Every so often, history unfolds before your very eyes and there is an overwhelming human need to do something — say something — to anchor yourself in events.
Think of the iconic photograph of the sailor kissing a nurse on V-J Day in Times Square. Or of the anonymous man who two decades ago stood in front of Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square.
It strikes us this instinct was at work when a 19th-century watchmaker secretly inscribed his thoughts about the beginning of the Civil War on the inner parts of then-President Abraham Lincoln’s pocket watch.
Last week, curators at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History opened Lincoln’s watch and, to the gasps of onlookers, confirmed the tale of the inscription.
Jonathan Dillon, a Washington, D.C., watchmaker and Union sympathizer, was at work on Lincoln’s watch in 1861 when he heard of the first shots fired in the Civil War.
In tiny handwriting, he wrote, in part “Fort Sumpter (sic) was attacked by the rebels . . . thank God we have a government.”
Unbeknownst to Lincoln, he carried those sentiments with him as he fought to keep the Union together.
The revelation doesn’t change our view of history, but it does open a window of understanding on how an ordinary person was affected by extraordinary events.
