wood slats six ft. high. Then we went down through rows of barbed wire to a building where they purposely infected these people with disease. Human guinea pigs for German medics.

In this medical building were exhibits of human heads in jars and tatooed human flesh or skin on the walls.

After that we went up to the torture dept. Here were beating devices that I won't explain. The clubs, by the way, are still lying there with blood on them. In another room in this building were 8 cremator furnaces. The doors were open and in one I noticed one body 1/2 done. A horrible sight. After I snapped a few pictures I walked out side and noticed a truck with 50 naked bodys piled up six deep. Turning my head away from that I looked over against the wall and here were about 30 more. Their eyes open, their mouths open, blue, and purple, cut and some with holes in them.

The guide told us he lived with some of these men for years. He said most of them died within the past 24 hrs. In fact a medical Red Cross man told us they are dying like flys. Nothing can be done for them. It's too late. They are much too far gone.

There is another place I never told you about. The latrine. I won't tell you about it, because you won't believe me. It's unbelievable.

It was about time to leave so we started out the big gate. As we were nearly out we saw one of the men that looked like a ghost, fall over. They put him on a coat and headed for the truck.

One of our pilots is Jewish and as you know the Jewish language is somewhat similar to the German language. He stopped one of the men in the striped suits. He was a young boy. The pilot asked him several questions such as, how long has he been here. Three years he said. How old was he. 16 years old. He asked all type of questions about the camp which was exceptionally interesting and no doubt true.

We gave him some cigarettes and candy. He forgot how to smile, but you could see the happiness in his sunken eyes.
We still had about an hour before leaving so we went back in. We wandered in to a barracks. What kept us from getting sick I'll never know. On some of these wooden slabs were half alive, half dead men, lying on some dirty rags and clothes. It was the sick barracks, you might call it. These men were cut deep in the flesh with knives, infected of course. Some of them were not off of these beds for days. They were lying in their own body waste. Yes, for days.

The Red Cross was there and were removing one of the men. They told him they were going to take him to a hospital and make him well again. He didn't want to go. He thought they were going to take him out and kill him. I doubt if he even knew who they were.

Naturally, the Krauts had to benefit by these people for bothering with them at all; so they had a factory in which the men had to work 12 to 15 hours a day. If they refused to work or couldn't work, Well—there was always more.

We were naturally interested in the six American pilots and crew men, so we inquired around. We couldn't find out very much; only that these bomber crews were shot down from a bomb run over the town. The inmates said they were put in a barraks by them selves. If they were tortured or not they didn't know, but they did know that they were dead in a few days. One man stated that their clothes were taken away from them so they couldn't escape.

We found a Russian that could speak a little English and he told us some incidences that took place.

He said that if the guards were feeling good they would get soup, very greasy soup. He said that he survived because he would warm the soup by putting his hands in it and melt the grease. If things weren't too good for the guards they wouldn't eat anything for 8 days. The men naturally wouldn't be able to walk so they put about 50 hungry dogs in the camp and let them gnaw on the dying men.

When the American tanks charged through the prison gates the guards naturally evacuated deeper into the father land, but the inmates caught one of them. I saw this SS guard among the dead bodys. When I saw him I though he was odd, because he had long blond hair. His head was all bruised, his neck was slashed with a knife. The inmate watched him kill himself just 48 hours ago. They drove him mad.

Our time was up so we boarded our truck and rode home, just thinking.

Enclosed you will find some pictures that I took while going through the camp.

All my love darling
Carroll

After returning to the United States, Jordan worked for insurance companies most of his life. He passed away in March 2008 at the age of 86.