This afternoon, Source, a member of ScarletNation.com, posted a commentary regarding the historical inaugural train ride of Abe Lincoln from Illinois to Washington, DC, and how that train ride is connected with Rutgers University. This commentary is based on the partial train ride being made by Barack Obama. Very interesting stuff:
Plenty of TV coverage today of President Elect Barack Obama’s
partially recreated train ride path that Abraham Lincoln made
in 1861 to his inauguration. Lincoln’s took a lot more than one
day but here is a little known story of President Elect Lincoln’s
brief stopover in front of Rutgers:
According to the February 12, 1912 Daily Home News, “From
New York, the President (elect) started for Washington (on
February 21, 1861) by what is now the Pennsylvania Railroad.
His train stopped in New Brunswick and he was greeted by an
immense throng that heartily greeted him. Among the newspaper
correspondents who traveled with Mr. Lincoln was Stephen Fiske
(Class of 1862), afterward a famous editor, then representing the
New York Herald. Mr. Fiske had been a Rutgers student and
pointed the college buildings out to Mr. Lincoln as the train pulled
into the old George Street station. There were plenty of Rutgers
men in the crowd and Mr. Fiske has related how, after he was
greeted by some of his old friends, Mr. Lincoln, with his
characteristic humor, asked him, “Is this your reception or mine?”
Abe Lincoln also told the Rutgers students and crowd he regretted
not having gone to college. Lincoln’s brief (and only) stopover in
New Brunswick was between speeches he gave in Jersey City and
Trenton that day before winding up in Philadelphia where he was
first told of plots to assassinate him.
