An Update

This isn't meant to be like the other posts that tell you what happened in Team of Rivals. This chapter is just meant to tell you how far I am into it.

THE NUMBER OF PAGES IN TEAM OF RIVALS: 754 (not including the bibliography and all that stuff)

HOW MANY PAGES IN I AM: 534

PAGES LEFT: 220

So if I read eight pages a day, I'll be done with Team of Rivals by the end of the summer and I can brag to all of my friends that I am way more smarter than them. The only trick with that is that I don't have any friends. Or good grammar.

Summary of Chapter Sixteen of TEAM OF RIVALS

GENERAL WAR ORDER NO. 1: Sets February 22 as "the day for a general movement of the land and naval forces of the United States against the insurgent forces."

On January 27, 1862, Lincoln issued the General War Order Number One. As you can see above, it marked February 22 as the day that the U.S. would attack anybody that was attacking them. Well, Lincoln was planning to attack people on February 22, but he was too "preoccupied" by Willie dying and Tad's illness to do anything about it.

People were all like, "What up with dat?"

Well, maybe not exactly like that.

I don't think people in the 1800's said what up with dat.

I might be wrong, though.

Just maybe.

Later, on March 11, Lincoln fired McClellan.

Well, it was more of a demotion.

If you have no idea what a demotion is, I guess I'll tell you. I need to beef this post up, anyways. If you already know what it means, too bad so sad. I guess that you can just suffer through me describing what a demotion is.

So.

The definition of demotion.

A demotion is pretty much the opposite of a promotion.

And if you don't know what a promotion is, go look it up. I'm tired of explaining all of this difficult stuff.

So, anyways,  on March 11, Lincoln fired demoted McClellan, so instead of being the general of the army, McClellan was just given control of the Potomac Army.

So that's it.

That's all there is to it.

I hope you learned something.

I know I did.

The end.

Summary of Chapter Fifteen of TEAM OF RIVALS

In February of 1862, Mary sent out invitations to around 500 people inviting them to come to the White House for a party.

Using invitations to get to the White House was a new way of doing, you know, stuff. Presidents (first ladies included) usually invited people into the White House by either inviting a small number or just by opening their doors and seeing who came in.

So, Mary's party was going to be big. and I mean BIG. Mary thought the party was going to go perfectly with nothing bad happening.

She was wrong.

Just a few days before Mary's BIG party, Willie (one of her sons) got sick. Mary wanted to cancel the party to take care of Willie, but Abraham was hesitant. They'd already sent out the invitations to people, and it probably wouldn't be a good choice to cancel the party. They just decided not to cancel the ball.

Willie's condition was worsening since the ball, and Tad (another Lincoln child) also got ill. On Thursday, February 20 at 5 pm, Willie died.

After Willie died, Mary almost never stopped crying because she was so depressed. She sometimes invited those people who pretend to speak with dead people (spiritualists?) to the White House to 'bring back' Willie.

Yeah, it was pretty bad.

By the way, it turns out that the ball was a huge triumph. Just saying.

Summary of Chapter Fourteen of TEAM OF RIVALS

There was a guy  that was a general.

Should the G be capitalized in 'general'?

Okay, never mind.

So, the general guy. His name was McCellan.

Well, his last name was, at least.

I don't remember his first name.

If I remembered, I'd tell you.

But I don't.

So I won't.

But now I'm just wasting time because I don't feel like writing.

And I don't think you're enjoying my stalling too much.

I payed too much for this, you say.

You didn't pay anything for this, I say.

Okay, enough with the stalling, you say.

Fine, I say.

I'm  getting annoyed with the way that we're talking, you say.

I agree, I say.

Then start actually writing, you say.

Fine, I say.

Fine, you say.

Fine, I say.

START WRITING ALREADY!, you say.

Fine, I say.

If I have to, I say.

So, this McClellan guy.

He was a general.

But you probably knew that.

So, the Republicans liked McClellan at first. But that changed once he made an order to capture escaped slaves that have, well... escaped. Once McClellan made that order, people started to dislike him.

Well, I guess that's it.

No more strenuous writing for today.

All that stalling took a lot out of me.

What?!?, you say.

That was it?, you say.

Yes, I say.

I waited all this time for just one paragraph?, you say.

Yes, I say.

This cost too much, you say.

Summary of Chapter Thirteen of TEAM OF RIVALS

When the Confederates attacked Fort Sumner, the Civil War began. The Civil War lasted for four years, and would take 600,000 lives.

In comparison to today's population, the deaths would total over 5,000,000,000.

That's more deaths that all the wars from the Revolutionary war to the Iraq War combined.

Lincoln called a cabinet meeting to discuss if there should  be any more troops brought in to the war. Some said 100,000, and some said only 50,000. To make everybody happy (more or less), Lincoln chose to only send in 7,500 troops.

The president had $20,000 to maintain the White House.

I think that Mary wasted used a whole lot of that.

Once she was done spending the money on carriages and other things, they were $6,800 in debt.

That's a lot.

You know what she did?

She asked the groundskeeper of the White House to funnel money toward her so she could pay off the debt.

Sounds easy... if I had a groundskeeper and a funnel.

Summary of Chapter Twelve of TEAM OF RIVALS

People thought that the way Lincoln wrote speeches was very unusual. I don't know the way that other speech writing people write speeches, so I don't really know if his way of writing speeches is weird or not. I'm just stating what they said in Team of Rivals.

First, Lincoln would reduce complex ideas into paragraphs, then after days or weeks, he would go back to that paragraph to edit it. Another thing that other speech writers found weird about Lincoln's speeches had four sources, when other people's speeches usually had more. (Those four main sources, in case you were wondering, were the Constitution, Andrew Jackson's nullification proclamation, Daniel Webster's "Liberty and Union Forever" speech that was popular at the time, and Clay's address to the senate in 1850.)

Several people read Lincoln's inaugural speech draft before the inauguration. Of all the people who read Lincoln's speech, Seward had the most impact. Seward's changes softened the tone so the tone would be... well... softer. Other than making the speech more softy, Seward's changes also added a lot of other things that made the speech more better.

As you can see, I wouldn't be too good at speeches.

Summary of Chapter Eleven of TEAM OF RIVALS

When Lincoln was leaving Springfield for Washington by train, over 1,000 people met him at the train station to say goodbye and to wish him good luck when he was the president and just to cry about it.

A man named Allan Pinkerton was responsible for guarding Lincoln on the trip to Washington. And because of all of the rumors going around about an assassin that was going to try to assassinate him when he got to Washington, Pinkerton decided that the best way to handle that was to take an earlier train from Springfield to the Capitol to stump the would be assassins from assassinating Lincoln.

Pinkerton's plan did work out. And I don't mean lifting weights.