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Google has created a Google Doodle in honor of beloved author Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday.

The image embedded above features several of Dickens’ most iconic characters, including Ebeneezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol and Pip from Great Expectations. When users click on the image at the Google homepage, they are taken to a page with Google Books listings for Dickens’ works including A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist and David Copperfield.

Here’s more about the birthday from The Washington Post: “Prince Charles [is] expected to visit London’s Dickens Museum. Actors who reportedly are scheduled to give readings Tuesday in Britain include Ralph Fiennes (who will play Abel Magwitch in the upcoming film of Dickens’s Great Expectations), Gillian Anderson (TV’s Great Expectations) and Sheila Hancock (Bleak House), as well as Simon Callow (Christmas Carol: The Movie) performing in Dickens’s birthplace of Portsmouth, Hampshire.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Craig L. Symonds is Professor Emeritus of History at the U.S. Naval Academy and the winner (with James M. McPherson) of the 2009 Lincoln Prize for his book Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War. In the post below Symonds discusses his experiences at the Lincoln Bicentennial celebrations.

A few Thursdays ago I spent the day with Abraham Lincoln. Of course I had spent most of the last four years with Lincoln while writing my book about him. As Doris Kearns Goodwin said about the many years she spent working on her book Team of Rivals, every day I got up excited about the notion of spending the day with Abe.

February 12th was Abe’s 200th birthday, and everybody, it seemed, wanted to spend the day with him. In the nation’s capital, a number of Lincoln scholars and other dignitaries spoke at a breakfast and a wreath laying at the Lincoln Memorial in the morning; a more formal celebration in the Capitol Rotunda followed at noon with music by the U.S. Army chorus and, of course, more speeches—including one by President Obama; the Library of Congress opened its new Lincoln exhibit at 1:00, an event marked by a luncheon, ribbon cutting, and more speeches; and dinner that night featured, what else, more speeches.

The historic Willard Hotel where Lincoln himself had stayed in as a Congressman in 1847 and again as president-elect in 1861 hosted the dinner. It is not the same building that existed then, but it stands on the same site, and has the same social and political pedigree.

Willard’s was at the very center of the dramatic and pivotal events of the 1860s. Most politicians stayed there when they were in town, and advocates for various causes would hang out in the lobby to buttonhole Congressmen in order to promote their agendas, a practice that created the term “lobbyist.” Many Union generals and admirals stayed at the Willard, too. By 1864, the desk clerk at the Willard had grown blasé about the appearance of yet another brigadier or major general, of whom there were then hundreds. That February, a scruffy looking major general showed up and asked for a room for himself and his son. The clerk assigned him a back room and asked him to sign the desk register. Then, spinning the register around, he read the name: “U.S. Grant and son, Galena, Ill.,” and discovered that he had a much nicer room available after all.

The dinner at the Willard last Thursday began with the usual lengthy acknowledgment of all those who had helped put the evening together. Almost every one of the 160 guests was introduced, some more than once. A string quartet played 19th century music, and of course there were speeches.

I gave one of them. I talked about Lincoln’s early political career that was marked by his opposition to the Mexican War, then at full flood. President James K. Polk had insisted that war with Mexico was justified because American blood had been shed on American soil by Mexican soldiers. Lincoln disputed that assertion. His resolution called for Polk “to establish whether the particular spot of soil on which the blood of our citizens was shed, was, or was not, our own soil.” The gangly western Congressmen made something of a nuisance of himself in these resolutions, called “The Spot Resolutions” at the time, and earning Lincoln the nickname “Spotty Lincoln.”

It is ironic that this man who began his political career as a kind of war protester, subsequently presided over the bloodiest war in our national history. We are fortunate that he did, for he possessed exactly the temperament needed for our country to survive: a willingness to accept expert advice, remarkable patience, and a sensitivity to what public opinion would accept as he moved forward toward union and emancipation.

After I finished, the second speaker came to the podium. It was George McGovern, looking remarkably fit and dignified at age 86. McGovern, too, had spent the last several years with Abe, writing a book of his own on Lincoln. Assessing history comes second nature to McGovern who earned a Ph.D. in History at Northwestern University back in 1953 and subsequently taught at his alma mater, Dakota Wesleyan University. After his political career, he returned to teaching, succeeding Stephen Ambrose at the University of New Orleans.

Listening to George McGovern talk about Abraham Lincoln in the Age of Obama was fascinating, even a bit disorienting, but also reassuring, clear evidence that Lincoln’s legacy reaches across the generations. That very day I had heard President Obama acknowledge his own debt to Lincoln: “I owe a special gratitude to this figure that made my position possible.” Now I listened as McGovern acknowledged his admiration of, and obligation to, Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln would no doubt have been surprised by the attention he still attracts. He knew he was not history’s prime mover. Late in his presidency he famously said, “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.” He was not being modest. He was acknowledging that History is a force we can only influence, not control. All of us who study history eventually become humbled by the appreciation of how complex it is, and that it has many fathers. Lincoln was great because he was confident enough to be humble, wise enough to be patient, and responsible enough to honor the opinion of the public he served.

All week on the OUPblog we will be celebrating the Lincoln Bicentennial.  Be sure to read Jennifer Weber’s post on how Lincoln almost failed, the excerpt from James M. McPherson’s Abraham Lincoln, and Craig L. Symonds post on how Lincoln and his leadership are reflected in our current President. In the original piece below Allen Guelzo, author of Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, answers some FAQs about Lincoln.  You can read part one here and part two here.

OUPblog: More than one observer has noted that the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free any enslaved people in the very territory controlled by Lincoln’s government. What then is its lasting importance?

Allen Guelzo: This is probably the most-frequently-repeated howler in American history, and no one who thinks twice about will ever believe they said it.

The question refers to an apparent oddity in the Emancipation Proclamation – Lincoln freed the slaves in the Confederate States, but did not free the slaves of the four border states which remained loyal to the Union or the slaves in the Southern areas which had been re-occupied by federal forces. So, Lincoln frees slaves where he can’t control them, and neglects to free them where he can. Right? Wrong.

We live under a Constitution which does not give Presidents plenary powers to do anything they like. Only in time of war or rebellion does the Constitution even surrender control of the armed forces to the President, and the “war powers” which the Constitution confers on the President are almost the only discretionary powers he has.

It was under the rubric of those “war powers” that Lincoln issued, and could only have issued, an Emancipation Proclamation. And since those four border states, and the occupied districts of the South, were not at war with the United States, or in rebellion against it any more, Lincoln had no “war power” authority to free any slaves there. If he had tried, slaveowners would have made a bee-line for the federal courts. And at the top of the federal judiciary, itching for a chance to strike down emancipation for good, sat Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, the author of the infamous Dred Scott decision. Lincoln might have had the military power to free slaves in those places, but not the legal authority.

By the same token, Lincoln declares the slaves of the Confederacy free because, even though he lacks the military power at that moment to enforce his proclamation, he retained the legal authority to do so. Lincoln had never recognized the Confederacy as a valid government. In his eyes, it was an insurrection against the existing forms of constitutional government, and as such, it came directly under the weight of his “war powers.” He might not have been able to enforce the Proclamation at once, but that’s very different from saying he had no authority to free the slaves there. Having the authority, it was only a matter of time and events before the enforcement, in the form of the Union Army, caught up with the authority and liberated the ex-slaves from their masters. Many of those slaves saw the distinction clearly enough that they began running away in droves to the Union lines, where they knew that the Army would at once recognize their freedom. Together, Lincoln and the slaves made the Proclamation in reality what it already was in law. But the reality would never have happened without the law.

At Gettysburg, Lincoln called on the nation to remember the war dead by a re-dedication to “unfinished work.” What is unfinished today? The unfinished work he was talking about at Gettysburg was the war itself, which he realized had to be won if the principle of government of the people was to be vindicated. If there was a sense in which he looked beyond that, it was to the larger goal of bringing opportunity for self-advancement and self-improvement to as many as possible. For Lincoln, the promise of the Declaration (that “proposition” that all men are created equal) was realized best when an open and democratic society gave to everyone the freedom to climb as far as talent and ambition could take them – as he himself had. Frederick Douglass, the black abolitionist, once wrote that Lincoln “was the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color.” Douglass attributed Lincoln’s lack of racial bias to Lincoln’s sympathy with Douglass’s struggle and the “similarity with which I had fought my way up, we both starting at the lowest round of the ladder.” I confess, having also started on that “lowest round,” that this is what fascinates me most about Lincoln, too.

Editor’s Note: We are giving away one signed copy of Lincoln and His Admirals. The first person to email blog.us(at)oup.com will win.

It is my pleasure to announce that Craig L. Symonds is one of two winners of the 2009 Lincoln Prize for his book Lincoln and His Admirals!  Congratulations are also in order to James M. McPherson who won for Tried By War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief.  Each received a generous cash award and a bronze cast of Augustus St. Gaudens‘ portrait sculpture of Abraham Lincoln (I saw the bronze cast, it is truly beautiful.)  Below is an original post from Symonds about Lincoln and Obama.  Be sure to read our other bicentennial Lincoln posts here.

The media took much notice of the fact that Barack Obama was intent on duplicating much of Abraham Lincoln’s behavior as President-Elect. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s superb book Team of Rivals is said to be one of the books Obama has read with great interest, and he has chosen a “Team of Rivals” for his Cabinet. Similarly, President Obama took a train from Philadelphia to Washington, duplicating part of Lincoln’s journey from Springfield to the capital in 1861. For this, Obama might have consulted Harold Holzer’s new book on Lincoln, President Elect. Others have noted that Obama has inherited what is arguably the worst national and international circumstance for a new president since Lincoln, with the possible exception of Franklin Roosevelt. How will he apply Lincoln’s style or outlook to the problems he has inherited?

My own recent study of Lincoln has confirmed in my mind several aspects of Lincoln’s leadership style that already seem to be part of Obama’s world view, which should stand him in good stead as he considers how to manage (or end) two wars, and stabilize and then revitalize a collapsing economy.

The most obvious of these is a serenity fueled by patience and a habit of thoughtfulness. Though we tend to assume that strong presidents are proactive, controlling a situation rather than responding to it after it has happened, the fact is that Lincoln was almost never proactive. Instead he took the time to consult with his advisers often making them present their positions in short memos. He also took up the pen himself, writing down options in order to clarify them, then writing down possible solutions. Many of these “Memos to Self” were never made public and were found among his papers only after his death. He also waited to see what public opinion would tolerate, reading many newspapers, especially opposition newspapers, before making a decision. He was so patient that it sometimes looked as if the momentum of history was about to take the decision out of his hands before he acted.

Indeed, his very first crisis—what to do about Fort Sumter—found him waiting until it was almost too late. It is even possible to argue that he waited until is WAS too late. On his very first day in office he received a report from the beleaguered commander of Fort Sumter, Major Robert Anderson, that the garrison was running out of food and that it must evacuate soon if not re-supplied. Moreover, Anderson reported that it would take twenty thousand men to re-supply him. Well, here was a conundrum. Lincoln had just promised in his inaugural address to “hold, occupy and possess” all Federal property in the South—a clear and specific reference to Fort Sumter, but there were not twenty thousand soldiers in all of the U.S. military in 1861. Like no-drama Obama, Lincoln did not panic. He met with his Cabinet and his military advisers, listened to all their input, sent scouts to Charleston to assess the situation there, and waited. By the time he sent an expedition there, Anderson’s supplies were all but exhausted. Lincoln’s patience was not a product of passivity, however. His decision to notify South Carolina State authorities that the expedition was en route deftly threw the ball into the South’s court and, when Fort Sumter was attacked, allowed the North to emerge as the aggrieved party.

Similarly, during the Trent affair, Lincoln was a master of forbearance. After Captain Charles Wilkes captured two Confederate ambassadors on the high seas, Britain responded with an ultimatum that gave the U.S. just seven days to release them and offer a public apology or face war. Again Lincoln waited, and his patience let the emotions of the moment ease allowing a solution that was both diplomatically acceptable, and politically benign. Had he responded to the ultimatum with the kind of fist-shaking defiance that would have been popular at home, it might indeed have led to war and the U.S. might be two countries today.

Even in dealing with emancipation, the most difficult problem of his administration—indeed, of American history—Lincoln showed remarkable composure which in the end led to a permanent solution. Some thought he was too patient. The abolitionists, including free blacks like Frederick Douglass, could not understand why he moved so slowly. But Lincoln knew what he was about. He moved as fast, and as efficiently, as public opinion, and the war news, would allow him to do.

Barack Obama, who has already demonstrated his patience and his pragmatism in his “no-drama” campaign, seems now to be echoing not only Lincoln’s cabinet choices and his travel route, but also his characteristic style. This bodes well for the future.

All week on the OUPblog we will be celebrating the Lincoln Bicentennial.  Be sure to read Jennifer Weber’s post on how Lincoln almost failed, the excerpt from James M. McPherson’s Abraham Lincoln, and come back tomorrow for Craig L. Symonds post. In the original piece below Allen Guelzo, author of Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, answers some FAQs about Lincoln.  Check back tomorrow for part three of this series.  You can read part one here

OUPblog: Lincoln had the highest regard for the U.S. Constitution, yet he assumed extraordinary powers during the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. When we look at this story for lessons about the conduct of a government today, what should we find?

Allen Guelzo: When we say that Lincoln exercised “extraordinary powers,” it sounds as though we were accusing him of making himself a dictator. But the Constitution itself gives the President some extraordinary powers when it designates the President as Commander-in-Chief in time of war or rebellion – and Lincoln was certainly willing to use those “war powers” during the Civil War. But looked at in retrospect, Lincoln used them very cautiously. Even the Emancipation Proclamation was issued as a “war powers” proclamation, with all kinds of restraints and caveats to keep it strictly within the legal bounds of military necessity. The Constitution was, for Lincoln, the frame mounted around the “apples of gold” in the Declaration of Independence, and you could not damage one without damaging the other.

OUPblog: During the Civil War, Lincoln declared martial law and suspended habeas corpus. He ordered the arrest of draft resisters and opponents of the draft, newspaper editors, judges, and other prominent opponents. He argued that it was an issue of self-preservation of the nation, as described in Article II, section one of the Constitution. What about opponents of the President’s policies?

Guelzo: Lincoln was a far better lawyer than I am, and he could answer that question with much more attention to constitutional law. But it is significant that the same issues are once again before us – not only that, but the same accusations of violations of rights, and the same response that the nature of the threat justifies extraordinary actions in national self-defense. One thing to bear in mind is that Lincoln has, on the whole, been judged fairly mildly, first, because the threat to the survival if the United States in 1861-65 has been seen as very real, and second, because, at the end of the day, the steps Lincoln took were not out of balance with the nature of the threat. (Those steps, by the way, included suppressing draft riots, executing a slave trader, and even exiling a political dissident). If anything, Lincoln once said, his administration would probably be remembered for treading too lightly on wartime civil liberties cases.

All week on the OUPblog we will be celebrating the Lincoln Bicentennial.  Be sure to check in daily for original posts from Allen C. Guelzo, author of Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction and Craig L. Symonds, author of Lincoln and His Admirals.  Also click through and read the posts that have already gone live by Guelzo and an excerpt from Abraham Lincoln by James M. McPherson.  Jennifer Weber, author of Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North, wrote the post below which looks at how Lincoln almost failed.

Abraham Lincoln is in the news a lot these days, and justifiably so. This year marks the bicentennial of his birth. That would have gotten a fair amount of attention under any circumstances, but the event has attracted even more interest because of the recent inauguration of another tall, lanky, up-by-his-own-bootstraps son of Illinois. Barack Obama, whom some see as a sort of heir to Lincoln, is, at the very least, the logical consequence of Lincoln’s actions. No Lincoln – no emancipation, no black troops, no civil rights (or at least an early promise thereof) – no Obama, at least not now.

In this season of Lincoln celebrations, in the avalanche of new books on our 16th president, it is easy to lapse into unquestioning adoration. From the moment John Wilkes Booth shot him on Good Friday, Lincoln became the American Jesus.

The truth is that, for the first four years of his presidency, Lincoln was a deeply controversial figure. He did not receive a single electoral vote from the South in 1860, and even after the war began many people in the North thought his actions, such as suspending habeas corpus and emancipation itself, were those of a tyrant.

But it was the losses that nearly did Lincoln in politically. The summer of 1864 was grim in a way that Americans today can hardly imagine. Ulysses S. Grant alone had taken 64,000 casualties in a little over a month of the Overland Campaign. What did he have to show for the bloodletting? A siege outside of Petersburg, Virginia. William T. Sherman was stalled on the outskirts of Atlanta, another siege. Nathaniel Banks had made an effort of going into Texas, but got turned back at Shreveport, Louisiana, in the spring and spent the summer sitting on his hands in New Orleans.

Many Northerners were screaming for an end to the war. Democrats who had long supported Lincoln’s actions abandoned him for the antiwar wing of their party. Even Republicans abandoned him. By August 1864 – a mere eight months before his death and martyrdom – the nation’s leading Republicans were certain that their candidate could not win re-election in November. Lincoln himself was resigned to losing. Under tremendous pressure to abandon emancipation as a war aim, Lincoln refused to reneg on his promise to the slaves. He would be “damned in time and eternity” if he did, he explained. He would go down with his principles intact.

Lincoln’s re-election was sealed with Sherman’s victory in Atlanta at the very beginning of September. Public opinion made a complete turnabout with that single event. Northerners were convinced that victory was theirs, and the rest of the war would be a mop-up operation. The national change of heart is startling in its totality, speed, and conviction, even from this distance.
But let’s say that Atlanta did not fall until after the election, and that Phil Sheridan, another Union general, did not stage his romp through the Shenandoah Valley later in September. Lincoln would surely have gone down to defeat. The first thing his opponent, the former general George B. McClellan, would have done would be to jettison emancipation as a condition of war. I believe he would not have had the stomach to continue to prosecute the war, just as he had no stomach to wage it as head of the Army of the Potomac, and he would have given the Confederates their independence. Historians would regard Lincoln, the same man many of them consider the greatest American president, as a failed president.

Lincoln’s enshrinement is testimony to the contingent nature of history. Sherman did take Atlanta before the election, and Sheridan did strip the valley bare, also before the election. Lincoln’s re-election guaranteed that the war would continue to the point of unconditional surrender. His assassination came just days after Robert E. Lee’s surrender. His death, by any measure, is one of history’s greatest tragedies, but it also froze Lincoln in time – and in marble. He did not have to deal with the bulk of Reconstruction, which was sure to be messy even for someone with Lincoln’s great political gifts. Instead, he died at the moment of his triumph, his reputation immediately sealed as the nation’s greatest president. One has to look no further for his legacy than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

All week on the OUPblog we will be celebrating the Lincoln Bicentennial.  Be sure to check in daily for posts from Jennifer Weber, author of Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North, James M. McPherson, author of Abraham Lincoln, and Craig L. Symonds, author of Lincoln and His Admirals. In the original post below Allen Guelzo, author of Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, answers some FAQs about Lincoln.  Be sure to check back for part two and three of this series with Guelzo.

OUPblog: What is the most important aspect of Lincoln’s legacy today?

Allen Guelzo: That he saved the idea of popular government, both politically and morally. In the first place, he showed that democracies are willing to fight to save themselves, that they are not forever doomed to divided and sub-divide over one issue after another until they have whittled themselves down into helpless political miniatures. The essence of popular government is that people come together to govern themselves; when they disagree, the form majorities and minorities over the disagreements; but the majority has the privilege of ruling, and the minority has the responsibility to yield to that rule, and not stage armed resistance or attempt to walk away. At the same time, though, the majority does not have the right to retaliate against, or persecute the minority; and both understand that at the next election, the balance of majority and minority can freely change.

In the second place, he showed that popular government is not the same thing as “everybody gets to do whatever they want.” There are certain fundamental truths which cannot be changed by any popular government, or by any majority or minority – chief among being the right everyone has to eat the bread they earn by their own hands, instead of being forced, as slaves, to feed another. Popular government is the pole-star in Lincoln’s firmament, but it does not abolish natural law.

OUP: Lincoln hoped for a “new birth of freedom” in America. What would that mean today?

Guelzo: It’s interesting that a man of such meager public religious profile should resort to religious language in his most famous speech, but that’s exactly what this “new birth of freedom” is. In fact, the Gettysburg Address is shot full of religious language. What a “new birth” meant since the two great religious Awakenings in America (in the 1740s and again in the 1820s) was a complete spiritual renewal – literally, being “born again.” Lincoln borrows the terminology, and lifts the energy, the transformation, and the dedication to God that this new birth implies, and transfers it to a renewal of our commitment as citizens to popular government.

All week on the OUPblog we will be celebrating the Lincoln Bicentennial.  Be sure to check in daily for original posts from Allen C. Guelzo, author of Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, Jennifer Weber, author of Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North, and Craig L. Symonds, author of Lincoln and His Admirals.  To start things off we have excerpted from Abraham Lincoln by James M. McPherson.  This short book is the perfect biography to kickstart our Lincoln celebrations.  The excerpt below begins with Lincoln’s birth, on February 12, 1809.

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky, about fifty miles south of Louisville. His father, Thomas Lincoln, had come as a child with his family from Virginia in 1782. Thomas acquired only enough literacy to sign his name but gained modest prosperity as a carpenter and farmer on the Kentucky frontier. He married Nancy Hanks, also illiterate, in 1806. Abraham was born in a log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm three miles south of Hodgenville. When he was two years old the family moved to another farm on Knob Creek about seven miles northeast of Hodgenville. On this farm of 230 acres (only thirty of which were tillable), young Abraham lived for five years, helped his parents with chores, and learned his ABCs by attending school for a few weeks with his older sister, Sarah.

In December 1816 the Lincolns moved again, this time to Indiana, which had just been admitted to the Union as a state. The traditional notion that the Lincolns moved because of a dislike of slavery may have some truth; they belonged to a Baptist denomination that broke from the parent church on the slavery issue. The main reason for the move, however, was the uncertainty of the land titles in Kentucky, which caused Thomas to lose much of his property. Indiana offered secure titles surveyed under the Northwest Ordinance. There Abraham learned the use of axe and plow as he helped his father carve a house and farm out of the hardwood forest. The growing youth also snatched a few more months of education in the typical one-room schoolhouses of the frontier. In late 1817 or early 1818 the Lincolns were joined by Nancy’s aunt Elizabeth Hanks Sparrow and her husband, Thomas Sparrow, and Abraham’s cousin Dennis Hanks. Soon thereafter, in the fall of 1818 the Sparrows and Nancy Hanks Lincoln all died of “milk sick,” probably caused by drinking the milk of cows that had grazed on poisonous white snakeroot.

After a year of trying to keep house and raise the children by himself, Thomas Lincoln returned to Kentucky to seek a wife. On December 2, 1819, he married the widow Sarah Bush Johnston and brought her and her three children to his farm on Pigeon Creek, Indiana. His stepmother provided Abraham with affection and guidance. With a desire for learning and an ambition for self-improvement, he devoured every book he could borrow from the meager libraries of friends and neighbors. The King James Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress offered him maxims for life as well as a model for the poetic prose that characterized the best of his later writings. Thomas Lincoln neither encouraged nor understood his son’s intellectual ambition; quite the contrary, he chastised Abraham’s “lazy” preference for the reading over working.

The teenaged Abraham’s thinly veiled disdain for life of a backwoods farmer doubtless irritated his father. Abraham in turn resented the requirement of law and custom that any wages he earned before he reached the age of twenty-one—by hiring out to neighbors to split rails, for example—must be turned over to his father. Abraham Lincoln’s hatred of slavery, which denied to slaves the “fruits of their labor,” may have been influenced by Thomas Lincoln’s expropriation of Abraham’s earnings. In any event, relations between Abraham and his father grew increasingly strained. When Thomas lay dying in January 1851, he sent word that he wanted to say goodbye to his son. Abraham refused to make the eighty-mile trip, stating that “If we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant.” He did not attend his father’s funeral.