7 ms·

Abraham Lincoln, America’s First Tech-Lawyer

50 points by WaitWaitWha 4y ago

steve_gh 4y ago
Really interesting, I knew Lincoln was a lawyer by training, but was unaware of his area of practice. Or for that matter, his interest in technology, or role in sounding the US Military's first aeronautical core.
ydlr 4y ago
Lincoln was also a proponent of state surveillance. He reorganized the national telegraph network to spy on journalists and experimented with the use of spy balloons.
- notch898a 4y ago
  Yeah well Lincoln was the OG dictator. He'd rather kill than allow free association of the states. Some people think the US died during the New Deal. No it died when Lincoln and the Supreme Court denied the right of secession. The states would have never entered the Union if it were made explicit the federal government would become what it has, and that they'd entered in a trap one way valve. If entering the Union was irrevocable it should have been spelled out when they joined rather than enforced retroactively.
  - dc-programmer 4y ago
    How can someone even argue the US died? It’s the only superpower in the world. Also no one really knew if a state could leave or not - it’s a question that had to be settled with violence. Might is right and all that
    - rayiner 4y ago
      The original notion of the US, as an association of sovereign states and a limited federal government, certainly died. Read the anti-federalist papers.
      - dc-programmer 4y ago
        That is only one interpretation of the founding however. You could also argue that vision died with the Articles of Confederation or the Whiskey Rebellion
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        Or even Shays' Rebellion. The utopianism of the Anti-Federalists faded pretty quickly once it went up against the realities of running a newborn country.
  - djur 4y ago
    Lincoln was an elected president and opposition to secession was not just his policy but that of the elected US government. Not a dictator.
  - Lammy 4y ago
    Relevant: https://www.nps.gov/articles/secret-symbol-of-the-lincoln-memorial.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/secret-symbol-of-the-lincoln-me...
  - jjk166 4y ago
    The question of whether States could secede from the Union had been settled a generation prior to the Civil War. If that's how you define the US "dying" then it died under Andrew Jackson while many of those who made the decision to enter the Union in the first place were still very much alive.
cik2e 4y ago
[flagged]
- jhbadger 4y ago
  There weren't really a horde of "Lincoln bodyguards" though. The Secret Service didn't even handle guarding politicians yet (They had just been created, but for their primary task of fighting counterfeiters). It's hard to imagine, but back then it was considered normal for politicians to just live like other people rather than being surrounded by bodyguards. You could even go as a normal citizen to the White House and ask to speak to the President (he might not have time to do so, but you could ask and people did)
  - cik2e 4y ago
    You are kidding right? Of course Lincoln had bodyguard. Maybe they weren't called the Secret Service but he had bodyguards. This was a time of war and the president is going about unprotected? Guarding your most important politician is not a modern invention.
    - jhbadger 4y ago
      No. He had in theory just one unofficial bodyguard, a police officer named John Parker. There is some evidence that Parker was bored by the play and left at intermission to get a drink and didn't come back to the president's box. He wasn't around at the time of the assassination, though, at which point Lincoln was completely unguarded.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      We've tightened the security around major US politicians, and especially the President, a ton over the 20th century, especially. It's even increased a bunch since e.g. the 1950s. Anyone could just walk onto the White House grounds without challenge for a really long time, for example.
- oh_sigh 4y ago
  Maybe the knife landed near him and he picked it up right away before he got up. You're putting a lot of weight on "you can't hold onto something from a 15' drop" to dismiss everything, even though there were hundreds of witnesses, many of whom were interviewed about the events. Why don't you go ahead and tell us your theory of what happened. I almost guarantee it is more outlandish than "he held onto a knife from a 15' drop"
AlbertCory 4y ago
He's well known as the only President to file and be issued a patent. It was never put into practice, for some reason.
narrator 4y ago
Abraham Lincoln was a huge technological optimist. He was the primary counterweight in the 19th century to the ideas of Malthus and Darwin. The opening of the midwest to grain production was a huge rebuke at the time to Malthus's overpopulation pessimism. Lincoln wrote a number of speeches where he extolled the greatness of unlimited technological progress. They were influential worldwide and inspired the trans-siberian railroad among other projects. https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/02/abraham-lincoln-the-technology-president/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/02/abraham-lincoln-the-t...
- ShredKazoo 4y ago
  And Lincoln was a man of his time in this regard. Excitement about economic and moral progress was abundant in the Northern states during that period -- a big contrast to the South. (The cultural divergence caused by different economic systems was arguably the main cause of the Civil War.) I recently finished reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals, and was struck by a passage describing the River and Harbor Convention, said to have been the largest convention ever gathered in the US prior to the Civil War. The convention attracted 5,000 delegates to Chicago in the late 1840s, a time when Chicago's population was only 16,000. What were all those people gathered to support? Infrastructure! They were incredibly passionate that the US federal government should fund infrastructure. There is no record of the final speech at the convention because reporters were too absorbed to write it down properly. But there are some passages recorded, e.g. "only by statesmanlike concession could problems of slavery and territorial acquisition be solved so that the nation could move on to material greatness." One observer wrote: "[the speaker] was interrupted continually by cheer upon cheer; and at its close, the air rung with shout after shout, from the thousands in attendance." (This is from pages 67-69 in Team of Rivals)
  - TSiege 4y ago
    This euphemism is doing a lot of heavy lifting, "cultural divergence caused by different economic systems"
    - 4y ago
dr_dshiv 4y ago
His chief economist Henry Charles Carey helped produce 100 years of prosperity through a balanced approach to trade and the free market. A very deep thinker about the impact of mechanization on labor, as well.
erk__ 4y ago
He was also involved in the case McCormick v. Manny about patent infringement of the Manny reaper. Though if Wikipedia is to believed he ended up not being directly involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Manny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Manny
yieldcrv 4y ago
He is still the only US President to have a US patent issued.

50 points by WaitWaitWha 4y ago

Really interesting, I knew Lincoln was a lawyer by training, but was unaware of his area of practice. Or for that matter, his interest in technology, or role in sounding the US Military's first aeronautical core.

ydlr 4y ago

Lincoln was also a proponent of state surveillance. He reorganized the national telegraph network to spy on journalists and experimented with the use of spy balloons.

notch898a 4y ago
Yeah well Lincoln was the OG dictator. He'd rather kill than allow free association of the states. Some people think the US died during the New Deal. No it died when Lincoln and the Supreme Court denied the right of secession. The states would have never entered the Union if it were made explicit the federal government would become what it has, and that they'd entered in a trap one way valve. If entering the Union was irrevocable it should have been spelled out when they joined rather than enforced retroactively.
- dc-programmer 4y ago
  How can someone even argue the US died? It’s the only superpower in the world. Also no one really knew if a state could leave or not - it’s a question that had to be settled with violence. Might is right and all that
  - rayiner 4y ago
    The original notion of the US, as an association of sovereign states and a limited federal government, certainly died. Read the anti-federalist papers.
    - dc-programmer 4y ago
      That is only one interpretation of the founding however. You could also argue that vision died with the Articles of Confederation or the Whiskey Rebellion
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        Or even Shays' Rebellion. The utopianism of the Anti-Federalists faded pretty quickly once it went up against the realities of running a newborn country.
- djur 4y ago
  Lincoln was an elected president and opposition to secession was not just his policy but that of the elected US government. Not a dictator.
- Lammy 4y ago
  Relevant: https://www.nps.gov/articles/secret-symbol-of-the-lincoln-memorial.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/secret-symbol-of-the-lincoln-me...
- jjk166 4y ago
  The question of whether States could secede from the Union had been settled a generation prior to the Civil War. If that's how you define the US "dying" then it died under Andrew Jackson while many of those who made the decision to enter the Union in the first place were still very much alive.

cik2e 4y ago

[flagged]

jhbadger 4y ago
There weren't really a horde of "Lincoln bodyguards" though. The Secret Service didn't even handle guarding politicians yet (They had just been created, but for their primary task of fighting counterfeiters). It's hard to imagine, but back then it was considered normal for politicians to just live like other people rather than being surrounded by bodyguards. You could even go as a normal citizen to the White House and ask to speak to the President (he might not have time to do so, but you could ask and people did)
- cik2e 4y ago
  You are kidding right? Of course Lincoln had bodyguard. Maybe they weren't called the Secret Service but he had bodyguards. This was a time of war and the president is going about unprotected? Guarding your most important politician is not a modern invention.
  - jhbadger 4y ago
    No. He had in theory just one unofficial bodyguard, a police officer named John Parker. There is some evidence that Parker was bored by the play and left at intermission to get a drink and didn't come back to the president's box. He wasn't around at the time of the assassination, though, at which point Lincoln was completely unguarded.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    We've tightened the security around major US politicians, and especially the President, a ton over the 20th century, especially. It's even increased a bunch since e.g. the 1950s. Anyone could just walk onto the White House grounds without challenge for a really long time, for example.
oh_sigh 4y ago
Maybe the knife landed near him and he picked it up right away before he got up. You're putting a lot of weight on "you can't hold onto something from a 15' drop" to dismiss everything, even though there were hundreds of witnesses, many of whom were interviewed about the events. Why don't you go ahead and tell us your theory of what happened. I almost guarantee it is more outlandish than "he held onto a knife from a 15' drop"

AlbertCory 4y ago

He's well known as the only President to file and be issued a patent. It was never put into practice, for some reason.

narrator 4y ago

Abraham Lincoln was a huge technological optimist. He was the primary counterweight in the 19th century to the ideas of Malthus and Darwin. The opening of the midwest to grain production was a huge rebuke at the time to Malthus's overpopulation pessimism. Lincoln wrote a number of speeches where he extolled the greatness of unlimited technological progress. They were influential worldwide and inspired the trans-siberian railroad among other projects. https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/02/abraham-lincoln-the-technology-president/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/02/abraham-lincoln-the-t...

ShredKazoo 4y ago
And Lincoln was a man of his time in this regard. Excitement about economic and moral progress was abundant in the Northern states during that period -- a big contrast to the South. (The cultural divergence caused by different economic systems was arguably the main cause of the Civil War.) I recently finished reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals, and was struck by a passage describing the River and Harbor Convention, said to have been the largest convention ever gathered in the US prior to the Civil War. The convention attracted 5,000 delegates to Chicago in the late 1840s, a time when Chicago's population was only 16,000. What were all those people gathered to support? Infrastructure! They were incredibly passionate that the US federal government should fund infrastructure. There is no record of the final speech at the convention because reporters were too absorbed to write it down properly. But there are some passages recorded, e.g. "only by statesmanlike concession could problems of slavery and territorial acquisition be solved so that the nation could move on to material greatness." One observer wrote: "[the speaker] was interrupted continually by cheer upon cheer; and at its close, the air rung with shout after shout, from the thousands in attendance." (This is from pages 67-69 in Team of Rivals)
- TSiege 4y ago
  This euphemism is doing a lot of heavy lifting, "cultural divergence caused by different economic systems"
  - 4y ago

dr_dshiv 4y ago

His chief economist Henry Charles Carey helped produce 100 years of prosperity through a balanced approach to trade and the free market. A very deep thinker about the impact of mechanization on labor, as well.

erk__ 4y ago

He was also involved in the case McCormick v. Manny about patent infringement of the Manny reaper. Though if Wikipedia is to believed he ended up not being directly involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Manny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Manny

yieldcrv 4y ago

He is still the only US President to have a US patent issued.