Lincoln the Inventor

by Jason Emerson

Overview

In Lincoln the Inventor, Jason Emerson offers the first treatment of Abraham Lincoln’s invention of a device to buoy vessels over shoals and its subsequent patent as more than mere historical footnote.

In this book, Emerson shows how, when, where, and why Lincoln created his invention; how his penchant for inventions and inventiveness was part of his larger political belief in internal improvements and free labor principles; how his interest in the topic led him to try his hand at scholarly lecturing; and how Lincoln, as president, encouraged and even contributed to the creation of new weapons for the Union during the Civil War.

During his extensive research, Emerson also uncovered previously unknown correspondence between Lincoln’s son, Robert, and his presidential secretary, John Nicolay, which revealed the existence of a previously unknown draft of Abraham Lincoln’s lecture “Discoveries and Inventions.” Emerson not only examines the creation, delivery, and legacy of this lecture, but also reveals for the first time how Robert Lincoln owned this unknown version, how he lost and later tried to find it, the indifference with which Robert and Nicolay both held the lecture, and their decision to give it as little attention as possible when publishing President Lincoln’s collected works.

The story of Lincoln’s invention extends beyond a boat journey, the whittling of some wood, and a trip to the Patent Office; the invention had ramifications for Lincoln’s life from the day his flatboat got stuck in 1831 until the day he died in 1865. Besides giving a complete examination of this important—and little known—aspect of Lincoln’s life, Lincoln the Inventor delves into the ramifications of Lincoln’s intellectual curiosity and inventiveness, both as a civilian and as president, and considers how it allows a fresh insight into his overall character and contributed in no small way to his greatness. Lincoln the Inventor is a fresh contribution to the field of Lincoln studies about a topic long neglected. By understanding Lincoln the inventor, we better understand Lincoln the man.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809386710
Publisher:	Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	01/15/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	935 KB

About the Author

Jason Emerson, the author of The Madness of Mary Lincoln, is an independent historian and freelance writer whose articles have appeared in American Heritage, American History, and Civil War Times magazines, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Lincoln Herald, and Lincoln Forum Bulletin. He is writing a biography of Robert T. Lincoln, to be published by Southern Illinois University Press.

Read an Excerpt

Abraham Lincoln’s Mechanical Mind

Abraham Lincoln’s invention and its subsequent patent always have been seen simply as a peculiar solitary event, a distraction from his politics, a historical footnote from the sideline of his life on his journey to greatness. Any books that mention the topic at all do so only perfunctorily. “The legend of Lincoln the prophet and martyr has bedimmed the genuine achievement of a human mind at work,” Roy P. Basler once trenchantly wrote. In truth, the story of Lincoln’s invention—which was the physical fruition of an intensely curious and mechanical mind—is a significant milestone on his journey to immortality. The story runs much deeper and is more multifaceted than has been credited and offers another glimpse into the workings of Lincoln’s much-examined intellect and character. Benjamin P. Thomas once wrote, “Behind the solemn, furrowed countenance of Abraham Lincoln was an inquisitive mind. It ranged over the abstract and the infinite, the absolute and the immediate. It was philosophical, and at the same time intensely practical. On the practical level Lincoln’s curiosity directed itself, among other things, to mechanical devices.” The story of Lincoln’s invention involves not just a boat journey, the whittling of some wood, and a trip to the Patent Office; the invention had ramifications for Lincoln’s life from the day his flatboat got stuck in 1831 till the day he died in 1865. It showed the mechanical genius of his mind and his way of thinking and analyzing, his penchant for expanding his learning and understanding disciplines other than politics, his fidelity to the political belief of internal improvements, his attempts at scholarly lecturing, and his admiration and fostering of invention and innovation as president. To understand Lincoln the inventor is to better understand Lincoln the man.

The story of Abraham Lincoln’s invention of “a device to buoy vessels over shoals” began with a trip down the river. In April 1831, twenty-two-year-old Lincoln, his stepbrother, John D. Johnston, and his cousin John Hanks hired themselves out to merchant Denton Offutt to take a flatboat loaded with hogs and barrels of bacon, pork, and corn from Sangamo Town, Illinois, to the market at New Orleans. Lincoln was an experienced boatman by this time (one reason he got the job), having worked plenty of jobs on the Ohio River, for the Portland Canal in Louisville, Kentucky, and Indiana, and as a hired hand on a flatboat to New Orleans in 1828. During the 1831 trip, while descending the Sangamon River, Offutt’s boat became grounded on the Rutledge milldam below the town of New Salem. With the front hanging out over the dam and the rear taking in water, Lincoln, wearing a pair of “mixed” blue jeans rolled up to his knees, “a hickory shirt and a Common Chip hat,” began “straining every nerve” to pry the boat over the dam, stated witness William G. Greene. As the flatboat continued taking on water, Lincoln directed the crew to unload the hogs onto an adjacent boat. Lincoln ran into the village, borrowed an auger from the cooper shop, and bored a hole in the end of the boat hanging over the dam. Some of the cargo barrels were rolled to the bow, causing the boat to tilt, the water to drain out, and the boat to float free. Every person in town showed up at the dam to watch the event, which lasted half a day and one night. Impressed by Lincoln’s operation on the dam, as well as his conduct during the entire journey to New Orleans, Offutt declared that he would build a steamboat for the Sangamon and have Lincoln as its captain. Offutt said he would build it with rollers underneath to overcome sandbars and runners underneath to run on ice, and “when Lincoln was captain by thunder she would have to go!”

Offutt never built the steamboat, but he did open a general store in New Salem in August 1831 and hired Lincoln as a clerk. It was during his nearly six years at New Salem that Lincoln’s self-reliant education took on a new, more expansive direction, and he honed his keen mind even sharper. Instead of being limited by few available books and little free time, as he was as a boy in Indiana, Lincoln made his own time to utilize numerous learning materials and to have educated men advise and mentor him. Lincoln, with less than one year of formal schooling, read every book and newspaper he could acquire or borrow, taught himself the techniques of surveying, kept abreast of local and national political issues, and began his self-study of the law, which would become his profession.

Seventeen years later, while Lincoln was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he and his family were traveling aboard the steamboat Globe over the Great Lakes from Buffalo, New York, to Chicago as they journeyed home to Springfield. Lincoln, the lone Whig Congressman from Illinois, had just finished giving political speeches across New England in support of General Zachary Taylor’s 1848 presidential campaign. As the Globe passed up the Detroit River during the final days of September, it came upon another steamboat, the Canada, which had run aground on Fighting Island. From the deck of the Globe, Lincoln watched as the Canada’s captain ordered his crew to collect all the empty barrels, boxes, and loose planks on the ship and force them under the sides to buoy the boat over the shallow water. No doubt this operation reminded Lincoln of his adventure at the New Salem milldam and got the old flat-boatman in him thinking of this common waterway problem. For the rest of his journey home, Lincoln considered how to construct a device to free stranded boats from shallow waters.

[end of excerpt]

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments

I. 
Abraham Lincoln’s Mechanical Mind 
II. 
Lincoln’s Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions: The Unknown Draft

Appendix 1: Patent No. 6,469, May 22, 1849, Buoying Vessels over Shoals, Abraham Lincoln, of Springfield, Illinois 
Appendix 2: Lincoln’s First and Second Lectures on Discoveries and Inventions
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

With the care and precision of an expert, Jason Emerson brings to light a vitally important and deeply revealing side of our greatest president. Most people know Lincoln for his political writings, pronouncements, and speeches; few know him as an inventor and imaginative technological thinker.”—Mark Fiege, author of The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States
 
“This is an elegant and fascinating exploration into the scientific mind of one of America's greatest presidents. Emerson illuminates how Lincoln's lifelong intellectual curiosity and academic pursuits on discoveries and inventions buoyed his historic leadership in law, politics, war, statecraft, and technological advancement. With fresh knowledge and insights, Emerson broadens our understanding of Lincoln as both moral and mechanical engineer of our nation.”—Michelle Malkin, author of Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs

“Lincoln the Inventor is an excellent book presenting new information about Abraham Lincoln, providing still another example of his intellectual genius. This well-organized and thoroughly researched work adds to Jason Emerson’s growing reputation as a young Lincoln scholar of note.”—Richard W. Etulain, author of Beyond the Missouri: The Story of the American West

“You will come away from Lincoln the Inventor the wiser for understanding how the mind that devised a patent for floating grounded river boats could also be the same mind that turned out the perfectly-balanced phrases of the Gettysburg Address, labored to promote transportation as the keystone to economic mobility, and piloted emancipation through the shoals of war.”—Allen C. Guelzo, author of Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America

From the Publisher