Short Takes

Came across a very nicely done site on vintage battleships, including a section on the ships of the US Civil War. Some nice trivia here as well. Did you know that the twin-turret monitor Onondaga, which served on the James River, later went on to a distinguished career in the French Navy that ended just before WWI? Or that the French-built, twin-turret Confederate super-ironclad Stonewall, which arrived too late for service in the Late Unpleasantness, went on to serve an important role in Japan as flagship of the Meiji fleet?

Also, lawmakers in Maryland have finally gotten around to listening to the state song, “Maryland, My Maryland,” which “spurns the Northern scum.” As a matter of fact Confederate troops sang it as the they crossed into the state during Lee’s incursion of late 1862, which culminated in the battle of Antietam. Now they want to change it. Too bad.

And finally, an interesting  take on Abe Lincoln’s Southern roots.

Isaac Lincoln, a great uncle of the future president, settled on the Doe and Watauga Rivers, tributaries of the Holston, in 1775. Eventually he farmed 1,200 acres there near Elizabethton. He was a well-established planter by 1798, when the future father of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Lincoln, moved here to work at his uncle’s farm. So for about a year, Abe’s dad was an East Tennessean, living in a cabin on Lynn Mountain. He apparently didn’t work hard enough to please his uncle.

Ironists like to point out that Isaac Lincoln was a slaveholder. He seems to have owned about 40. He kept his slaves; he got rid of his slacker nephew. Thomas Lincoln moved to Kentucky.