Return briefly to Aaron Burr and a recent review of the literature in the New York Review of Books for April 13, 2000.
 
 

Review how Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln are presented on the web, visiting such website as http://members.aol.com/RVSNorton/Lincoln2.html
 
 

Discuss the sources for the study of MTL as portrayed in fiction and biography, returning to the television mini series of Vidal's Lincoln.
 
 

For next week,

read selected chapters in Love is Eternal by Irving Stone and

from Jackie Napoleon Wilson, Hidden Witness,(1999), p. 41; taken from the November 1999 issue of Smithsonian Magazine.

Elizabeth Keckley's perspective on MTL.

For Elizabeth Keckley see:

1) her book on MTL

2) an excellent website on Keckley

also next week:

Essay on Lincoln due.

Suggestions:
 

1) compare and contrast what you knew and thought about Lincoln before you read and viewed the dramatization of Vidal's work.

2) examine how reading the Thomas biography impacted on your understanding and assessment of Lincoln

3) discuss the conflict between Vidal and the historians.  Who do you think is right? Why?

4) try to answer the question as it relates to your reading about Lincoln: "who can you trust and how do you know you can trust them?"