Took advantage of a trip to New York last week to catch two well-reviewed revivals, South Pacific and Finian's Rainbow. The former was the first ever Broadway return for the Rodgers & Hammerstein smash of the late 40s-early 50s; the latter was a six-performance run by Encores, a group that specializes in reviving musicals, at City Center, nee Mecca Temple, on 55th St. We went Saturday night and possibly because of the rave in that morning's Times, the joint was packed to the gills.
Finian's Rainbow remains a total delight, probably because of its inane plot, which goes off in all kinds of directions--Burton Lane hit his high spot with this score, from How Are Things in Glocca Mora, That Old Devil Moon, and If This Isn't Love, and then the leprechaun's two magnificently rhymed turns, Something Sort of Grandish and If I'm Not Near the Girl I Love, in which E. Y. (Yip) Harburg, the lyricist, had a field day. The first of those two benefitted in the original (1949, I think) from Ella Logan and David Wayne, but Harburg's lyrics went over wonderfully in the presentation of a fine cast without stars. Harburg throws in lots of great lefty political references--including the centerpiece, of course, of turning the racist senator black. Philip Bosco--probably the only famous name in this cast--played the senator (it was Keenan Wynn in the movie). But in the end, how can you not love "Every femme that flutters by me/is a flame that must be fought/ when i'm not fondling the face that I'm fond of/I fondle the face at hand/my heart's in a pickle, it's constantly fickle/and not too partickle, I fear..."
This show was staged just enough, as this series only claims to do minimal staging. The plot needs no more encouragement. We sat in the back of the rear mezz, which at City Center is truly hell'n'gone but it still was fine for both sound and view. Even met a couple we know (mostly through another friend) from DC and his uncle was Yip Harburg. Small world is getting smaller.
There's probably some Bway reason why South Pacific hadn't been revived until now. Maybe it was the years it took for people to identify positively with any war, including the war "that had to be fought": WW II. And Hammerstein's mushy and now embarrassing side, exemplified by LT Cable's second-act song, "You've Got to be Carefully Taught." As a lover of Rodgers & Hart, I would argue that no one could come up with melodies like Richard Rodgers but Rodgers & Hammerstein were left on the shelf for decades because of the pretentiousness of Hammerstein's lyrics compared with Hart's snappy ones, so reminiscent of Cole Porter, another closeted gay guy (as was Rodgers, too, as it happens). I recall Hammerstein's widow or daughter contending on some show that without his words, Kern's immortal Old Man River (from Showboat) was just notes. Well, I'd take Kern's tune (especially when performed by the original Joe, Paul Robeson) over Hammerstein's words anytime on that one.
But South Pacific remains a blockbuster because of the hit after hit song--no clinkers. The stage erupts in excitement in the second scene when the sailors and Seabees charge onstage, led by Milo Minderbinder's inspiration, Luther Billis (created by Myron McCormick). I saw what was the second or even the third cast--Kelly O'Hair, the original Nellie, is pregnant--and they were all wonderful. The current lead, Linda Osnes, probably is more convincing in this ingenue role than Mary Martin was in the original. I always think of Martin as Peter Pan, but we should recall that she made herself known by doing Cole Porter's edgy, naughty My Heart Belongs to Daddy. The male lead has the Pinza vocal heft and deep basso tone. But listen: There's Nothing Like a Dame, Wonderful Guy, This Nearly Was Mine (which I've always preferred to the more famed Some Enchanted Evening), and the delightful throwaways like Happy Talk and Honey Bun.
For opera folks, I took in the Met's Cav'n'Pag on my other open night. Roberto Alagna did both tenor roles and looks young and convincing, especially as Turiddu, and has the pipes for Canio as well. Alberto Mastromarino was listed to do Tonio, who does the famed Prologue in Pag, but filled in for an ill younger baritone listed to sing Alfio in Cav--filled is the word because he is huge. But his voice was good, as was everyone's and Nedda was convincing in the Bird Song and love duet--the reason it's so tough to cast even an Alagna in both tenor roles is that Canio seems to be the older husband insanely jealous of his younger wife. In Cav, it's basically the other way round and it's the baritone who's the jealous husband--in both stories, of course, for good reason! One thing happened that I'd never seen before: Mastromarino delivered such a strong note a few bars before the end of the Prologue that the audience burst into applause early. I'd never seen that happen, and the first baritone I saw in this role was the renowned Leonard Warren (in the first regular Met performance I ever saw). Waltraud Meyer was a superb Santuzza in Cav--despite having the stage manager plead for our indulgence before the curtain rose. Interesingly, she moves on to sing in Wagner's Ring now, including a Brunnhilde or two, I believe.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The Jessup
This week I was a judge during three arguments (rounds) of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, which is the largest moot court competition in the world. More than 80 countries participate, with many more law schools and law programs represented. My trusty legal assistant, Dewi Savitri Reni, known as Vitri, from the project I ran in Indonesia for The Asia Foundation, competed in the Jessup when she studied law at the University of Indonesia, that country's premier law school, which is located in a suburb of Jakarta. She continued to stay involved as a team coach and this year as a judge; this brought her to Washington every March, which was a plus in itself, and she urged me to become a judge too.
The Jessup becomes a world unto itself. People compete and then keep returning as judges, bailiffs, general factotums, and coaches. There is a network called FOJ, Friends of Jessup, of which I am now one, because I had to join it to get the info on becoming a judge. Many participants of course become major legal figures in their countries so the networking possibilities are extensive. This Friday--when I will be out of town--there's a 50th anni dinner for the Jessup at the Reagan Building in Federal Triangle, with the U.S. judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Stephen Schwebel, and the court's President, Rosalie Higgins, the guests of honor and principal speakers.
The competition itself turns on how two-person teams manage to argue the same case in each round. Every team has won one round, either a U.S. Super Regional, or a National in each country, to get to the Fairmont Hotel in D.C. I broke in by judging two arguments at the Mid-Atlantic Super Regional in February, held at George Washington University National Law Center. The case is artfully drawn and pits two nations against each other in the ICJ at the Hague. There are all sorts of great issues--can a country send troops into another if ethnic cleansing is feared, must the country that acts make secret intelligence available that ostensibly justifies the act, who is liable for sexual exploitation committed by troops ostensibly under the UN flag, and must an assassin of the president of the country taken over by religious extremists be sent back after he has been tried in absentia and sentenced to death under a death penalty re-enacted a week after the assassination.
At the Super Regional, I heard one good argument and one not-so-good argument, all by students at U.S. law schools, whose schools remain unknown to me, so as to preserve anonymity in judging. At these International Rounds, I heard one not-so-good arument, one fairly good argument, and one superb argument. One of these needed simultaneous translation of one side's argument from Arabic. The superb oralists from U.S. law schools--again, I know their names but not their schools--compared favorably to the great Supreme Court advocates I heard recently. They added the extras that make a presentation really click: presenting a solid and appealing theory of the case (especially when the facts of your issue are slightly weighted against you) or, in one especially clever touch, conceding a point where you feel that defending the client's position weakens the entirety of your argument.
I sat with a wonderful melange of judges from all over: a court lawyer from Accra, Ghana; a law school moot court director from Miami; a legal services agency head from Argentina; a lawyer based in Wasilla, Alaska (not a fan of his town's most famous resident); and a JAG lawyer in the U.S. Coast Guard. There was a lot of electricity in the air and sometimes vapors of something else--the hotel had to shut down the bar early last night when it turned out some underaged folks were being served. A warning email went out to all of us involved in the Jessup.
Who was Jessup? He was an American international law professor and scholar who became a judge on the ICJ in the 60s after a distinguished career that had him working with the legendary Elihu Root in the 30s. I'm afraid that that prejudiced me a bit against him if only because of the notorious prejudice of the white-shoe bar in those days, personified by Root, as it happens, and which persisted well into the 70s when I was in active firm practice only to disappear for the most part when law turned into a business. Take your choice--a profession stratified into firms organized by ethnic groups (well, white-shoe WASP outfits v. three-I-League ones, viz., Jewish, Irish, and Italian concerns) or one that has all the elevation of the market-place, which we have seen disappoint us especially this year. Conjures up William Allen White's "tribute" to the newspaper consolidator of his day, Frank Muncey, who "turned a once noble profession into an 8-percent security." Would that journalism were so profitable today as papers shut their doors daily.
The Jessup becomes a world unto itself. People compete and then keep returning as judges, bailiffs, general factotums, and coaches. There is a network called FOJ, Friends of Jessup, of which I am now one, because I had to join it to get the info on becoming a judge. Many participants of course become major legal figures in their countries so the networking possibilities are extensive. This Friday--when I will be out of town--there's a 50th anni dinner for the Jessup at the Reagan Building in Federal Triangle, with the U.S. judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Stephen Schwebel, and the court's President, Rosalie Higgins, the guests of honor and principal speakers.
The competition itself turns on how two-person teams manage to argue the same case in each round. Every team has won one round, either a U.S. Super Regional, or a National in each country, to get to the Fairmont Hotel in D.C. I broke in by judging two arguments at the Mid-Atlantic Super Regional in February, held at George Washington University National Law Center. The case is artfully drawn and pits two nations against each other in the ICJ at the Hague. There are all sorts of great issues--can a country send troops into another if ethnic cleansing is feared, must the country that acts make secret intelligence available that ostensibly justifies the act, who is liable for sexual exploitation committed by troops ostensibly under the UN flag, and must an assassin of the president of the country taken over by religious extremists be sent back after he has been tried in absentia and sentenced to death under a death penalty re-enacted a week after the assassination.
At the Super Regional, I heard one good argument and one not-so-good argument, all by students at U.S. law schools, whose schools remain unknown to me, so as to preserve anonymity in judging. At these International Rounds, I heard one not-so-good arument, one fairly good argument, and one superb argument. One of these needed simultaneous translation of one side's argument from Arabic. The superb oralists from U.S. law schools--again, I know their names but not their schools--compared favorably to the great Supreme Court advocates I heard recently. They added the extras that make a presentation really click: presenting a solid and appealing theory of the case (especially when the facts of your issue are slightly weighted against you) or, in one especially clever touch, conceding a point where you feel that defending the client's position weakens the entirety of your argument.
I sat with a wonderful melange of judges from all over: a court lawyer from Accra, Ghana; a law school moot court director from Miami; a legal services agency head from Argentina; a lawyer based in Wasilla, Alaska (not a fan of his town's most famous resident); and a JAG lawyer in the U.S. Coast Guard. There was a lot of electricity in the air and sometimes vapors of something else--the hotel had to shut down the bar early last night when it turned out some underaged folks were being served. A warning email went out to all of us involved in the Jessup.
Who was Jessup? He was an American international law professor and scholar who became a judge on the ICJ in the 60s after a distinguished career that had him working with the legendary Elihu Root in the 30s. I'm afraid that that prejudiced me a bit against him if only because of the notorious prejudice of the white-shoe bar in those days, personified by Root, as it happens, and which persisted well into the 70s when I was in active firm practice only to disappear for the most part when law turned into a business. Take your choice--a profession stratified into firms organized by ethnic groups (well, white-shoe WASP outfits v. three-I-League ones, viz., Jewish, Irish, and Italian concerns) or one that has all the elevation of the market-place, which we have seen disappoint us especially this year. Conjures up William Allen White's "tribute" to the newspaper consolidator of his day, Frank Muncey, who "turned a once noble profession into an 8-percent security." Would that journalism were so profitable today as papers shut their doors daily.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Big Day at the Big Court
This morning I went to an argument at the Supreme Court for the first time in a few years. My appetite was whetted by a story in Monday's Washington Post. Early arrival was vital because this was one of the one or two major cases each year that packs the Supreme Court bar section located right behind where the attorneys make their arguments in the courtroom.
The case was taken from the Supreme Court of West Virginia and arose from a corporate battle between a big coal company and a small one. The big one lost in the trial court, so it went out and spent $3 million to elect a Supreme Court judge who would vote its way on the appeal. He did--they won, 3-2, in West Virginia. On to the Supreme Court of the U.S.
Should this judge have recused (taken himself out of) from the case? That was the issue--or, is there a constitutional standard that requires a fair trial with no probability of bias on the part of the judge(s)?
The biggest attraction of this argument, aside from the general interest of the case and point at issue, were the two advocates at the Supreme Court. Theodore B (Ted) Olson was Solicitor General under Bush I and is a very conservative lawyer at Gibson Dunn in Washington. Andrew L (Andy) Frey, formerly Deputy Solicitor General (in charge of criminal cases) for many years, and now at Mayer Brown, has also been a regular advocate. Ted Olson argued and won Bush v. Gore. Andy Frey managed to get the Supreme Court to adopt a totality of circumstances test in ruling on Miranda appeals and also got them to put a cap on punitive damages, in the interest of corporate defendants.
Uncharacteristically, Olson was arguing the "activist" (dare I say liberal?) side of this case, asking the Supreme Court to require a fair trial that means recusal of a judge who has the appearance or probability of bias. Frey argued the side of the corporation that put up the $3 million and argued that allowing this kind of required recusal would "open the floodgates" to these kinds of claims and that there was no constitutional standard here.
It was fun watching Olson have to deal with hostile questioning from Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Roberts, his usual compadres. Frey was put on the defensive mostly by Justices Ginsburg, Souter, and Stevens. Justice Kennedy tried to get both to answer his questions. Both advocates have the art of gently deflecting a question toward the answer they want to give down to an art.
The lineup of justices sounded familiar, including Justice Kennedy's searching for a viable middle ground to make, in effect, the decision. This did make the result harder to predict but it did seem that Olson had the better day at the lectern. He easily brought up relevant caselaw and seemed more at ease than Frey, who usually handles himself more smoothly.
The case was taken from the Supreme Court of West Virginia and arose from a corporate battle between a big coal company and a small one. The big one lost in the trial court, so it went out and spent $3 million to elect a Supreme Court judge who would vote its way on the appeal. He did--they won, 3-2, in West Virginia. On to the Supreme Court of the U.S.
Should this judge have recused (taken himself out of) from the case? That was the issue--or, is there a constitutional standard that requires a fair trial with no probability of bias on the part of the judge(s)?
The biggest attraction of this argument, aside from the general interest of the case and point at issue, were the two advocates at the Supreme Court. Theodore B (Ted) Olson was Solicitor General under Bush I and is a very conservative lawyer at Gibson Dunn in Washington. Andrew L (Andy) Frey, formerly Deputy Solicitor General (in charge of criminal cases) for many years, and now at Mayer Brown, has also been a regular advocate. Ted Olson argued and won Bush v. Gore. Andy Frey managed to get the Supreme Court to adopt a totality of circumstances test in ruling on Miranda appeals and also got them to put a cap on punitive damages, in the interest of corporate defendants.
Uncharacteristically, Olson was arguing the "activist" (dare I say liberal?) side of this case, asking the Supreme Court to require a fair trial that means recusal of a judge who has the appearance or probability of bias. Frey argued the side of the corporation that put up the $3 million and argued that allowing this kind of required recusal would "open the floodgates" to these kinds of claims and that there was no constitutional standard here.
It was fun watching Olson have to deal with hostile questioning from Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Roberts, his usual compadres. Frey was put on the defensive mostly by Justices Ginsburg, Souter, and Stevens. Justice Kennedy tried to get both to answer his questions. Both advocates have the art of gently deflecting a question toward the answer they want to give down to an art.
The lineup of justices sounded familiar, including Justice Kennedy's searching for a viable middle ground to make, in effect, the decision. This did make the result harder to predict but it did seem that Olson had the better day at the lectern. He easily brought up relevant caselaw and seemed more at ease than Frey, who usually handles himself more smoothly.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
In Search of A. Lincoln
Lambert Field, St. Louis, MO (Feb. 14, 2009)--I'm writing from a slightly different venue: Springfield, Illinois. Yes, it’s the week of the Lincoln Bicentennial and Noah Griffin and I planned on spending it here, he leaving from San Francisco and I from DC. So far the weather has cooperated—after all, this is the Midwest in February—with one rain day Wednesday and the threat of snow showers late Friday night on our drive back to catch Southwest flights in St. Louis.
No sooner had we arrived Tuesday than we got to hear a presentation by Daniel Mark Epstein, author of The Lincolns and We Are Lincoln Men at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library. Epstein believes that the Lincolns’ marriage—best known for its storminess—was much like other marriages with high and low points. His other book is about Lincoln’s staff—his three secretaries (quite a contrast with today’s White House staff of hundreds) John Nicolay, John Hay, and William Stoddard. This has become a focus of modern Lincoln scholarship because Nicolay and Hay, in particular, constitute a primary source—they themselves turned their experience into a 10-volume biography of Lincoln, but now their letters and other documents are being combed for new information.
Then yesterday we spent the morning at the museum, which is fantastic. It has a life-size log cabin of the kind in which Lincoln was born, a gruesome slave auction block, a show on how the 1860 election might have been covered (including ads) by modern electronic media featuring the late Tim Russert as anchor/analyst, and a summary (four minute) presentation of the Civil War. We then had lunch at a hundred-year-old restaurant that made great meatloaf!
That same afternoon we managed to squeeze into a reenactment of Lincoln's leaving Springfield at the restored Great Western Depot ("I leave not knowing when or if I shall ever return...") complete with Lincoln dress-up artist Fritz Klein. Then we went to the Lincoln Home for a tour, attended a huge Let Freedom Sing! concert next door in the Prairie View Convention Center , led by the Illinois State Symphony (trying on the part of the brass section occasionally to sound like the great Chicago Symphony), and finally to the all-night vigil at the museum where they brought out their originals of the Emancipation, Gettysburg Address and the 13th Amendment. Then there were readings from lots of sources including Herndon's recollections of Lincoln and his contemporaries and the Robert Sherwood play that made Raymond Massey famous, Abe Lincoln in Illinois.
On Thursday—Lincoln’s 200th Birthday—we went to the Old State Capitol to get special post office cancellation of new Lincoln stamps and hear a roundtable in the old House chamber (complete with candles, quill pens and spittoons) by five prominent Lincoln historians, who included Michael Burlingame, Orville Burton, Elizabeth Varon, and others. The discussion, which went on for most of the morning, is the annual roundtable of the Abraham Lincoln Association, and plumbed all areas of contemporary Lincoln scholarship. One of the historians was as interested in the other world figure born on exactly the same day as Lincoln—Charles Darwin—and compared the two in many respects.
Presiding was Michael Burlingame, a retired professor from Connecticut College, who appears to be the reigning Lincoln historian of the day. He has just published a two-volume biography that appears to be the next major generational standard in Lincoln history since David Herbert Donald and Benjamin Thomas wrote their bios in the 1980s and 1950s, respectively. Burlingame did triple duty yesterday—also appearing as the Association’s lunch and dinner speaker! He had a rather tough act to follow at dinner—fellow named Obama, and then he didn’t get to speak until two hours after the Prez departed—but more on that below. Probably the most impressive conclusion about Lincoln one might draw from the discussion was the consensus on his demonstrated ability for growth, even after arriving at the White House.
We then toured the only surviving Lincoln law office building right on the square around the Old State Capitol where lawyers then and now have their offices in Springfield. Many of the courts are still nearby as well although it was illuminating to learn that this small structure that housed Logan & Lincoln and later Lincoln & Herndon (one of four buildings Lincoln occupied as a lawyer, but the only surviving one) also housed (in the 1840s) the U.S. Post Office on the first floor and the U.S. District Court on the second. Those two institutions often used to share buildings and lawyers commonly rented the space that was left, thus being truly “courthouse lawyers,” but this building was amazingly small for all of this activity! Most of it is still being restored but as in the museum’s rendering of Lincoln’s law office, each of the different rooms used as law offices by the partners always had pictures of (as Noah put it) the Big Whigs—Henry Clay, Lincoln’s political model, and Daniel Webster, also admired politically as well as being recognized as the greatest lawyer of his generation. Lincoln, of course, always said to Herndon, his last partner and first biographer, that this is where he intended to return and resume practice after the presidency.
There has been a huge amount of work done here in recent years to assemble not only all of Lincoln’s papers and correspondence, but every legal paper in every case he handled. The results of this massive project based out here are now being disseminated and reflected in newer works. The total amount written on Lincoln is becoming, as one commentator said here, second in volume possibly only to Jesus. What’s most interesting is that the work has upgraded the image of Lincoln as a lawyer. Not only was he well-regarded on the 8th circuit here and in the state but even beyond that (contra, of course, recall the major case in Cincinnati where lead counsel Edwin M. Stanton, later Lincoln’s Secretary of War, treated Lincoln like a country bumpkin, in the account in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals), but perhaps indicative of the current state of the profession, he also managed to make a good living at the practice by the time he left it for the White House.
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On then to visit a great old book store next door called Prairie Archives, whose owner told us that at least 50 new Lincoln books come out each year. Shelves, of course, of Lincolniana and Civil War volumes, but also, for this increasingly crazed collector, lots of Horatio Algers and old juveniles, including a good Alger edition. I had previously written to the widow of Judge Harlington Wood, a U.S. 7th Circuit judge whose chambers were in Springfield and with whom I had become friendly when working with him during my years at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on the first federal courts long range plan, to obtain a copy of his memoirs, published shortly before his death at 88 late last year. A stack of these confronted me right when I walked into the shop and the owner told me that Judge Wood had frequented the restaurant next door for years. Judge Wood had an amazing life that saw him turn up all over the world but also at Wounded Knee, where as an official in the Justice Department—Deputy Attorney General—he helped to ensure that the confrontation did not end in bloodshed, and earlier on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri on September 2, 1945, where his Lincolnesque features—mainly his height—led MacArthur’s cadre to assign him to stand right on the deck during the Japanese surrender ceremony. I still would love to learn how (as reported in his obituary in The Times) his performance at an amateur production at New Salem, near where he lived, playing Lincoln as a young man many years ago, was (well) reviewed by the legendary N.Y. Times critic Brooks Atkinson.
So Thursday night was the 200th Birthday Party for A. Lincoln, as it was dubbed, held at a large ballroom at the Crowne Plaza, a hotel located on the outskirts of Springfield and thus not very Lincolnian in any way. Apparently the A.L. Association only knew Obama would come shortly before the event (last week), because they undoubtedly could have filled a far larger space than this hall that had about nine hundred packed in, along with an overflow room. The major banquet in 1909 was held at the state armory.
Security was omnipresent as those of us in Washington are especially accustomed to dealing with. Despite that, it was fascinating to see Obama appear from a corner entrance to the main ballroom mobbed by well-wishers, cameramen, and media types. Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin introduced him by video—the President enjoyed reporting that Durbin was too much needed for a vote in Washington to come to the banquet he had arranged for the President to attend—and the President was most generous in complimenting all politicos on hand of both parties, including the M.C. for the evening, former Gov. Jim Edgar, a Republican, who was, to this observer, a bit condescending to the President in his remarks. Obama’s speech, which you may have seen in part on tv, was brief and excellent, perfectly designed for the occasion and drawing from it just the right amount of historical comparison in urging all to recognize what we need to do together through government.
Today we drove 23 miles out of town to see New Salem, which is preserved as a park with most of the original cabins reconstructed. We learned that when the town folded around 1840, because the Sangamon River never became really navigable, people disassembled their cabins just as if they were built of Lincoln Logs (sorry, couldn’t resist that one) and rebuilt them elsewhere, all in the same day. Even at this time of year, some locals dress up in period costumes and explain what their persona occupying each house, did at the time. The tavern was a temperance house, so you could eat and sleep but not drink. For spirits you had to repair to the store co-owned by A. Lincoln. Much of New Salem was reconstructed by the CCC in the ‘30s (will we see it revived soon?) and the land was purchased many years before for preservation by none other than Wm. Randolph Hearst. I’m no usually very high on historic re-creations but this one really conveys to you—especially the warm fires inside the cold cabins on a day in February—what it was like living there back then.
The New Salem museum has an excellent exhibit of artifacts from the community and those relating to its most famous citizen. They also take a neutral position on the issue of what was the relationship, if any, between Lincoln and Ann Rutledge. There remains violent disagreement on this among historians and the first promoter of the story was the aforementioned Herndon, who conducted extensive interviews with everyone he could find who knew Lincoln. That Herndon had little liking for Mary Lincoln (nor did Nicolay and Hay) may account for some of his own ardor in advancing the view that Ann Rutledge’s death in 1835 was a tragic moment for Lincoln. However, Herndon as well as Nicolay and Hay are coming back into favor as the key sources—Herndon for pre-White House and N&H for the time in Washington. My grandfather discovered some hitherto unseen Herndon papers in the 1930s (published in his book, The Hidden Lincoln), so he’d probably be pleased to see Lincoln’s last law partner’s reputation renovated. Herndon had been disparaged since World War II by historians who noted how the Lincoln stories he collected became engrossed later in his life by his need for cash and his weakness for drink. The third major Lincoln biographer up through the 1930s—Carl Sandburg—will remain on the disapproval list for accuracy (no one matches his poetic style, of course) because today’s historians point out that he merely accepted every story anyone fed to him.
We made a stop at the Lincoln Tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery. The tomb looked better on the outside than I had remembered but the inside is overdone marble and repros of statues of Lincoln. Tonight our finale was courtesy of the Springfield Theatre Company’s revival of Our American Cousin, which the Prez was presumably wise enough to pass up. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this true chestnut held the boards well. Granted, I don’t know how much adaptation the adaptor/director engaged in—original by Tom Taylor in the 1850s. The title character, as well as the female lead (played at Ford’s of course by the renowned Laura Keene), were excellent and the rest were adequate. And, of course, we got to see “the rest of the story”—that is, everything after that moment in Act III, Scene 2, when…In this production you hear a gunshot and the leading lady (out of character) explains what happened then. In addition, the star sang a song written by the show’s musical director to be performed by Laura Keene entr’acte on April 14, 1865. Miss Keene was not ready to sing it after either Act I or Act II, so this production presented it on stage for the first time. Having now heard it, she might have desisted even after Act III, had things been permitted to proceed that far.
It’s been a fantastic few days out here in the heartland, and I hope this conveys a bit of what’s it’s been like here. Our constant comment was the welcoming friendliness of the locals, of how on so many occasions someone was willing to squeeze us into a sold-out lecture or performance.
No sooner had we arrived Tuesday than we got to hear a presentation by Daniel Mark Epstein, author of The Lincolns and We Are Lincoln Men at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library. Epstein believes that the Lincolns’ marriage—best known for its storminess—was much like other marriages with high and low points. His other book is about Lincoln’s staff—his three secretaries (quite a contrast with today’s White House staff of hundreds) John Nicolay, John Hay, and William Stoddard. This has become a focus of modern Lincoln scholarship because Nicolay and Hay, in particular, constitute a primary source—they themselves turned their experience into a 10-volume biography of Lincoln, but now their letters and other documents are being combed for new information.
Then yesterday we spent the morning at the museum, which is fantastic. It has a life-size log cabin of the kind in which Lincoln was born, a gruesome slave auction block, a show on how the 1860 election might have been covered (including ads) by modern electronic media featuring the late Tim Russert as anchor/analyst, and a summary (four minute) presentation of the Civil War. We then had lunch at a hundred-year-old restaurant that made great meatloaf!
That same afternoon we managed to squeeze into a reenactment of Lincoln's leaving Springfield at the restored Great Western Depot ("I leave not knowing when or if I shall ever return...") complete with Lincoln dress-up artist Fritz Klein. Then we went to the Lincoln Home for a tour, attended a huge Let Freedom Sing! concert next door in the Prairie View Convention Center , led by the Illinois State Symphony (trying on the part of the brass section occasionally to sound like the great Chicago Symphony), and finally to the all-night vigil at the museum where they brought out their originals of the Emancipation, Gettysburg Address and the 13th Amendment. Then there were readings from lots of sources including Herndon's recollections of Lincoln and his contemporaries and the Robert Sherwood play that made Raymond Massey famous, Abe Lincoln in Illinois.
On Thursday—Lincoln’s 200th Birthday—we went to the Old State Capitol to get special post office cancellation of new Lincoln stamps and hear a roundtable in the old House chamber (complete with candles, quill pens and spittoons) by five prominent Lincoln historians, who included Michael Burlingame, Orville Burton, Elizabeth Varon, and others. The discussion, which went on for most of the morning, is the annual roundtable of the Abraham Lincoln Association, and plumbed all areas of contemporary Lincoln scholarship. One of the historians was as interested in the other world figure born on exactly the same day as Lincoln—Charles Darwin—and compared the two in many respects.
Presiding was Michael Burlingame, a retired professor from Connecticut College, who appears to be the reigning Lincoln historian of the day. He has just published a two-volume biography that appears to be the next major generational standard in Lincoln history since David Herbert Donald and Benjamin Thomas wrote their bios in the 1980s and 1950s, respectively. Burlingame did triple duty yesterday—also appearing as the Association’s lunch and dinner speaker! He had a rather tough act to follow at dinner—fellow named Obama, and then he didn’t get to speak until two hours after the Prez departed—but more on that below. Probably the most impressive conclusion about Lincoln one might draw from the discussion was the consensus on his demonstrated ability for growth, even after arriving at the White House.
We then toured the only surviving Lincoln law office building right on the square around the Old State Capitol where lawyers then and now have their offices in Springfield. Many of the courts are still nearby as well although it was illuminating to learn that this small structure that housed Logan & Lincoln and later Lincoln & Herndon (one of four buildings Lincoln occupied as a lawyer, but the only surviving one) also housed (in the 1840s) the U.S. Post Office on the first floor and the U.S. District Court on the second. Those two institutions often used to share buildings and lawyers commonly rented the space that was left, thus being truly “courthouse lawyers,” but this building was amazingly small for all of this activity! Most of it is still being restored but as in the museum’s rendering of Lincoln’s law office, each of the different rooms used as law offices by the partners always had pictures of (as Noah put it) the Big Whigs—Henry Clay, Lincoln’s political model, and Daniel Webster, also admired politically as well as being recognized as the greatest lawyer of his generation. Lincoln, of course, always said to Herndon, his last partner and first biographer, that this is where he intended to return and resume practice after the presidency.
There has been a huge amount of work done here in recent years to assemble not only all of Lincoln’s papers and correspondence, but every legal paper in every case he handled. The results of this massive project based out here are now being disseminated and reflected in newer works. The total amount written on Lincoln is becoming, as one commentator said here, second in volume possibly only to Jesus. What’s most interesting is that the work has upgraded the image of Lincoln as a lawyer. Not only was he well-regarded on the 8th circuit here and in the state but even beyond that (contra, of course, recall the major case in Cincinnati where lead counsel Edwin M. Stanton, later Lincoln’s Secretary of War, treated Lincoln like a country bumpkin, in the account in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals), but perhaps indicative of the current state of the profession, he also managed to make a good living at the practice by the time he left it for the White House.
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On then to visit a great old book store next door called Prairie Archives, whose owner told us that at least 50 new Lincoln books come out each year. Shelves, of course, of Lincolniana and Civil War volumes, but also, for this increasingly crazed collector, lots of Horatio Algers and old juveniles, including a good Alger edition. I had previously written to the widow of Judge Harlington Wood, a U.S. 7th Circuit judge whose chambers were in Springfield and with whom I had become friendly when working with him during my years at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on the first federal courts long range plan, to obtain a copy of his memoirs, published shortly before his death at 88 late last year. A stack of these confronted me right when I walked into the shop and the owner told me that Judge Wood had frequented the restaurant next door for years. Judge Wood had an amazing life that saw him turn up all over the world but also at Wounded Knee, where as an official in the Justice Department—Deputy Attorney General—he helped to ensure that the confrontation did not end in bloodshed, and earlier on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri on September 2, 1945, where his Lincolnesque features—mainly his height—led MacArthur’s cadre to assign him to stand right on the deck during the Japanese surrender ceremony. I still would love to learn how (as reported in his obituary in The Times) his performance at an amateur production at New Salem, near where he lived, playing Lincoln as a young man many years ago, was (well) reviewed by the legendary N.Y. Times critic Brooks Atkinson.
So Thursday night was the 200th Birthday Party for A. Lincoln, as it was dubbed, held at a large ballroom at the Crowne Plaza, a hotel located on the outskirts of Springfield and thus not very Lincolnian in any way. Apparently the A.L. Association only knew Obama would come shortly before the event (last week), because they undoubtedly could have filled a far larger space than this hall that had about nine hundred packed in, along with an overflow room. The major banquet in 1909 was held at the state armory.
Security was omnipresent as those of us in Washington are especially accustomed to dealing with. Despite that, it was fascinating to see Obama appear from a corner entrance to the main ballroom mobbed by well-wishers, cameramen, and media types. Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin introduced him by video—the President enjoyed reporting that Durbin was too much needed for a vote in Washington to come to the banquet he had arranged for the President to attend—and the President was most generous in complimenting all politicos on hand of both parties, including the M.C. for the evening, former Gov. Jim Edgar, a Republican, who was, to this observer, a bit condescending to the President in his remarks. Obama’s speech, which you may have seen in part on tv, was brief and excellent, perfectly designed for the occasion and drawing from it just the right amount of historical comparison in urging all to recognize what we need to do together through government.
Today we drove 23 miles out of town to see New Salem, which is preserved as a park with most of the original cabins reconstructed. We learned that when the town folded around 1840, because the Sangamon River never became really navigable, people disassembled their cabins just as if they were built of Lincoln Logs (sorry, couldn’t resist that one) and rebuilt them elsewhere, all in the same day. Even at this time of year, some locals dress up in period costumes and explain what their persona occupying each house, did at the time. The tavern was a temperance house, so you could eat and sleep but not drink. For spirits you had to repair to the store co-owned by A. Lincoln. Much of New Salem was reconstructed by the CCC in the ‘30s (will we see it revived soon?) and the land was purchased many years before for preservation by none other than Wm. Randolph Hearst. I’m no usually very high on historic re-creations but this one really conveys to you—especially the warm fires inside the cold cabins on a day in February—what it was like living there back then.
The New Salem museum has an excellent exhibit of artifacts from the community and those relating to its most famous citizen. They also take a neutral position on the issue of what was the relationship, if any, between Lincoln and Ann Rutledge. There remains violent disagreement on this among historians and the first promoter of the story was the aforementioned Herndon, who conducted extensive interviews with everyone he could find who knew Lincoln. That Herndon had little liking for Mary Lincoln (nor did Nicolay and Hay) may account for some of his own ardor in advancing the view that Ann Rutledge’s death in 1835 was a tragic moment for Lincoln. However, Herndon as well as Nicolay and Hay are coming back into favor as the key sources—Herndon for pre-White House and N&H for the time in Washington. My grandfather discovered some hitherto unseen Herndon papers in the 1930s (published in his book, The Hidden Lincoln), so he’d probably be pleased to see Lincoln’s last law partner’s reputation renovated. Herndon had been disparaged since World War II by historians who noted how the Lincoln stories he collected became engrossed later in his life by his need for cash and his weakness for drink. The third major Lincoln biographer up through the 1930s—Carl Sandburg—will remain on the disapproval list for accuracy (no one matches his poetic style, of course) because today’s historians point out that he merely accepted every story anyone fed to him.
We made a stop at the Lincoln Tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery. The tomb looked better on the outside than I had remembered but the inside is overdone marble and repros of statues of Lincoln. Tonight our finale was courtesy of the Springfield Theatre Company’s revival of Our American Cousin, which the Prez was presumably wise enough to pass up. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this true chestnut held the boards well. Granted, I don’t know how much adaptation the adaptor/director engaged in—original by Tom Taylor in the 1850s. The title character, as well as the female lead (played at Ford’s of course by the renowned Laura Keene), were excellent and the rest were adequate. And, of course, we got to see “the rest of the story”—that is, everything after that moment in Act III, Scene 2, when…In this production you hear a gunshot and the leading lady (out of character) explains what happened then. In addition, the star sang a song written by the show’s musical director to be performed by Laura Keene entr’acte on April 14, 1865. Miss Keene was not ready to sing it after either Act I or Act II, so this production presented it on stage for the first time. Having now heard it, she might have desisted even after Act III, had things been permitted to proceed that far.
It’s been a fantastic few days out here in the heartland, and I hope this conveys a bit of what’s it’s been like here. Our constant comment was the welcoming friendliness of the locals, of how on so many occasions someone was willing to squeeze us into a sold-out lecture or performance.
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