Granville Then & Now – February 17, 2022

Morris Rote-Rosen’s writings on Lincoln

By Erik Pekar, Town Historian

Last Saturday, Feb. 12, was the anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States. Lincoln was born Feb. 12, 1809, and he entered politics in the 1850s, culminating in his election to the presidency in 1860. He led the Union through the trying times of the Civil War.

He was assassinated in April of 1865, just a couple weeks after the end of the war.

Admiration for Lincoln has continued to this day.

For several years in the 1960s, Morris Rote-Rosen, writer of the “Main Street” column, wrote every February about a different historical detail of Lincoln’s life. It is not known what prompted Rote-Rosen to write of Lincoln. He may have been inspired by 1961 being the 100th anniversary of the start of the Civil War in 1861. With that centennial approaching, there was much interest in the war and in Lincoln. Rote-Rosen noted that year, “there has been more written about Abraham Lincoln than about any other president from Washington down to the present time.”

Rote-Rosen first wrote about a Lincoln-related topic in the Sentinel in 1960; he wrote of John Wilkes Booth, the events leading up to him assassinating Lincoln in 1865, and his subsequent capture and death as well as the capture and sentencing of Booth’s associates. Some readers of “Main Street” noted similarities between his writing on Booth and that of a writer in the February 1960 issue of the Reader’s Digest magazine. Rote-Rosen responded in his column on Feb. 25, noting he had already written and had his writing published in the Sentinel before he had seen the Reader’s Digest feature.

For 1961, Rote-Rosen wrote about Lincoln’s appearance. This included the clothes Lincoln wore through the years, to the growing of his beard, suggested to him in a letter by the young Grace Bedell of Westfield, New York. In the closing of his 1961 installment on Lincoln, he wrote, “There are many pictures of Lincoln; there is no portrait of him to do him justice . . . there was such a difference between the hard lateral shell of the physical man and the fine ideal, temper and aspiration of his spirit. The extremes were so far apart that no photograph or painting of the former could render even an approximate representation of the latter.”

For 1962, Rote-Rosen wrote about Abraham Lincoln’s childhood, or at least what little was known of it. This included Lincoln’s birth in Kentucky and the subsequent move of the family to Illinois in his childhood.

For 1963, Rote-Rosen recalled Lincoln’s character and changes of Lincoln in the period of 1856 to 1862. In 1856 Lincoln had been little known outside of Illinois, and by the end of those years he was elected president. Rote-Rosen noted the changes in his appearance in that time, which “were a shock to many of his personal acquaintances.” In 1858, Lincoln’s appearance had “the fullness of health . . . his face had a rosy flush, his eyes were full and bright, and he appeared to be full of vigor.”

Rote-Rosen continued that the growing of his beard “added an expression of cadaverousness to his face” and that his whole face had a look of sadness, with “a far-away look in his eyes which were unlike the Lincoln of earlier days.” He noted that Lincoln liked jokes and humor, even if the told joke’s humor was at the expense of his generals or aides.

For 1964, Rote-Rosen recalled the conflicting and sometimes contradicting information regarding Lincoln’s religion. Some claimed he attended church, others claimed he was an agnostic, and yet others claimed that he did not have any beliefs and only presented religious beliefs for the benefit of his political endeavors.

For 1965, Rote-Rosen recalled Lincoln’s proposal in early 1865 to end the Civil War early by making a compromise with the rebelling Confederate states and compensating them for their loss of slaves. His cabinet rejected the idea, reasoning that the war was far enough along and enough damage inflicted upon the Confederacy that it would not be received well by them, or by the states and politicians of the Union.

Lincoln put the paper with the proposal back in his pocket, and it was never acted upon. Rote-Rosen noted that “the matter proposed . . . was not disclosed for a long time after the war . . . it was thought best that an offer of the United States to buy itself out of a war not of its own making, would have a bad morale on the country as a whole . . .” The war came to a close just a few months later in April 1865.

For 1966, Rote-Rosen recalled Lincoln’s second inauguration of March 4, 1865, and retold Lincoln’s address that he gave that day. There was no Lincoln article from Rote-Rosen in 1967. For 1968, Rote-Rosen retold an account of Lincoln’s final day, leading up to when he was assassinated at Ford’s Theater by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865. This was from the perspective of Lincoln’s actions that day, unlike the 1960 column where the event was told in the perspective of Booth’s actions that day. The 1968 column ultimately was the final column from Morris Rote-Rosen on certain events or happenings of Lincoln’s life, from his collection of historic “Lincolniana.”

Today, Abraham Lincoln’s presidency is now more than 150 years past. Lincoln’s legacy lives on, however, and interest in Lincoln’s life and accomplishments continues to the present.