Thursday, January 19, 2012

Oct. 23, 1861

Oct. 23, 1861: Skirmishing in Kentucky breaks out between Southern and Northern forces, near West Liberty and Hodgenville.

The Writ of Habeas Corpus is suspended in Washington, D.C., and military law is imposed.

George Templeton Strong writes in his diary of a trip to Washington just concluded:

"We had an audience of Lincoln from nine to eleven A.M. Thursday (I think it was Thursday). He is lank and hard-featured, among the ugliest white men I have seen. Decidedly plebeian. Superficially vulgar and a snob. But not essentially. He seems to me clear-headed and sound-hearted, though his laugh is the laugh of a yahoo, with a wrinkling of the nose that suggests affinity with the tapir and other pachyderms; and his grammar is weak."

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