is not enough, he wrote. americans have to cultivate the science of human relationships, the ability of all peoples, of all kinds to live together and work together in the same world at peace. to make our the world. find to be better than.

the topic of our final segment this morning has been the one liner used by comedians, scholars, politician and common folks. for 100 years. who is buried. congrats to this morning. and timeless questions serves as a lead to a serious and painful to remember the civil war that and we have the selfless panel of luminaries doing might not seem. our panelists are recognized by

any civil war enthusiast. but first of them why this man and their brief introduction please hold your enthusiasm. welcome to joe. all ready to eminent civil war historian helen. he also serves as the thomas w smith distinguished research scholar and director of the initiative on politics and statesmanship and the james madison program at princeton university. he formerly was a professor of history right here at gettysburg college. allan is the only three time winner of the lincoln prize for abraham lincoln redeemer. president lincoln's emancipation proclamation and gettysburg, the last invasion. his more most recent work is a widely praised biography of robert. do you read about richard? george miller wrote in the washington post exactly what the

nation needs as it reappears raises important historical figures who lived in challenging times with assumptions based on life that michelle krowl serves as the secretary of the lincoln forum. she is an author of several articles and books relating to civil war and the world war two memorial in washington. she holds a master's degree and is from the university california, berkeley, and was once a research assistant for doris kearns goodwin. michelle, is the civil war and reconstruction specialist in the manuscript division of the library of congress, where she oversees the lincoln papers. dana shoaf is a longtime editor of civil war times and engineer of it's a multi-year partnership with the lincoln forum. he recently left the magazine to become director of interpretation for the national museum of civil war medicine in frederick, maryland. he is also an avid collector of

early 19th century antiques and photography. although some family members say he's a hoarder of old hand tools. but no, no judging here. and he is a renowned battlefield guide. melissa winn is the marketing manager at american battlefield trust, the nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving america's hallowed battlegrounds. prior to that, she was the director photography for history net, a writer editor, preservation advocate, photographer and collector of civil war photographs. she is a member of both the professional photographers association and the center for civil war photography. and finally, our own jonathan white serves as vice chairman of the lincoln forum. he is professor of american studies at christopher newport university. and as if those two full time

vocations were not enough in his spare time, he has authored or edited some 16 books. we got a salty splash of his shipwrecked book yesterday at the lincoln forum is very proud that our vice chairman is this year's winner of the lincoln prize for his work a house built by slaves, african-american visitors to the lincoln white house. i turn the stage over to the 2023 lincoln prize winner. our vice chair, john, who will serve as the moderator of this morning's distinguished panel and now recognize the panel. thank you, chris. and thank you for taking the boston red sox hat ballot with back with you. as a phillies fan, it's been a hard year, but i certainly couldn't stand here and look at a red sox hat during this time. i wanted to open this session by reading a short excerpt from the introduction of final resting

places. and this passage was written by my brilliant coeditor and friend brian matthew jordan. so these are his words. the civil war did few things better or more efficiently than make final resting places between 1861 and 1865, an estimated. 750,000 soldiers succumbed to chronic diseases, enemy bullets or the effects of captivity. the war planted bodies on battlefields, in cemeteries beneath obedient rows of military headstones and amid the crowded disorder of mass graves, some bodies were lost at sea. remains were scattered across the farms and behind earthworks, often planted where they fell. death is nothing here. the poet walt whitman marveled as he surveyed the field hospitals around fredericksburg. in december 1862. as you step out in the morning from your tent to wash your face, you see before you a

stretcher of shapeless, extended object with a shapeless, extended object. it is the corpse of some wounded or sick soldier. no one makes an adieu. all useless ceremony is admitted. death, burial and commemoration were daily aspects of civil war life. graves became sites of memory, both for those who lost loved ones and for succeeding generations, including our own. about six or seven years ago, i had the idea to invite civil war historians to write short, personal, reflective essays about a gravesite that mattered to them. i wanted them to reflect on that place. why it mattered to the those who lost their loved ones. what it tells us about the civil war generation and what it can still tell us in our own time. we didn't want. we didn't want to collect a series of essays just about headstones and so instead, our contributors found a diverse array of places that captured a

broad and new history of the vi war. and i wa tshow you just a couple of photographs of some of these places. and then i'm going to ask our palis to talk about the essays that they wrote and the photographs that they took. glen le fantasy wrote about william oates, who lost his brother here at gettysburg on the second day of the battle. and he spent 40 years looking for his brother, where his brother's remains rested. he finally foundut in the early 20th century they were at hollywoo cemetery in richmond. and glen's essay brought me to tears en i was reading the page proofs this summer, ron white wrote about this extraordinary person, joshua lawrence chamberlain has a very humble headstone. dan blanton wrote about jenny in irish immigra fought as albert cashier and lived the rest of his life as albert cashier as a soldier and veteran who has two headstones in illinois and a holloway who knows more about the uss monitor

than just about anyone else in the world wrote about the turret of the monitor as a gravesite because the remains two sailors were found there when the turret was recovered, and then years later, they received a formal burial at arlington national cemetery. michael vaughan berg wrote about the stone river as a grave and the story of 20 black soldiers who drowned after a careless accident by a white sailor and their grave became the waters of a river near charleston. doug edgerton wrote about the beaches near battery wagner, ught and the mass grave that was put there. that have been discovered since that battle and some of those remains were moved to buford national cemetery and i'm so proud that the university of georgia press chose this photograph as the cover illustration, because it was taken by a student of mine, chloe baker. these are unknn aves of

massachusetts. that's men who fell in that battle. and it is very possible that robert gould shaw is buried under one of these nameless stones. michael gray wrote about a train wreck in northeastern pennsylvania that led to hundreds of confederate p.o.w.s dying and being thrown in a mass ditch along the delaware river. melody andrews reflects on the 38 dakota warriors who were the executed in the day after christmas, 1862. and mark schantz has a powerful essay about lincoln murder and a segregated cemetery brick wall in norfolk, virginia. two of our writers, caroline janeen, hillary green, wrote about the slave cemeteries and the confederate cemeties on their university campuses. and jennifer murray wrote about a horse animal. history is becoming very popular. and old baldy general meade's horse was died after the war and

was buried and his comrade meade's comrades, they decided, we got to get that thing out of the ground and taxidermy it. and so. i got to drive to philadelphia and take this picture at the art museum. you can go visit old baldy today. and of course, if we want to know who's buried in grant's tomb and if you don't know, we're not going to tell you. we had to have grant, but we decided to look at grant in a slightly different way through the lens of richard greener, an african-american college professor who was a fundraiser for grant's tomb. and in fact, not only does catherine reynolds chaddock tell the story of greener life, but now how he is commemorated himself at the unirsy of south carolina, where he was a college professor. and so this is actually just a sample of the many stories that come out in this book. where were historians reflect in a very new and personal way. and so i'm going to start with

michelle because she has one of the lincoln stories in the book and i'll turn it over. i've asked each person to talk about the story they tell. so, michelle so my sto about elizabeth keckley, who, as we heard a little bit earli was the best known as the seamstress, modest confidante of mary of mary lincoln. but she was born enslaved in virginia in 1818. she suffered all of the horrors of slavery in terms of mental and physical abuse but le to use her skills as a seamstress to buy her own freedom and that of her son in the 1850s, after she had ended up in saint louis. and that and then she came to washington, d.c., and got in with the lincoln administration and was an intimate in the lincoln white house after lincoln's death. she was involved in the old clothes scandal with mary lincoln and in 1868, she wrote a book called behind the scenes as a way of telling her story, but also trying to vindicate mary

lincoln a bit because as she's said, since she was involved with this, this woman so closely, she needed to show that she was upright in her own activities as well. the problem is, is that she then gave some letters to her editor that were included in the book, and they were very personal about the lincolns. and she essentially became persona non grata with most lincoln people. and most of us now know her because of that lincoln story. so my connection with this and what i wrote about in the essay is when i was an undergraduate, i wrote a senior seminar paper on elizabeth keckley and i kind of this is terrible, but i kind of promised myself, like, if i got an a on this paper, i will go to her grave in washington, d.c., because i got an a, but we never doubted. now, sometimes you do have to doubt, but but the problem was, as i had access to johnny washington's they knew lincoln which includes information about her her funeral expenses. it has a photo of her tombstone

and you know, it describes where it is and that she'll be there forever. it's the bible verse that she had on it. and i knew it was that at harmony cemetery, which had been the preeminent african-american seminary cemetery in washington when she died in 1907. and but i knew it was in washington, d.c. so i when i first when i was able to finally fulfill my pledge, when i basically moved to washington to work on my dissertation, i looked for harmony cemetery and it was i kept seeing land over maryland or another somewhere else in maryland. and i thought, that can't be right. and so i finally discovered that in the night as as harmony particularly is, as you know, segregation changed in washington. and and the cemetery had fallen on hard times and wasn't being maintained in the 1950s. a developer offered to buy the property where it had been, which is now the rhode island metro station, by the way. and move the bodies to new harmony cemetery out in

landover, maryland. so that's why i was seeing these landover, maryland, addresses. and as it turned out, about 1959, this started happening and there were over 30,000 graves that were being moved from this one cemetery to the new harmony. and the developer for the contract said that he would move the bodies. but as it turned out, there was no there was no clause about moving the tombstones. so when i finally got out to new harmony cemetery and i started looking, i, i couldn't find her. and i went into the office and essentially it was explained well, there are no headstones in that section, so we can give you the number and you can try to find it yourself. so i had flowers with me and i wanted to go put flowers on her grave. and there was nowhere to leave them because i didn't know where she was. so when john offered this this story, i thought, okay, i want to do elizabeth keckley and talk about this and what ended up being a marvelous thing is and

why i call it not so final resting places is first of all, she's not where she she had been before. but what i was discovering is that you can parallel her tombstone in her grave with her historical status and reputation because around 1907, she was she was known she had only, you know, been dead, for she had just died. she was still well known. but as time passed, people kind of started to forget about her other than as a witness to the lincoln administration. and every few years, you know, maybe every 30 years, her book would be reprinted. but then starting in the civil rights movement, people started paying a little bit more attention to her. and then a resurgence with with lincoln's studies and interest in african american women. and she was talked about more and more and to the point that now she is almost given equal equal status. and sometimes with mary lincoln. so books started coming out, mrs. lincoln and mrs. keckley or there was the stage play at arena arena stage.

there's now an elizabeth keckley reader with essays about her. so her her her status started to become more and more. and i was very pleased to see that tamika nunley had written an essay in which you never even see the words the lincolns, because it's all about elizabeth keckley and her extraordinary life. the other thing that started happening is that the book was published under the name keckley. keckley y, and that's how her name had been known for many years. but when you actually find her signature on historical documents at the national archives for her pension or we have one of her signatures in the herndon white papers, she spells it k e c k l y so an extra e had been added to her name for all of that time. so in addition to the resurgence of her own identity, as apart from or very, you know, prominent with the lincoln's as her name started to be spelled correctly, she was regaining her identity that way. so about 2009, i think it was, there was an effort made to get her a tombstone at new harmony

cemetery. and it was it was erected and now there'a photo of her on it. it gives her correct name. it has her signature. and it also more about her life. so as a result of this book, i was finally prompted to go back. and and so when i was writing, i was able to take my flowers and i was able to find her. and so i felt like a 24 year journey had finally been completed. thank you so much, michelle. ellen, you're going to take us to a completely different sort of story. there's there's two ways of going out civil war. there's probably more than that. but there's two ways, at least in the most general sense. one is like, michelle, you know something about a person. and then you have to track down where the burial is. sometimes you go out of the other way.

sometimes you trip across a burial almost literally. and then you reconstruct the story behind. i've had that experience near where we live in in payola, which is the western suburbs of philadelphia and the churchyard at old st david's, which is a parish that was founded in 1715. so it has a pretty substantial graveyard. on one occasion, as historians will hear the kind of people who do this sort of thing, we wander around graveyards and take notes. one occasion i almost literally bumped into a monument and i began reading it because i'd never really paid a whole lot of attention to it before. but it was a monument. and as it turned out, it was to a young man, 20 years old, went listing everything about him, suddenly i realized it was a civil war casualty. young man, 72nd pennsylvania.

oh, wait, i know what that is. that's the philadelphia brigade. and then at the bottom. killed around cheatham, september 17, 1862. and i thought, i know exactly where his regiment took its casualties. i did a little further digging. i found a photograph of him. he was the son of the stationmaster at police station, grew up within usually distance of where i live. and suddenly, at that moment, you you experience a sense of neighborliness that you didn't realize you had before. now, in that same churchyard, and on another occasion, i noticed in the grass almost level with the ground, there was a small marker. well, curious, they killed the cat and will probably kill me at one point, but curiosity took

hold of me and i got down on all fours and brushed the grass and all away. and i tried to decipher what this was, and it took some difficulty. and finally, after piecing it all together, i realized what it was saying was this moses malone, 45th u.s. city. i had no idea who moses malone was, but the national archives did. they had his service records. he had enlisted in the 45th uscg from lancaster, pennsylvania. he was part of four companies of the 45th u.s. team, which were detailed to participate at lincoln's second inauguration on march fourth, 1865. we know the photographs of lincoln standing on the east portico of the capitol with the little table and the glass of water. and he's reading the second inaugural.

but there are also photographs which have come more recently to light on the last 20 years from the same camera perch, looking around at the audience of this enormous crowd of people and in the front rank of it is a rank of soldiers. they are black soldiers. they are the 45th united states colored troops. moses malone, as they are. yes. sometimes you get surprised by what you find. that wasn't the case with robert kelly. robert kelly had never been in particularly tip top health. he had always suffered from even before the beginning of a civil war from heart trouble. the war exacerbated it. he suffered at least two major heart attacks during the war. after the war, he becomes president of washington college in the upper shenandoah around lexington, virginia.

people have often scratch their heads, wondering why he became president of this little college, which was on the verge of extinction. most of its students had gone off to the war. most of its endowment had gone off to the war, too, and wasn't coming back. i think in large measure he took the job when it was offered to him because it got him as far away from washington, d.c. as he could get without violating the terms of his parole. remember, by that point, he was under indictment for treason. so he becomes president. he turns out to be a remarkably successful college president. this man knew how to shake the apples out of the tree. he brings in more than a quarter million dollars of endowment. money raises the student body from a dozen when he becomes president to over 400. i mean, that was that was a time in which that was a bigger student population than yale or

the university o virginia. and yet his health continues to decline. and by 1870, his heart trouble has become so serious that he can hardly walk from the president's house, which is an engineer. he had design, and he can hardly walk from the president's house to his office in the basement of the college chapel without having to stop and catch his breath. and finally, in september of 1870, his heart fails again, this time in very serious terms. his heart fails because, first of all, he suffers a stroke. the stroke was not fatal. he would probably have recovered from the stroke, but his heart couldn't take the strain. and so he dies. on the 12th of october, 1870. at that point, i don't think that anybody was horribly surprised by it. one student wrote a letter home

saying, i've never seen a man man's health decline as seriously and as rapidly as i've seen president leaves decline. that meant that there were a lot of people who were already giving thought to what, a funeral and a burial might look like. so that after lee dies on the 12th of october, immediately the machinery is in work and there is a grand funeral. there is a viewing of the body in the college chapel. and then there is a great ceremony there provided presided over by his former chief of artillery, william nelson pendleton. and lee is buried in the basement of the college chapel. but it doesn't stop there. it's a good thing it didn't stop there, too, because almost in a almost in a final indignity, they get the dates wrong on the inscription of the burial they had that they had his birth date

off by a week. but the college trustees do two things. one is they immediately move to change the name of the institution to washington and lee university. and the next thing they do is begin planning a substantial addition to the chapel as a burial place, a grand burial place for lee, the sculptor, sir edward valentine, who had been contracted to make a sculpture of lee before lee's death, is now taken on board to create a kind of memorial of recumbent figure of robert ely,heack of the chapel is torn down, extended and a large apse is created, and this recumbent valentine sculpture of lee is installed. there. why is the college taking all this trouble? because it knows profit when it sees it.

the college is thinking two things. one is this will continue to attract students. students who in some cases might have been of age to serve in the confederate army. by the end of the war, the confederates were digging down fairly deep in the age deciles. but if they couldn't actually serve in the army, they could always be part of general lee's college. so we will put lee out in front because that will help us to recruit students, but also it will help us as a tourist attraction for lexington, virginia. and the idea is going to be that lexington is going to become a source of pilgrimage for visitors from all over the country who will, of course, not unlike the town we're presently living in, will will be the source of a great revenue stream. and that does not happen. and it doesn't happen because two years after lee's death,

jubal early comes to speak in lexington and jubal early proceeds to tell us why the most important monument to robert ely should be erected in richmond, virginia. so lecturing john gets the valentine memorial. it gets it's reconstruction of the chapel, but it does not get the tourists. it does, however, have this figure of the recumbent lee on display, then for many, many years until 2017. right. to come back to that. yes, we can come back to that. thank you. we'll come back to that in the second round of questions. i just got squelch all. you're just leaving. isn't there an adage at historical conferences you'd ever want to follow babies, dogs or the rich voice of l'engle's? so, yeah. such as my lot. such as my lot. well, the person i'm going to talk about whose grave i investigated is someone you've

never heard of. not a recognizable figure like elizabeth keckley, or certainly like robert e lee did not belong to a recognizable regiment as some of the folks that allen mentioned in 2018. because i do have a very small collection of civil war items i was perusing online civil war dealers and there was an online shop, the iron horse military store, military antiques, and i was scanning what he had for sale, and i was arrested by this entry. documents discussed seeing an exchange between soldiers and civilians murder near adamstown, maryland. so they really weren't that expensive. there was an outline of what they contained and i purchased them and what i received were very neat, handwritten testimonials or affidavits from

four men, and i'll not going to try to give you too many names, but i'm going to read these names to you. and these four men were named george and charles brady. they were brothers, john crown and curtis wheeler. they were all civilians that lived in frederick county, maryland, which is where i live right now in adamstown. and it's just 20 minutes south of where i live. there was another person involved named samuel calvin lamar, but there was no testimonial from him. miraculously, nearly a year later, that same dealer emailed me and said, there's another one of those testimonials for sale at an auction house by a man named charles b davis. and i purchase that. and charles b davis was a soldier. he was a member of the first new hampshire three months infantry regiment. and i was very happy because i had a soldier's side of this as well. these civilian accounts and what these affidavits of it's

discussed was an interaction that took place on a warm july 1861 afternoon between five and six in the late afternoon, the civilians i mentioned were on a handcart and they were leaving the main line of the baltimore, ohio railroad near a town called point of rocks. and if you've driven across route 15 on the bridge, that's essentially where point iraq is located. they were hand pumping their way toward adams town because a spur that they were on ran through adams town. and in the frederick, maryland. and these men were all from the adams town area. so they're pumping their way along. they were in pointed rocks. they were hanging out and they encounter a detached moment of these first new hampshire soldiers walking southward on the same spur, all bedecked in their early war uniforms, gray swallowtail coats trimmed in red, gray capiz copies trimmed

in red. the soldiers stopped the handcart and demanded that the civilians get off and let them take it so they could use it to get back to their camp and one common thread that comes out in all these testimonials is that both parties have been drinking somewhat heavily. i won't read you extensive quotes, but this is the tenor of what you read in these these testimonials from various these various accounts. we had done a good deal of drinking. i had had three times of whiskey and two of beer in point a rocks. charles davis, the soldier, says, we had all been drinking too. you get a sense alcohol is helping to fuel this incident. one of the soldiers becomes particularly aggressive. a man named samuel webster. he's a sergeant in the first new

hampshire. he pulls his pistol out and demands all the civilians get off the handcart. they all comply except to samuel calvin lamar and george brady. they remain on the handcart. webster fires his pistol in the ground near one of the civilians that had gotten off the handcart. and at that point, samuel calvin. samuel calvin lamar says shooting be --. you don't scare me. webster pulled up his pistol, shot lamar in the head, and he fell down on the ground. the civilians were frantic. their friend had just been shot dead in front of them, and they pleaded with the soldiers to let them use a hand cart to take his body to the regimental hospital back toward point arrives at their camp. webster said. let the son of a -- die.

i'm not sure of the exact same exact process that followed, but webster is arrested and he will be placed in jail in frederick county and a local diarist, jacob engelbrecht, mentions the shooting and the fact that he's imprisoned. he will be acquitted of murder in november of 1861, which is not surprising because frederick is a very pro-union area. the officer that had these items taken down was a lieutenant named william f greely. and you can just imagine this young officer very early in the war trying to do his best to record this terrible incident. i had these documents and i, i thought immediately, lamar must be buried somewhere in the county. i would hope he would be buried somewhere in the county. could i find his grave and i did some research, looked at some our archives, looked online.

and at first i was i found a lead that he might be buried in a small village called brooksville, which some of you may know. there's a cemetery there. i went there. i didn't i couldn't find it. and then my wife, heidi, who was a former director of the historical society of frederick county, said, you know, i remember a book, an old book, 18th century graveyards of frederick county. we got found the book online and it listed samuel calvin lamar as being buried in the ortho thomas cemetery near point of rocks. so on a beautiful sunlit october day, brilliant blue sky leaves still on the trees myself, heidi and melissa, because we were both working on civil war times at the time, i went there to try to find his grave. we drove up and down main road and eventually i said, i think maybe down this gravel road. and we went down that gravel road. and as we did, we were surrounded by soybean fields, but we could see there was a knot of trees, just a knot of

trees down this gravel road. and as we got closer and looked down, we could see some gravestones. so i parked my truck, we got out and we walked out of the brilliant sunshine into darkness, literally this overgrown cemetery, trees preventing the sunlight from reaching the ground. we didn't say much. we gassed. we had to watch where we step brambles, sunken graves, feet deep, fallen trees toppled over, headstones. so i picked one up 18th century. i picked another one of the 18th century founders of the area. ortho thomas was a early landowner in that area and it had been a family plot and is in the cases of many plots, it had been expanded for use by the larger community. there were other names in there, but we couldn't find lamar's grave and we were about to leave. and heidi noticed a grave off by itself at the edge of the cemetery and we walked over in

this grave is inscribed, lived facing east to meet the rising sun, as so many of them were at the time, and there it said samuel cal lamar wh weeping willow eroded and his death date of july 21st, 1861. this incident occurred the same day as the first battle of bull run dana, can i stop you there and use that to transition to melissa and i'll come back you to ask about the. this is a tough panel that we're going to we're going to we're going to settle this on the parking. i now have something in common with al and i thank you for that. i'll come back to you. i swear. so i'm going to transition to melissa, who was there on that day. yes. note to self. be brief. yes. i feel really fortunate because i was asked by jonathan to take photographs of many of those for these resting places in the book

that were covered. so i'm just going to show you a couple of the places because by by doing so i really feel like i got a really good glimpse of what a different resting place might be. you know, what this book is trying to show is that these final resting places are buried. and that's the story of the war that this are all very different. so you can see here elizabeth ckley, again, her, ow, original, final resting place is now a metro stop. she's been moved. and this is this is actually another photograph of the the graveyard where seven calvin lamar is buried. and it's very overgrown. you can see now you can go ahead. so one of the first places that i was went to take photographs ttysburg.avid aitchison rock in and many of you have probably heard the story. he was in the hundred and 40th pennsylvania, shot twice, died at gettysburg. his friends buried him and john

wolcott farm near this rock, and they marked the rock with his initials, dea. and that allows for them to send home to his father where he is buried. and his father sends some men out to gettysburg to bring his body back home and he is then reinterred in washington cemetery in pennsylvania. this is the essay in the book says by doing that they made first headstone and gettysburg by marking it that way it's an incredible story and then a very different one. the next one is john rodgers briggs in arlington cemetery. this is, ocose, the son of montgomery makes the quartermaster general for the united states army. he has also sort of a controversial death between he gets in sort of a skirmish or between engagement between of himself and some maybe confederates, soldiers, maybe bushwhackers. the stories vary as to what

happened with him, but of course, it's devastated. into montgomery, miggs, his first burial site is near rock creek park in washington, d.c. and he is then reinterred. and you can go to the next one. his second burial site actually sort of an act of vengeance by montgomery miggs. he's buried in the first plot of arlington cemetery on the front lawn of robert kelly. you know, if if if i have to suffer losing my son, you're losing your home. and here's my son at your doorstep and his the monument on top of his cenotaph is very emotional. it's it's it's moving. and this is it. it's a depiction of his death. it's got his gun laying next to him. these mahe ground are tual the hoof marks a you know, the soldiers that were there and his body that was laying there dead. the cape that he is wearing in this depiction is a gift that montgomery miggs gave to him a

brief of shortly before this occurred. so it's a very moving memorial to his son. but also, again, at the front doorstep of robert kelly. it's a very different gravestone. gravestone and resting place. and also at the same cemetery is williamon, a completely different resting place. and completely different story of the civil war. m johnson, of course, is the servant of lincoln, who he brings the president brings him to d.c. with him from springfield. he has, you know, some controversy in the white house himself. and lincoln really cares for his servant quite a bit and gets him a placement at the treasury, but he brings him to some of his engagements or appointments with him still. and they go to gettysburg to come to gettysburg here for the speech. and shortly after that, william johnson dies from smallpox. lincoln pays off his house debt.

he pays for his headstone and his his burial. this is a plot at arlington cemetery. it is most likely his, but we don't really know it is. and it speaks in the essay about this could be and it could not be. it is a mystery. and why? because his story is vastly different than many of the people that are buried at arlington cemetery. the next one is john wilkes booth. and this one was really fascinating to see. and then, you know, he'rked it. he's buried in an unmarked grave. he has no headstone. and i think we can all imagine why he's a shame to his family. but his burial has multiple pieces as well. he's originally the government doesn't want to give anybody a place for his body to be a martyr. you they don't want an entirely new unites to come and worship over booth this dead body so they make kind of a show of tossing him into the potomac river, but they actually bury

him at washington arsenal. and then he's reinterred a few years later, the booth family is trying to get his remains to bury him somehow and, you know, recognize the ball, or at least in the family plot. he's buried here in greenmount cemetery in baltimore, but he has no headstone at all. but he is buried with his family. this little spot plot here, you can see, is a foot stone for one of his family members. and people still to this day venture into the graveyard to pay tribute to booth. many of them put a penny on it. and of course, that's a very common practice. but as the essay sort of leaves it there, usually there are always left with lincoln's head face up. he gets the last word. so and then the next place that i was able to go and this is a beautiful cemetery. even the cemetery trees are vastly different here. this is oak hill cemetery in georgetown. very notable.

people are buried here and this is the story of jamie stanton, whhe son of edwin stanton. he was eight mthold when he ed. he was vaccinated at two weeks old for smallp, which was likely to early and he's sickly most of his life. and he is buried at this beautiful ceme you can go forrd. there's two markers here that mark his head and then this one says, aged eight months. it's very traumatic for this family. the next one shows, again, this cemetery three is very prestigious cete. it's vastly different than the cemetery that samuel calvin lamar is buried in. ben bradleisuried there. catherine graham is buried there. it's also very notable because lincoln son was there, held in the vault and he would visit often. and jamie is buried there as well. so i to see lots of different resting places and i find why so fortunate for having to get that

full piece of this. the thing i really noted among all of the stories that people have been talking about and when i was sort of putting my notes together, was how many of these places are not final resting places? almost all of the stories i told involve a moving of the body, you know, in this sort of rewrite of their final resting place and sort of the of the past is not dead. it's not even past. so it was very interesting for me so we're going to do a speed round where i'm going to ask two questions and give them a minute or so to answer. i'm just going to ask michelle and dana something very quickly and then we'll open it up to q&a. we will go to about 1240 because we started late and so that way you'll have time for some questions to michelle. you open the essay by talking about elizabeth coakley's mother. can you just very quickly tell that story and why it matters so much to elizabeth's story in behind the scenes, elizabeth keckley mentions that once she bought her freedom and her sons and they moved to washington,

she lost touch with. her own mother, who remained with the garland family in saint louis and that she when she went back, she tried to find her mother's final resting place. and there was no headstone and she couldn't do it. and so essentially, i won't even try to get the quote out, but it was essentially, you know, the pangs of your heart when you try to pay your respects to a loved one and you don't know where they are. and i of course, i had read that many times in reading her book, but it was not until after tried to visit elizabeth keckley. and, you know, obviously, she's not she's not a an intimate relative or something. but i had this connection to her and then i reread behind the scenes and i thought, oh, goodness, the same thing happened to her. so it was just very moving that the same thing had happened. but at least in her case, she's now she's now been found. and dana, you did a facebook book live from the site of lamar's grave. can you just very quickly talk about what changed after that?

you did that is sure. you weren't holding this somewhat awkwardly, pull these out. so to me, lamar is an unknown casualty. the civil war, he's not on any casualty list or casualty roster. and that juxtaposition with the first bull run really bears that out. but he's as much a casualty of the war as anyone else that fought or died in it in uniform. and when i went back, i've gone back several times and i found confederate flags on his grave. and there in picture as well that you saw on the screen and i removed them because he wasn't a confederate soldier, he was a civilian. and i think in some way these flags justify, his death on the battlefield. and he was the victim of a drunken interact session and we

don't know what his allegiance really was. several of the friends on the pushcart of his do go and enlist in a large whites 35th battalion in virginia cavalry. they cross the river into virginia and they fight for the confederacy. but we don't know if he'd have done that. and it just. it's interesting, though, that somebody is paying attention and, going back and finding it. and the last time i went back, someone taped a notice on there asking any lamar descendants to reach out to them in these places still have great resonance in our society today. and so with that, i want to thank our panelists and open it up to questions. please go to the microphone so that the audience can hear you. we've got about 10 minutes, so please keep the questions concise and we will strive to keep our answers concise.

go ahead. so comment. no question, john chamberlain, still no relation. when i was growing up, i had a tendency to anna age the pronunciation of words i didn't know, one of which was solely. relegated to the discussion of cemetery, as i'm sure you're familiar with, a wonderful book by the former harvard president. it's called this republic of suffering americans in the civil war. for those of you are not familiar with it, i commend it to you. thank you. eric, over here. my name is richard kramer. i live in a little town in northeastern pennsylvania. and one of the towns very near us happens to be where my late wife is buried. and i'll be on her stone as well. it's called wyoming and in that cemetery, there's a grave of a confederate soldier, so he's kind of odd. in there is the only confederate we have. and the story is that he was a

prisoner of war and it was a prison camp up. and upstate new york. and they were on their way there when he passed and they buried him there. i don't have his name with me because i didn't know this discussion was going to come up. i have it back home. so i just wanted to mention that because if anybody ever hears about him, they can verify through me and i can tell you his name and where his where's his headstone is with his grave is some of the p.o.w.s who were in the train crash, survived and fled and a few of them were found, died later and they were buried secretly. and then in decades later, the government tried to find where they were and the families concealed where the burial sites are. so there are confederate p.o.w.s buried throughout northeastern and upstate new york as a result of that crash. let me go over here. thank you. could i hear alan's conclusion on. yes, i was hoping someone would

ask about the significance of jubal early declaring that i was actually almost at the end anyway, but oh 2017 2017 comes and suddenly the whole environ at around robert kelly changes and as a result there was tremendous movement on the part of the faculty to remove the lead name from washington. the university. earlier the confederate flags that adorned the aps of the church were removed. there has been movement now to creating a screen behind which the valentine recumbent statue will no longer be visible. even the marker for the remains of traveler at the front door of the chapel house has been relocated. whether this will move towards a call for re burials, the movement of not only lee, but all the members of his family from the chapel that remains to be seen. some people said, well, that that's really going to be a

bridge too far. and i don't really think that's the case. i think we have to wait and see where the direction of things goes. so you might say that the story of the burial of robert ely is not quite over yet. ed. ed stares i was a party along with james oh hall and michael coffman in a lawsuit to block the disentanglement of john wilkes booth. i think it was 1990 or 1990 when and we were successful in that which i now regret, because wherever i go, i'm told of course i know that booth escaped and made his way to goodheart india. so the only solution to what this the rest is to dig them up and prove that experiment email thanks in the book itself to go ahead in the book the essay does mention that when they reinterred him in this cemetery,

he's buried with three family members on top of him. so and that is why this didn't go through, because and to reassure him was also to reassert or to, you know, exhume him was to exhume three other family members who there was no cause for doing so. can i add a footnote very quickly to the discussion about john rogers maggs and his father, montgomery mags montgomery meggs was a very talented u.s. army engineer, fresh out of west point, his first posting was to saint louis, missouri. his c.o., who was an officer named robert e lee. go ahead. hi, eileen bradner, arlington, virginia. and i'm with the u.s. grant association as well. my father was a world war two veteran from ohio. and at the end of his life, he was extremely frugal. a child of the depression. but when he learned that he could have a place at a va

cemetery, also with his wife, and it would receive perhaps perpetual care into infinity, it was i can't tell you it was the joy of his life. and he said it's the last brebner bargain for for to get that free grave site and it is gorgeous i go there frequently i was just there two weeks ago with ohio western reserve national cemetery, but it's such a contrast to what we see here and. so my question is, is anything being done on an organized scale to care or preserve these final resting places? i know my daughter was in americorps in west virginia. they do a lot of training in preservation work for cemeteries. so is anyone working on this on

an organic? i think there are a lot of local efforts towards that sort of thing, but it really takes local community members and organizations to find their resting places within their communities and keep them right and well and to that point, i have talked to some people about trying to get an organization together to try to restore the cemetery or clean it up or do something along those lines. it hasn't borne fruit yet, but i because of my job change and everything, i mean, i'm still working at it. and my father and mother are also buried in a va cemetery. and your point is so well taken because that cemetery is like your father's. well maintained and we'll be so perpetually. and then you look at this ortho thomas, where the people that gave their lives to help build this country and it's just fallen into disrepair. last question to wendy. thank you. i always send this to michelle

on memorial day, but there is an amazing tombstone on in lake forest, illinois, where parents are buried and. it it is just amazing to think that lake forest this is lauded our people from chicago who made lake forest their summer homes and then they built these big mansions and everything. but there's a tombstone on there that was dedicated by the people of lake forest to samuel dent, who was born a slave in tuscumbia, alabama, escaped in 1862 and joined and fought in the union army in 1870. he came to lake forests and established a popular livery business. his freedom papers were included in the cornerstone of first presbyterian church, which is a really big church with stained glass windows by tiffany and everybody else. and when it was dedicated in

1887 and he even had his own funeral there, the citizens of lake forest subscribed and erected and dedicated this grave marker, showing their esteem for a lovable christian, devoted citizen and faithful friend. so i think that's just so amazing that, you know, they would have this. thank you so much for that, wendy. please thank our panel for. thank you. thank