Dr. David Livingstone

Today, a whole day at the British Museum, i can't tell you how excited i am. But first, a wee yarn to spin about a person buried in the Westminister Abbey.

Dr. David Livingstone is buried within the confines of the Westminister Abbey. A plaque marks his burial, and on it it proclaims him as Doctor, Explorer, and Missionary. He also has an interesting connection to the American Civil War. One of his six children, Robert Moffet Livingston, diverted from his planned trip from England to Kilmane, Portuguese East Africa and joined the 3rd New Hampshire Infantry in 1864 to fight for the Union side during the Civil War. Robert Livingstone fell to heat stroke during the time leading up to the Second Battle of Deep Bottom and was captured by the Confederate Army. Robert Livingstone ended up in Salisbry Prison, North Carolina where, during a chaotic prison break he was shot down and died ten days later of his wounds. After the uprising/break was put down, the bodies of Robert Livingstone and the 14 others who were killed were dumped in a trough.

Sir Henry Morton Stanley, GCB, the explorer/journalist who uttered the famed and possibly fabricated phrase "Dr. Livingstone i presume" after finding Dr. David Livingstone in Africa, was a twenty year old Welsh immigrant in Arkansas when the Civil War broke out. He was "shamed" into joining the 6th Arkansas Infantry and was captured in the Battle of Shiloh. After his capture, Stanley quickly renounced allegiance to the Confederacy and joined the Union side and promptly deserted from the Union army and, after several adventures (including serving for a short time in the Union Navy) landed a job as a journalist for the New York Herald as a foreign correspondent after the Civil War. It was in this incarnation that this human chameleon was sent to Tanzania to recover Dr. David Livingstone.

All the information i entered here i learned from Amanda Foreman's excellent book, A World on Fire, Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, was the leader of the conservatives during the Civil War and played a major role in keeping the British Government toeing a strict line of neutrality.) The strict neutrality stance of the government could not prevent numerous professional soldiers and adventure seekers from Her Majesty's Army from joining either side of the Civil War conflict. When Britain sent reinforcements into Canada to prepare from a potential incursion by either the Union or Confederate Army(s), many soldiers took leave to join either the Union or Confederate side citing "boredom" while guarding the Canada/America border.