Talk:Abraham Lincoln

Moving Category

An edit on May 27, 2024 was "Moving Category:United States politicians killed during the Civil War to Category:Politicians killed in the American Civil War." I don't think that "during" should have been changed to "in," because to be killed in a war is usually understood to mean on the battlefield. Even "during" is problematic in Lincoln's case, because Lee had already surrendered when Lincoln was killed, and, as it states at American Civil War, "Appomattox is often referred to symbolically as the end of the war." Even though, as it states at American Civil War, Lee's surrender only "set in motion" the end of the war, it nevertheless does not seem right to say that Lincoln was killed during the war. But "during" at least is better than "in." I will not edit this but will leave it to others to do so if they wish. Maurice Magnus (talk) 10:51, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 June 2024

Add pages=35-36 to reference 78 (The Collected Works Volume 1 reference), since that's where the quote is in [[1]] (pages 84 and 85 in PDF).

Sorry, didn't realize Collected and Completed works were different. Please add page 109 to the citation[[2]].

GrapesRock (talk) 02:32, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

 Question: @GrapesRock, which citation? ABG (Talk/Report any mistakes here) 08:18, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Reference 78, which is the first citation after "It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher" GrapesRock (talk) 13:32, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

 Done Now that I have auto-confirmed perms, I've edited in the page number GrapesRock (talk) 03:39, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 June 2024 (2)

Change Reference 187 to go to Volume 6[[3]] rather than Volume 4 of Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. The First Inaugural Address is on page 169–170 (pages 221 and 222 of PDF) of Volume 6 and is not found in Volume 4.

Er sorry, Collected and Complete Works are different. In that case, add that the page is 333 per to reference 187, which comes after the block-quote from his "First inaugural address, 4 March 1861" GrapesRock (talk) 03:11, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

 Done Now that I have autoconfirmed permissions, I've enacted this change GrapesRock (talk) 03:37, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 June 2024

The Lincoln Memorial is no longer in top 5 visited, rather it is in the top 10, so note that.

More explicitly, please change "and is one of the top five most visited National Park Service sites in the country." to "and is one of the top ten most visited National Park Service sites in the country." GrapesRock (talk) 14:52, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I just changed it to "one of the most visited" as it does not need it to be jumping around each year, and the exact number is not crucial, here. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:58, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Sandburg 1926 seems miscited on two occasions

I've been going through the citations which reference Sandburg 1926 and the page numbers seem wrong. I've already corrected the page numbers on two occasions, but I can't find proper page numbers for the following two references:

• "Thomas Lincoln bought or leased farms in Kentucky before losing all but 200 acres (81 ha) of his land in court disputes over property titles."
  • cites Sandburg p. 20 (as of writing: citation 11), which says nothing about losing all but 200 acres (and I can't find support for this claim anywhere in Sandburg)
• "In 1860, Lincoln noted that the family's move to Indiana was "partly on account of slavery", but mainly due to land title difficulties."
  • cites Sandburg 1926, p. 20 and Donald 1996, pp. 23–24 (as of writing: citation 18). I can't speak on whether Donald supports this claim, but once again nothing on page 20 in Sandburg supports the claim

GrapesRock (talk) 16:36, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Hey, I have the DHD book on loan from my library and can verify that second ref.

On pages 23-24, it says "In 1816, when Abraham was only seven years old, the Lincolns moved across the Ohio river to Indiana. Many years later he stated, quite accurately, that his father left Kentucky "partly on account of slavery, but chiefly on account of the difficulty in land titles in Ky."

DHD doesn't tell the reader that Lincoln said this in 1860, but in the footnotes he does source the statement to p. 61-62 in vol 4 of Lincoln's Collected Works ed. Roy P. Basler, which covers Abraham's 1860 autobiographical statement. In it Abraham says that "From this place he removed to what is now Spencer county Indiana, in the autumn of 1816, A. then being in his eigth year. This removal was partly on account of slavery; but chiefly on account of the difficulty in land titles in Ky." (Yes, that's Abraham writing in the third person. Go figure.) https://books.google.com/books?id=LQjla5mLYdcC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false So yeah, "In 1860, Lincoln noted that the family's move to Indiana was "partly on account of slavery", but mainly due to land title difficulties" is an accurate statement with a suitable source.

The first statement, "Thomas Lincoln bought or leased farms in Kentucky before losing all but 200 acres (81 ha) of his land in court disputes over property titles," is more difficult to verify.

In pages 22, DHD gives an account of Thomas Lincoln's property holdings thus: "Thomas... accumulate[d] enough money to buy his first farm, a 238-acre tract on Mill Creek, in Hardin County, Kentucky... By 1809, Thomas Lincoln had bought another farm, this time one of 300 acres, on the south fork of Nolan Creek (not far from Hogdenville). It was called the Sinking Spring Farm, because it had a magnificent spring that bubbled from the batter of a deep cave. Here, on a little knoll near the spring, he built a one-room log cabin, measuring 16-by-18 feet. Here Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809. He had no recollection of the place of his birth, because his parents moved before he was 2 years old. The land on Sinking Spring proved very poor, ... [so Thomas bought] a smaller but more fertile farm, some ten miles to the northeast, on Knob Creek... It was of this Knob Creek farm that Abraham Lincoln had his earliest memories."

So here we have 3 properties: a "238-acre tract on Mill Creek", a Sinking Spring farm of 300 acres, and a Knob Creek farm of unspecified acrage.

DHD then says on page 24 what happened to these properties: "He [Thomas] had trouble gaining a clear title to any of the 3 farms that had purchased in Kentucky. The details were exceedingly complicated, and not particularly important: one had been improperly surveyed, so that it proved to be 38 acres smaller than what he had thought he had purchased; another had a lien on it because of a small debt by a previous owner; in the case of the Knob Creek Farm, non-Kentucky residents brought suit against Thomas and other occupants of the rich valley, claiming prior title. Having neither the money nor the inclination to fight for his claims in court, he heard with great interest of the opening of Indiana, territory from which slavery had been excluded by the Northwest Ordinance. Here the United States government had surveyed the land and offered purchasers guaranteed titles to their farms. [And so Thomas went to Indiana.]"

That's maddeningly vague. From just this paragraph, which constitutes the entirety of DHD's account of Thomas' property losses, it's ambiguous whether Thomas "had a lien on" his Sinking Spring property and lost 38 acres from Mill Creek, or the other way around; which would mean that he might have been left with only 200 acres (if Sinking Spring had the lien and Mill Creek the 38 acres), or 300 acres (if Mill Creek had the lien and Sinking Spring the 38 acres). I make those calculations assuming that Thomas lost his Knob Creek property, which I think is implied by him getting sued and not fighting in court, but I'm not very educated on legal matters so idk. I'm also assuming Thomas lost whatever property he had a lien on, based on my understanding of what a lien is after Googling the term. In the footnotes, DHD's only source for Thomas' property holdings is Lincoln's Parentage and Childhood by Louis A Warren; "My account of Thomas Lincoln and his property holding derives principally from Warren," says DHD. Luckily, Lincoln's Parentage is stored in full for free at Google Books (I love the Internet!) https://books.google.com/books/about/Lincoln_s_Parentage_Childhood.html?id=iRlCAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false; however it's 300ish pages and I can't be bothered to search the whole thing for details that are supposedly "exceedingly complicated."

Thus, I could not verify that "Thomas Lincoln bought or leased farms in Kentucky before losing all but 200 acres (81 ha) of his land in court disputes over property titles," based on DHD's book. I don't think it's necessary to say exactly how many acres Thomas had left anyway; we can just say something like "Thomas Lincoln bought or leased multiple farms in Kentucky, but could not gain clear titles to all of them and lost hundreds of acres of land in property disputes."

Side note here, but Lincoln by DHD was published in 1995, not 1996. Idk exactly when that error in dates was added, but glancing at the page history I can see that as early as March 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Abraham_Lincoln&oldid=947624055# this page had that error. That ought to be fixed.

TL:DR: Donald 1995 p. 23-24 is a perfect reference for ""In 1860, Lincoln noted that the family's move to Indiana was "partly on account of slavery", but mainly due to land title difficulties." I could not verify that "Thomas Lincoln bought or leased farms in Kentucky before losing all but 200 acres (81 ha) of his land in court disputes over property titles," and I recommend that we simply edit out the exact number. I hope this comment helped, and let me know if you need to verify anything else that's cited to DHD or might be in there somewhere. Woozybydefault (talk) 21:51, 5 June 2024 (UTC)