Gettysburg Address

November 19,1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery, the day's second speaker, president Abraham Lincoln had this to say:

The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

President Abraham Lincoln
November 1863

The first National Thanksgiving Day, as proclaimed by President Lincoln took place one week later (Nov 26).

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On this day-1865

U.S.President Abraham Lincoln was shot while attending a play at Ford's Theater in Washington D.C.. His death the next morning, forever changed,and not for the better, the history of the former Confederacy.

engraving by Currier and Ives

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Mudd Grove

watercolor by Joe McGauley

This is a bit of stretch but work with me. In our continuing exploration of Civil War era St. Louis Mrs. T and I visited Mudd Grove, an early 1850's pile in one of the area's first suburbs, home to one Henry Mudd.

An 1848 a cholera epidemic wiped out nearly 10% of the population of St. Louis. In 1849 a fire destroyed 400 buildings and boats along the riverfront. In reaction to the epidemic, cemeteries were closed, slums were torn down, laws were passed outlawing epidemics.

The fire brought changes to the local building code. The mayor owned a brick foundry and passed legislation banning wooden buildings, which not only changed the landscape of STL, but the influx of Italian brick workers changed local cuisine forever.

Those that could, made tracks to join the wagon trains heading west, or made arrangements to move to the newly planned suburbs. Local planter, politician and opportunist Henry Mudd saw the chance of a lifetime. Along with a consortium of swells, the ingenious Mudd plotted along with the Pacific Railway to buy up excess land along the RR's planned route west out of St. Louis. It didn't hurt that Mudd was county assessor at the time. The swells bought the land from the railroad, saved the best for themselves, and hired Scottish engineer James Kirkwood to plat what is now the city of Kirkwood, Mo.. The railroad offered new suburbanites an easy commute to their downtown offices. Their plan worked like a charm.

James Kirkwood came recommended by the Pacific. His claim to fame was having designed the Starruca Viaduct in eastern Pennsylvania, at the time the largest and most expensive stone viaduct railroad bridge in the world. Kirkwood liked it here, and stayed, later to become chief engineer for the City of St. Louis, eventually being replaced by poet Walt Whitman's brother, Thomas Jefferson Whitman.

Starruca Viaduct

Here comes the Civil War connection.

Our Mudd had a Maryland cousin, Dr. Sam Mudd.

Dr Sam Mudd

The good doctor was most likely a co-conspirator with one of his patients, actor John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed President Lincoln. Booth broke his leg in a fall during his escape after the assassination. Dr. Mudd set Booth's leg and provided help navigating the swamps around Chesapeake Bay to presumed safety in Virginia. 146 years ago today Booth was killed by US Cavalry troops while on the run.

In June 1865, Mudd was tried as a co-conspirator to the assassination, found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Dry Tortuga's, south of Key West. In 1869, President Johnson overturned Mudd's sentence, who then returned to Maryland, practiced medicine, farmed and ran for political office unsuccessfully several times. He died in 1883.

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