SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A document containing President Abraham Lincoln's signed pardon of a Civil War soldier has been the source of much controversy since its 1998 discovery, after historians concluded that the date had likely been altered to make the document more historically significant. A new analysis by scientists at the National Archives has confirmed that the date was indeed forged (although the pardon is genuine), according to a November paper published in the journal Forensic Science International: Synergy. The authors also concluded that there is no way to restore the document to its original state without causing further damage.
Among then was a pardon for a Civil War solider in the Union Army named Patrick Murphy, a private who had been court-martialed for desertion and condemned to death. The pardon is written perpendicularly in the left margin of a letter dated September 1, 1863, requesting a pardon for Murphy. Lincoln's statement reads, "This man is pardoned and hereby ordered to be discharged from the service." It was signed "A. Lincoln."
It was the date that made the document significant: April 14, 1865, meaning the pardon was likely one of the last official acts of President Lincoln, since he was assassinated later that same day at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC. The pardon was broadly interpreted as evidence for a historical narrative about the president's compassionate nature: i.e., his last act was one of mercy. The discovery made headlines and brought Lowry considerable renown.
After its discovery, the Murphy pardon was exhibited in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom in the National Archives building. But an archivist named Trevor Plante became suspicious of the document, noting that the ink on the "5" in "1865" was noticeably darker. It also seemed as if another number was written underneath it. Then Plante consulted a seminal collection of Lincoln's writings from the 1950s. The pardon was there, but it was dated April 14, 1864—a full year before Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Clearly the document had been altered sometime between the 1950s and 1998 to make the pardon more historically significant.
Investigators naturally turned to the man who made the discovery for further information. They began corresponding with Lowry in 2010. Initially, Lowry seemed cooperative, but when he learned about the nature of the investigation, he stopped communicating with the Office of the Inspector General, thereby arousing suspicion. So the investigators knocked on the historian's door one January morning in 2011 for an interview.
[...] Read the article to learn about a confession, a retraction, chemical analysis, and more.
Journal Reference:
Jennifer K. Herrmann, Yoonjoo Strumfels, Kathy Ludwig. Examination of date tampering on Abraham Lincoln's pardon of Patrick Murphy, RG 153 entry 15, case MM761 (ARC identifier: 1839980) Forensic Science International: Synergy, 2021 [Creative Commons by-nc-nd] (DOI: 10.1016/j.fsisyn.2021.100210)
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 28 2021, @03:30AM (8 children)
I don't know how people like that can look at themselves in the mirror, but there never seems to be a shortage of them. Maybe they just remove all the mirrors in their houses or something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 28 2021, @12:58PM (6 children)
There's definitely a financial and reputational motivation for historians who do this sort of thing. If you are the expert, how long before someone finds out you messed around? Often, that'll be after you're dead, and some people just don't care.
It does seem to be a problem peculiar to historians, although I suppose the same could be said of other fields, like dealing in art.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday December 28 2021, @02:40PM (5 children)
Or the reproducibility problem in science. Or the contractor who gets paid to tell you that you need his services.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 28 2021, @03:46PM (4 children)
The reproducibility problem isn't the same. It isn't borne out of willful and active deceit like this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 28 2021, @06:17PM
Well, not superficially. But in the mixture of motives is arrogance, deceit and laziness. How else do you assemble a lab of throw-away grad students and stomp on them until they produce more papers so you can get your Nobel Prize / committee appointment / Professorship?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 28 2021, @06:32PM (2 children)
Maybe but maybe not - nobody has actually been investigated for fraud or other signs of willful deceit as a result of the reproducibility crisis. My take is that there will always be willful and active deceit, but gullibility hasn't always been so widespread and institutionalized.
In the story, no one seriously examined the letter (which had been "discovered" in 1998 and placed on public display [archives.gov] sometime shortly after) until roughly ten years later (Lowry confessed to the forgery in early 2011, and the investigation had been ongoing for some time prior).
The big thing here is not Lowry's mendacity, but the placid acceptance of such a controversial item without looking deeply at its legitimacy - if this one guy hadn't looked, the fraud might have never been caught. This systemic gullibility is the real problem. It shows up everywhere, not just historical documents or art.
My take is that it's a combination of three things: ideological confirmation (tells a story that is ideologically convenient or essential like the Lincoln story), cultural/institutional corruption (this is part of the reproducibility crisis, nobody tried to reproduce those results often for decades), and no incentive for good behavior (disinterested public funding that doesn't care about results is the other half of the reproducibility crisis, or the government not looking at an important historical document before putting it on display).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 28 2021, @11:46PM (1 child)
I'll have to dig into the details a bit deeper, but I don't believe the piece of paper was "discovered" in 1998, I think it was always in the archive, or at least in the archive since the 1950s. I think what was discovered was that the pardon written into the margin, which was there from the beginning, had the date the day that Lincoln died. It was a "oh hey, look, did anybody notice that this was written the day he died?" Everyone knew the document was legitimate and it had been in the Arhives collection for a long time. Given that, and that the change made wasn't of the kind to make a substantial change to historical interpretation of anything, I don't take it as being gullible to accept it. But you should note that it was't placidly accepted, because the people who really knew their stuff had their suspicions from the start. I think what you are saying would apply if the document came in from the outside and someone said "I just found this paper written by Lincoln and look, right here it is dated on the day he died" and people believed it. The amount of material in the Archives is massive and they "find" unknown stuff in the documents all the time.
I wonder what Lowry's motivation was. Did he notice that the pardon was a year to the day off from Lincoln's death and he was a big Lincoln fanboi to think how cool it would be to change the date? Did he do it for personal reasons knowing that he would gain some notoriety by pointing this out? I wonder, did he make a big deal of it himself to promote himself, or was it a feel-good story that went viral, so to speak, and blow up more than he knew it would (and hence, bring more attention and scrutiny)? Regardless, this kind of thing is reprehensible to me. You expect fakes to be passed off and attempted to be sold to museums, but you don't expect vandalizing the stuff that's there. Historical vandalism has always rubbed me the wrong way, whether it is something small like this, or ISIS blowing up 10,000 year old sites, or even uptight people adding fig leaves to paintings and statues hundreds of years ago.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 29 2021, @12:31AM
I differ on that. My take is that this should have been checked right away, once the discovery was made, because there was a conflict of interest by the discoverer. And as you note, historical vandalism is a thing.
It could have been unplanned, but it also could have been deliberate with Lowry spending considerable time to find a document that was same date, different year, and could easily be forged. At some point, it just doesn't matter. People will come up with reasons and excuses for these things when it's to their advantage - it's just human nature. There's little point to figuring that out. Nor does that knowledge keep them from doing it again and again - this guy alone may have vandalized a lot of stuff over the years. Vetting the discoveries in a timely manner does.
And because they didn't bother to look when it first came up, the statute of limitations expired on the crime and Lowry got away with it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 28 2021, @03:08PM
Those people have little problem with mirrors. They see the facade they've put up for people to see. They lack introspection, so they see their carefully structured facades, and nothing more. Much like politicians who can pivot 30 times on the same issue during a campaign, then after election pretend that they're representing all the 30 factions that they made empty promises to.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 29 2021, @05:36PM
Now that historians have proven Lincoln's work is forged, it's time for all those uppity plantation workers to get back to the cotton fields.