With Malice Toward None: A biography of Abraham Lincoln

Recently I've been reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and I'm really enjoying it. I've learned that he had depression and that he was incredibly self-conscious of his humble beginnings. Evidently, he hated farm work and manual labor, which was a big factor in him educating himself. He was a very successful lawyer and was well-read on the issues of the times--he read every newspaper he could get his hands on, so he was not limited to just his party's point of view.

I've also learned a lot more about the slave issue leading up to the time of the American Civil War. Many Northerners were opposed to the idea of slavery, but did not want to fight a war over it. Most Northerners were also White supremacists and did not like the idea of freed slaves flocking to the North. Abraham Lincoln was aware of these views, and did not initially make the Civil War a war over slavery even though he was very opposed to slavery and wanted to see it end. Lincoln gradually introduced more and more measures to facilitate the emancipation of the slaves to help the American people get used to the idea.

The Emancipation Proclamation didn't come along until January of 1863, two years after the Confederacy was formed. It also only freed the slaves in the Confederate states; the people in the slave states still part of the Union were still permitted to retain ownership of the people enslaved at the time. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution--freeing all slaves everywhere in the US--was adopted in December of 1865, several months after the end of the war, and practically three years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Union also experienced poor military leadership until about 1864, only a year before the end of the war. Prior to that time, the Northern generals consistently fought a defensive war, successfully repelling all of the Southern forays into Union land, but never pursuing Southerners into their lands, even though the Northern armies had better weapons and more men.

I enjoyed the biography from start to finish. I enjoyed the new information I got as I read it. Although it did not read like a novel (how many accurate biographies do?), it did not consist solely of dry, uninteresting facts. The biography itself is called "With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln" by Stephen B. Oates. It comes highly recommended!

Good people here

Levi and I went outside to play this afternoon. When we got outside, we saw there was a group of mothers and toddlers already outside--what a treat! Levi and I approached them. Levi had no fear, but as we neared the group, I had a sudden apprehension that the women in the group secretly didn't want me there and didn't enjoy my company. I've had this fear ever since middle school--or even before that. I'm not sure; it's just that every time I approached people I didn't know very well, I would assume they were innocent of enjoying my company until proven guilty. I've been working on this somewhat illogical fear for years, with only very little progress.

Today when the thought came to me, I immediately told myself, "No, self, these are very nice people, and they like having you around. You know that! Now go talk to them!" So I did. And they enjoyed my company! Although I felt like a very different kind of person than these women were, I did fit in. They did enjoy having me around.

I think all too many of us (but thankfully not all of us) in the human family have an inferiority complex: we feel that we don't fit in, so we reluctant to let others who are different from us befriend us. Let's remember that those who seem more "with it" than us may be more open than we think!

Trees can have identical twins

Today I learned (TIL - I can never remember what the acronym means, so I'm reminding myself in writing) that a grove of aspens are ALL genetically identical! What. and Wow. The way it works is that they all sprout from the same root system, which spreads underground over time. So these trees aren't really damaged by forest fires, because they just come right back up in a younger and healthier version. Amazing, right?

Here's a great quote from the Wikipedia article on them:

"Lately, aspens have an increased popularity in forestry, mostly because of their fast growth rate and ability to regenerate from sprouts, making the reforestation after harvesting much cheaper, since no planting or sowing is required."

Photo from Wikimedia Commons