We’re in the middle of the final panel, and Ripley has left the stage. Now Teresa Burke introduces Harry Lang, who is probably best known for A Phone of Our Own: The Deaf Insurrection Against Ma Bell. He was, as was previously noted yesterday, the senior advisor for “Through Deaf Eyes.”

Lang will also talk about Laura Redden. His presentation is “I Considered Him My Friend: Laura C. Redden and Abraham Lincoln.” Lang begins by recounting his correspondence and work with Judy Yaeger Jones. Jones shared a box of materials with Lang. This container that she found that had tons of letters in them that were between Redden and noted people of the 19th century.

I want to talk about Redden today, but I also want to tie into Gallaudet, because we are here celebrating the 150th anniversary of Kendall Green. Fort Rapp was situated next to and on Kendall Green during the Civil War. In September, 1861, the Pennsylvania 62nd Infantry regiment from Pittsburgh encamped there. They were not yet fully outfitted and six of the companies received Springfields; the others got Enfield muskets.

During the first week of September, 1861, Laura C. Redden was a war correspondent. She came from Missouri to cover the Civil War for the St. Louis Republican. Within a week of her arrival in D.C., she was watching this regiment cross the Potomac. While she was in D.C., she stayed at the Willard Hotel, along with many others, from correspondents to government officials.

Laura Catherine Redden was born in 1839, and became deaf around age 12 or 13 due to meningitis. She went to the Missouri School for the Deaf, where she graduated in 1858. She primarily communicated through sign and written communication. She was an avid reader of the classics and poetry. Her family not wealthy, so she wanted to be self-supporting. She became a writer, and adopted the pseudonym “Howard Glyndon” when she was 19. She was very charming, and she was an advocate for female suffrage.

Missouri at the time was a border state and very politically divided; it was the only state that Stephen A. Douglas won in the 1860 Presidential election. Missouri was soon controlled quickly by the Union, but the was much death and chaos regardless. In St. Louis, a job was available as a war correspondent, and Redden decided to take it. She left by train, and arrived in Washington, D.C., where she used the telegraph to send back her dispatches.

She would go to the top of the Willard, where she used a telescope in her work. She rode horseback to the nearby camps to communicate with the soldiers, and then sent telegraphs back from the Willard. She and other correspondents were often on the Willard’s roof with telescopes during the war.

During the year 1861, Abraham Lincoln stayed at the Willard, General U.S. Grant stayed there, General George McClellan stayed there, and many others besides. Redden visited the receptions and events at the White House, just three blocks away from the Willard Hotel. D.C. was unpaved with dirt roads back then, and the streets quickly became muddy on rainy days. Nearly every block had a livery stable.

Redden was apparently pretty and quite vivacious, her newspaper was highly respected, and her nom de plume, Howard Glyndon, was well known. These elements helped her in her work. She was not the only female journalist at the time, but others mention her in their memoirs.

While in D.C., Redden met Lincoln six times in two months. In one of her written accounts of her meetings and sightings of Lincoln, she states about him, “I do not think the president had given three minutes thought to his personal apperance…” She was impressed with Lincoln and his bearing, recounting that “You could not, to save your life, even if that man were your bitterest enemy look upon that face and come away without feeling a respectable pity for the suffering clearly writtten on his face…” [These are quotes that Lang is showing in a simultaneous PowerPoint presentation]

In 1862, she was hired by publishers to edit a series of short biographies of men serving in the wartime Congress, titled Notable Men of the House. Some of the lawmakers whom she interviewed were involved with approving the legislation for the National Deaf-Mute College as part of the Columbia Institution, which of course today is Gallaudet University.

Some people claim she personally interviewed Lincoln, but the word “interview” back then did not have the same meaning as it does today. Back then, it could mean merely to see each other, and the two did have at least six meetings , but probably not an actual interview in the sense that we think of it today. However, another writer, John Janney, recounts that a “mute woman” met with Lincoln. Could this woman have been Redden? Judy Yaeger Jones found a handwritten note from Lincoln to Redden, so we know that they did have communications.

One must wonder how laura communicated with Lincoln and other personages such as Grant. She also knew Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, who actually learned some signs, as did Booth’s sister. We don’t know yet, but some wonder if there’s a possibility Lincoln knew some fingerspelling or signs. Lincoln also knew Frederick Barnard, who learned signs from Laurent Clerc. Laura Redden rarely used speech for communication, but she never described in detail how she obtained so many fascinating details during her interactions with others.

I’m trying to answer some of these questions that I’ve just posed, but we still don’t have a lot of answers; it’s a very tantalizing puzzle. By 1864, Redden was friends with General Grant, and Grant gave her a pass to go see the battles. We do know that she advised Lincoln in a letter to add Grant to the ticket in 1864 rather than Andrew Johnson. Redden was also friends with Mary Todd Lincoln.

Once, a General van Vliet handed Redden a paper and asked if she’d like to have it it; it was four stanzas commemorating the Battle of Balls Bluff by Willie Lincoln, the son of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. After Willie died, Redden sent the poem back to Mrs. Lincoln along with her condolences. A few days later, a large bouquet arrived from Mary Todd Lincoln, thanking Laura Redden for her thoughtfulness.

There’s a lot more, of course, since I’m working on this now with Judy Yaeger Jones. But I’m excited to share this with you and continue this research.

My Commentary: This was an excellent paper for this particular panel; I’m now very interested in Laura Redden Searing, and looking forward to the publication or dissemination of Lang’s work. It would be interesting to know what her editors thought of her, what other assignments they sent her on, and what other reporters and war correspondents of the time thought of Redden, and what their interactions with her might have been. At a time when the telephone hadn’t yet been invented and the written word was paramount, I think Redden was able to seize opportunities that later generations probably didn’t have. Lang is presently doing research, so it’s hard to fully critique his work, or suggest new questions or avenues, but the presentation today was very satisfactory.