Thursday, June 7, 2007

History nerd...




My job sometimes is hard to explain to people. I work to preserve, organize and make available documents of historical value. So when I hear about a great historical find somewhere, I like to pass it on. My favorite time period in history is the US Civil War, so this article interested me. Here's a little bit of the article:

"WASHINGTON, June 7, 2007 - The National Archives on Thursday unveiled a handwritten note by Abraham Lincoln exhorting his generals to pursue Robert E. Lee's army after the battle of Gettysburg, underscoring one of the great missed opportunities for an early end to the Civil War.

An archives Civil War specialist discovered the July 7, 1863, note three weeks ago in a batch of military papers stored among the billions of pages of historical documents at the mammoth building on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The text of Lincoln's note has been publicly known because the general to whom Lincoln addressed it telegraphed the contents verbatim to the front lines at Gettysburg. There, the Union army's leaders failed for more than a week to aggressively pursue Lee following his defeat."

I know, it's somewhat nerdy of me, but don't we each have some unique interest that drives us? So there is mine, what a fantastic find!

3 comments:

Shelley said...

So you'll have to visit the Lincoln Shrine when you are up here sometime. It's in Redlands. I've been wanting to check it out sometime...
"The Lincoln Memorial Shrine is the only museum and archives dedicated to the study of Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War west of the Mississippi River. Its extensive collection of manuscripts, diaries, images and artifacts is maintained by the Special Collections Division of Smiley Library." http://www.lincolnshrine.org/.

Peter FNFN said...

super cool.... it's fun to be a nerd. cuz deep down inside we're all nerdy about something.
speaking of which... can you find out the history of the word nerd?
AWESOME!
welcome to the blogger nation

Rushell said...

So I was just transported back to the summer of 1996. I think that was one of the longest days of my life, and one of the most fascinating for you. I am so glad this is a passion for you, but please never ask me to do the wirl wind tour of Gettysburg again. LOL!!! Rushell