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THE CONTINUING WAR Robert Dykstra The ways in which modern Americans put their Civil War to use continues to fascinate. In last December's column we discussed a littleknown group calling itself the Society for Correct Civil War Information , founded by the distinguished newspaperman, author, and "muckraking " reformer, Charles Edward Russell. Another such organization was the Lincoln-Lee Legion, established by Howard Hyde Russell. The former society flourished in the late 1930's to defend the Union cause against its twentieth-century "enemies." The Lincoln-Lee Legion, on the other hand, proves to have been an older group, formed at the turn of the century to help combat alcohol consumption in diis country. Both thus embraced equally militant, not entirely historical purposes; both represented curious survivals of the Civil War theme in twentiethcentury popular thought. No formal relationship appears to link the two founding Russells. By an intriguing coincidence, however, both lived as youngsters in Davenport , Iowa, in the early 1870's. That Mississippi River city's many wartime associations, of which the Confederate prisoners' graves on offshore Rock Island remained the most tangibly dramatic, were then fresh. Charles' father, a former abolitionist editor, still managed the Davenport Gazette, while Howard's father, an Episcopal clergyman, served as professor of mathematics at local Griswold College. Charles worked in his father's editorial office, or was soon to do so; Howard finished prep school at Griswold in 1871 and for two years worked as a clerk at the Rock Island Arsenal. If a family or social connection between the boys existed it remains altogether obscure. Their respective entries, now facing one another on opposite pages of old Who's Who volumes, reveal no concrete clue. But our story concerns Howard. After teaching school and editing a newpaper for a year or two he commenced the study of law, which he then practiced until 1883. In that year he underwent conversion at a religious revival. He abrupdy rejected his flourishing legal practice and studied five years at Oberlin College, emerging as a Congregational ministerwho subsequendy heldpastorates in Kansas City, Chicago, and various Ohio communities. While serving in Chicago he dedicated his life to the anti-liquor movement. 200 At Oberlin, Ohio, in 1893, Russell founded what was to become the powerful and militantAnti-Saloon League. Serving as its national superintendent until 1903, and as state chairman of the pivotal New York Anti-Saloon League until 1908, he thereafter resumed high executive office in the organization. The A.S.L. turned its attention increasingly to national prohibition. Passage of the Eighteenth Amendment is often ascribed to its vigorous efforts. The organization naturally declined following prohibition's repeal in 1933, and since 1948 has existed under another name entirely. One of Russell's most unique contributions to the cause after his initial pioneering work was founding the Lincoln-Lee Legion. During a sojourn at Springfield, Illinois, in 1900, he visited a drugstore whose proprietor owned a desk used by Abraham Lincoln. While talking with die druggist Russell learned diat one Cleopas Breckenridge, still living near Springfield, possessed first-hand knowledge of Lincoln as a temperance advocate. Seeking out Breckenridge, Russell was told diat in 1847 Lincoln presided at a temperance meeting at die Soutii Forks School House in Sangamon County at which all present were asked to sign an abstinence pledge composed by the future Emancipator. "Sonny, don't you want your name on this pledge?" Lincoln asked the ten-year-old Breckenridge. The boy answered yes, but admitted that he did not know how to write. Lincoln gladly signed it in his behalf. Subsequendy satisfyinghimself as to the truth of the story, and filling in some missing details, Russell obtained what was supposedly die wording of die pledge composed by Lincoln on diat occasion: "Whereas , The use of intoxicating liquors as a beverage is productive of pauperism , degradation and crime; and believing it is our duty to discourage that which produces more evil than good, we therefore pledge ourselves to abstain from die use of intoxicating liquors as a beverage." Russell, realizing die propaganda value of tiiis charming Lincolnian encounter with Cleopas Breckenridge, built around it a new total abstinence and moral suasion...

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