March 13, 1861 (Wednesday)

A Little Rainy This Morning

In an article by Edward Rothstein entitled "Emancipating History", New York Times, March 11, 2011, he writes about what Charleston is doing to bring to light the issue of slavery.  Excellent article...click on the link for details.

"The sesquicentennial of the Civil War that is about to be commemorated means that it has been nearly 150 years since American slavery was brought to an end.  But even in the North, the subject is still approached with caution, delicacy, and worry.  It inspires profound shame, guilt, anger, recrimination and remorse, aimed in many directions for many reasons on both sides of the racial divide.

Of course, in the North slavery can seem like a distant abstraction, creating its own problems.  But in Charleston all abstractions are gone.  The strange thing is how long it has taken to see the substance, and how much more is yet to be shown.  Several directors of the region's historical plantations and homes, which offer tours of these once-prosperous estates, told me that until the 1990s, slavery's role was generally met with silence."

An article written by Richard J. Tofel of the New York Times entitled "Abraham Lincoln, Rookie Executive, March 12, 2011" explores the first several weeks in Lincoln's young presidency.  He had over a 1000 jobs he needed to fill and spent hours and days interviewing people -- which slowly wore him down and became sick with migraines.  For more details, click on the link above to get the story of his learning curve.

"Finally, Nicolay convinced Lincoln to restrict the hours during which he was available to office seekers.  He cut back from an average of 12 hours a day to a daily window from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., six days a week.  The next day, still weakened, Lincoln acquiesced to a further cutback, restricting his public office hours to three hours a day and eliminating Saturday hours.  The pressure from office seekers had taken a toll on both president and policy, and the president knew it.  'I am,' Lincoln told the editor of the New York Times, 'like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of the his house, that he can't stop to put out the fire that is burning in the other.' "