It’s interesting to get a sense of the degree to which modern technology has captured through images or sound, the earliest leaders of the Church.

For some time I have been walking around with a random question that I think is still somewhat related to what this post is talking about. I am wondering if we can identify the earliest audio file of an LDS prophet. I’d like very much to hear it.

Alma, that’s pretty cool. I like the last part:

This is my testimony, spoken by myself into a talking machine on this the 19th day of March, 1897, in the ninety-first year of my age. Wilford Woodruff.

Matt, I believe there is a consensus that the daguerreotype of Joseph Smith that you feature in your link is actually a daguerreotype of an oil painting, and not of the man himself. Perhaps that is why you sense there is some “touching up” that has been done.

A year ago next week I blogged about a lecture by Dr. Richard Bushman comparing and contrasting Joseph Smith and Abraham Lincoln. I thought it was a fascinating talk.

Thanks to Ronan James Head, for forwarding me the photo to which I refer at the end of my comment #4:

[image voluntarily deleted to accommodate the personal request of the Archivist of the Community of Christ Church]

I’ve emailed Ron Romig to see if I might obtain a better quality copy.

Ronan also included this comparison to the death mask, which I hadn’t seen before, but which is illustrative:

[image voluntarily deleted to accommodate the personal request of the Archivist of the Community of Christ Church]

“The problem with Ron Romig’s favored daguerreotype is this: The person portrayed in it is not the romanticized, bold image of a strong prophet with powerful features. The photo depicts a boyish-looking man with weak features who is awkwardly overdressed, reminiscent of the way that Dickens describes the blacksmith Joe Gargery looking perfectly awful in a suit.”

I actually like that one better than the one I think is a photograph of a painting. It is the naturalness that attracts me to that photograph. The other famous one has a look that is too overconfident. Frankly, as strange as it might sound, I perfer the death mask to any production of his image as far as asthetically pleasing. There is a calmness and yet slight amusement about it, as if to say “you think you got me, but now I am free.”

Not meaning to get the post too far on a tangent, but what are these “despicable” things you don’t like about him or what he has done?

DKL – yes, please do tell as to why Lincoln is so despicable. I can think of morally corrupt Presidents who were excellent leaders IMO – such as FDR, Clinton, Kennedy (OK all Democrats – I am biased).

Regarding Lincoln, I could go into a number of things that he did that were dispicable (e.g., like sending Federal marshals to dismiss elected state legislatures, sending Federal Marshals to confiscate the guns from every citizen in the greater Baltimore metropolitan area in May of 1861, electing puppet governments in states by conducting elections where voters had to take oaths of loyalty to the Federal government, suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus). I go into a lot of them at J’s Gods of War Thread on BCC.

Regarding the Joseph Smith picture, as I indicated, I asked Ron Romig for a better copy of the photo, he responded by saying that they’re not making the image available until it’s authenticated, and that this is an ongoing process.

I asked him if I could quote him on this, and sent him the URL of this thread to provide a context for that quote. He wrote back, “You may notice that this copyrighted image is being use on this site without permission. Please encourage whom ever posted it to remove it. Thanks, Ron”

He is, of course, just doing his job. It’s not like he’s making a demand or having his lawyer send us nasty-grams. He’s merely made a polite suggestion, But still, we’re using it for a serious discussion of such historical artifacts. If this isn’t fair use, then nothing is.

Still, I’ll leave it up to Matt whether to dispense with the images in my comment, since this is his thread.

Devyn, that’s a pretty silly question.

Lincoln won the war, because Robert E. Lee did not believe that it was honorable to fight a gorilla war with insurrections rather than pitched battles. Islamic terrorists are low-lifes, and that makes like a lot harder.

Bush hasn’t done anything as bad as FDR did. You remember FDR rounded up all the Chinese-Americans (many 2nd and 3rd generation Americans) all up and down the California country-side and put them into internment camps?

And FDR wasn’t nearly as bad as Lincoln. Lincoln ran prisoner-of-war camps with double-digit mortality rates — worse than the fabled Confederate Andersonville in both rate of death and absolute numbers of deaths. What’s the mortality rate at Guantanimo?

Name one state government that Bush has disolved with armed Federal Marshalls. Name one election that he’s sponsored and forced oaths of loyalty. Name one major metropolitan area where Bush has confiscated guns.

The Patriot Act was originally written by Democrats. It was sponsored by Bill Clinton, and opposed by the Republicans. Bush picked it up, and suddenly the Republicans support it, the Democrats decry it.

Dave – I think it’s a good idea to accommodate Ron on this.

I’d also disagree that Lincoln won the war because Lee was too much of a gentleman to stop him. Lincoln won the war because he had superior resources and the will to use them, despite watching the Army of the Potomac get out-generaled at nearly every turn. Lee could have retreated into the Blue Ridge instead of going to Appomattox, but it would merely have prolonged the inevitable; the Confederate government was going down in 1865 regardless.

The problem of the Civil War is twofold: whether Lincoln’s actions proved necessary to the achievement of his goals, and whether those achievements in retrospect have proven more desirable than the alternative. Certainly, Lincoln’s actions in Maryland passed the first test (and, in the case of habeus corpus, he had some constitutional ground). As the the second – Lincoln himself believed that the war was the nation’s redemption for the sin of slavery. That’s something that is inherently unprovable, I think, but it has some moral resonance.

Matt, Lincoln did have better resources. The northern politicians were huge on pork spending, which the southern politicians looked down on. This resulted in a disproportionate number of shipyards and metalworks being built in the north. Davis sought to end this habit among Southern politicians when he was a US Senator and Secretary of War under Pierce, because he realized that it was a poor choice economically and that it put the South on less than equal footing as far as the military. Davis himself was largely responsible for the size and scope of the USA Army, because he presided over it’s re-organization over-hauling under Pierce, using his connections in Congress to help secure large peace-time increases in defense spending.

The North was also helped because southern naval captains had a nasty habit of returning their ships to northern ports in order to resign their commission — a habit that infuriated Jefferson Davis.

The single largest factor, though, was that Lincoln did a good job of keeping the CSA from obtaining foreign credit. In fact, Charles Francis Adams worked almost as hard to deny his (former) fellow Americans their right to self determination as his grandfather, John Adams had worked to help secure it, though Charles Francis Adams never risked his personal safety or his personal fortunes to obtain his goal the way his opponents did and the way his grandfather did. CF Adams should, by right and title, be the primary villain in the American imagination. Instead it’s Benedict Arnold. Arnold joined forces with the English to burn Williamsburg, Virginia; Adams joined forces with the English to burn most the populated areas in the South. By any very dispassionate analysis, Adams is much worse.

In any case, foreign credit was the lynchpin, and it’s what drove Lincoln to change the propaganda theme of the war from avoiding a bifurcation of the Union (one which implicitly legitimized the South as a potential equal) to eradicating slavery and the sham that we call The Emancipation Proclamation (which implicitly de-legitimized the South).

It usually goes unnoticed, also, that the Lincoln administration had better monetary policy than Jefferson Davis’s administration in the CSA, and this had a large impact as well.

I fail to see that Lincoln’s willingness to use his resources was a differentiator. His opponents were every bit as willing to use theirs.

My point about Lee surrendering at Appomattox is that Lincoln’s did not have to deal with insurgency. Battle by insurgency is different from dodging battle with an assembled army (something that Washington frequently did), by retreating to the Blue Ridge (a course that Jefferson Davis seemed to have favored).

You’re thinking along the wrong lines if you think that transforming the CSA army into a band of insurgents would merely have postponed the inevitable. It is more likely to have fueled the fire, and perhaps converted the South into a kind of Northern Ireland for the United States. Of course, neither Lee nor Davis wanted this.

There was no constitutional grounds for the Habeas Corpus suspension. The prohibition against such a suspension (and the tolerable exceptions) are listed among restrictions of Congress. The Supreme Court found that there was no constitutional basis for a suspension originating with the executive.

I know that it’s popular, but I don’t think it’s credible to propose that Lincoln thought the war was a redemption for slavery. You’re referring to things like the 2nd inaugural address here. People read Lincoln’s public speeches as though Lincoln were a private citizen writing in his diary, and not a ruthlessly pragmatic politician speaking to a public that he needed to influence in order to advance his own agenda in a war precipitated by his own actions. (There’s a pretty pathetic book recently written about the 2nd inaugural address, which actually succeeds on being more propagandistic than the speech itself.)

Devyn, I go over the question of Constitutionality in detail in The Gods of War thread at BCC that I linked to earlier. It’s pretty obviously constitutional. Just so you don’t have to swim through a lengthy thread with many arguments of wide scope, I’ll cross-post some of the info I put into comments there.

First of all, the constitutional union that we currently have was formed by secession from the union created by the Articles of Confederation. The Federal Constitution stipulated that if 9 states seceded from the Articles of Confederation, then those 9 states would form a union under the new constitution. The fact that an additional 4 states seceded and made it 100% was just gravy.

The irony is that the The Articles themselves are quite clear about the nature of the Union that they create. In fact, in just under 3,500 words, the Articles of Confederation use the word perpetual exactly five times.

In the preamble (emphasis added):

Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

In Article XIII (emphasis added):

Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.

In the Conclusion (emphasis added):

And Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in Congress, to approve of, and to authorize us to ratify the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union. Know Ye that we the undersigned delegates, by virtue of the power and authority to us given for that purpose, do by these presents, in the name and in behalf of our respective constituents, fully and entirely ratify and confirm each and every of the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union, and all and singular the matters and things therein contained: And we do further solemnly plight and engage the faith of our respective constituents, that they shall abide by the determinations of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions, which by the said Confederation are submitted to them. And that the Articles thereof shall be inviolably observed by the States we respectively represent, and that the Union shall be perpetual.

Given how emphatically the Articles assert the perpetuity of the Union that they create, it’s just not plausible to maintain that the silence of its superseding document (i.e., the Federal Constitution) is unintentional. Moreover, The 10th amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The power to arbitrate secession is not delegated to the US by the Constitution, and not prohibited to the states. The power to arbitrate secession clearly and unambiguously falls within the powers not delegated to the United States and not prohibited from the states, is therefore reserved to the states by Amendment 10.

You can read the entire Articles of Confederation online here. It’s quick reading; just a preamble, 13 articles, a conclusion, and some signatures.

As aside: It’s customary to disparage the Articles of Confederation. Leaving aside the question of their adequacy, it is undeniable that the US Constitution would have been impossible without them. I dare say that there is no more elegant definition of the basic functions of a government in 3,500 words in the history of mankind. If you read any of the “anti-Federalists,” like Brutus, history has shown that their objections to the new constitution were well founded, and their predictions concerning the future of a nation under the US Constitution were correct. In my estimation, the only advantage offered by the Federal Constitution are (a) monetary union, and (b) a free trade zone. Other than that, I don’t find the Federal Constitution to be an improvement (or even very good), and to the extant to which it has been the model for other governments, it’s promoted heavy-handed governmental setups under a centralized model — better than (say) the Soviet Constitution, but not what we’d call friendly to freedom.

If the North had sued the South to keep them in the Union, then Texas v White might have been decided years earlier. The problem, however, is with jurisdiction. Once a state has effected its secession, the Supreme Court has no say in the matter. It might as well make a ruling about Cuba.

Jefferson Davis didn’t have the power to do what Lincoln did. He was barely able to get the CSA congress to renew conscription.

The North/South economic divide is something of a myth. There’s a prima facie case for it in our day, because Southern and Northern identities were more created by the Civil War than they were causes of it, and economic data on the topic can be made to fit that pattern on a superficial analysis.

There’s enough books on Lincoln to play dueling bibliographies until the cows come in. My point in bringing up the recent book was to provide an example of how common it is to take Lincoln’s speeches at face value. As a general rule it’s sheer folly to analyze prominent politicians (be it Warren Harding or Ronald Reagan or George Washington or Lincoln) without assuming that much of what they say is self-serving subterfuge.

DKL said:

What Lincoln did was kill more than 600,000 Americans and destroy a country (the CSA) in order to stifle its self determination, setting aside any pretense of a Constitutional Union in the process.

No. You didn’t just say that. You really, truly believe this? You sound like the MSM, only some strange 1860s-but-modern iteration of it. Are we to understand that you could have handled the abolitionists’ problems deftly? Perhaps you imagine that because Joseph Smith had a prescient view on how to deal with “the slave issue,” and campaigned on such, that he would have handled it much better than Lincoln.

A fair and strong case could be made that Joseph Smith’s martyrdom was at least partly tied to people who hated him for speaking out on the slave issue.

Twenty years later, the issue exploded. I find it stunning that you blame Lincoln. Absolutely stunning.

Absolutely, utterly, incredibly stunning.

Albert – that’s quite interesting; thanks for sharing it. I suppose the two men shared some features – large ears, Roman noses, and so forth – but the eyes of the Lincoln image seem unmistakable to me.