Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  126. Clara Stillwell, “A Few Lincoln-in-Indiana Stories,” typescript, 3, Lincoln Papers, Lilly Library, InU.

  127. Polly Richardson Egnew, in J. Edward Murr, “Lincoln in Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History 14 (1918):57.

  128. Jane L. Mosby (daughter of Elizabeth Wood) to Anna C. O’Flynn, Grandview, Indiana, 8 Mar. 1896, O’Flynn Papers, Vincennes University.

  129. T. Hardy Masterson, “Lincoln’s Life in Indiana,” Rockport, Indiana, Journal, 12 Feb. 1897; interview with Tuley’s grandniece, Mrs. Louisa K. Barr, St. Paul, Minnesota, Pioneer Press, 12 Feb. 1925; Nora Bender, granddaughter of Elizabeth Tuley, to Laura Wright, Chrisney, Indiana, 16 Aug. 1926, copy, and C. E. Jones to Nora Bender, Wichita, Kansas, 28 Jan. 1926, copy, Francis Marion Van Natter Papers, Vincennes University; interviews with Elizabeth Tuley, Evansville Courier and Journal, 12 Feb. 1928, and Rockport, Indiana, correspondence, 21 Dec., Chicago Times-Herald, 22 Dec. 1895.

  130. Eli Grigsby, second interview with Francis Marion Van Natter, Gentryville, Indiana, 12 Dec. 1935, Van Natter Papers, Vincennes University.

  131. Statement of Mrs. Allen Gentry (née Anna Caroline Roby), Rockport, Indiana, 17 Sept. 1865, HI, 131.

  132. Dr. James LeGrande’s answers to a questionnaire, [ca. 1909], Arthur E. Morgan Papers, DLC.

  133. Sara Bush Lincoln, interview with Herndon, near Charleston, Illinois, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 108.

  134. John Hanks, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 455.

  135. Dennis Hanks, interview with Herndon, Charleston, Illinois, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 105; Hanks quoted in the Charleston, Illinois, correspondence, 24 July [1891], Chicago Republic, undated clipping, LMF; Dennis Franklin Johnston, son of John D. Johnston, paraphrasing what his father told him, Los Angeles Times, 12 Feb. 1929, part 2.

  136. Reminiscences of John E. Roll, Chicago Times-Herald, 25 Aug. 1895.

  137. Green B. Taylor, interview with Herndon, 16 Sept. 1865, HI, 129–130; S. Grant Johnson, “Abraham Lincoln,” Dale, Indiana, Weekly Reporter, 18 Feb. 1944.

  138. Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndon’s Lincoln, 51.

  139. William D. Kelley, in Allen Thorndike Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (New York: North American Review, 1888), 280.

  140. William Makepeace Thayer, The Pioneer Boy and How He Became President (Boston: Walker, Wise, 1863), 205.

  141. E. Grant Gentry, recalling what his grandmother, Anna Caroline Roby Gentry, wife of Allen Gentry, had told him, in Francis Marion Van Natter’s notes of two interviews (dated 21 Jan. and 10 Feb. 1936), and an affidavit dated Rockport, 5 Sept. 1936, and notes of an interview with his sisters Anna, Hannah, and Rose, Rockport, 21 Jan. 1936, Van Natter Papers, Vincennes University.

  142. Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832; New York: Dodd, Mead, 1901), 22–23.

  143. William Wood, interview with Herndon, 15 Sept. 1865, HI, 124.

  144. John B. Rowbotham to Herndon, Cincinnati, 24 June 1865, HI, 56.

  145. Augustus H. Chapman, statement for Herndon, [before 8 Sept. 1865], HI, 102.

  146. John Romine, statement to Herndon, Lincoln Farm, Indiana, 14 Sept. 1865, HI, 118.

  147. An unidentified resident of Charleston, quoted in Alonzo Hilton Davis, “Lincoln’s Goose Nest Home,” Century Magazine, Sept. 1892, 798–799.

  148. Volney Hickox, “Lincoln at Home,” Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 15 Oct. 1874.

  149. Matilda Johnston Moore, interview with Herndon, near Charleston, Illinois, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 109.

  150. Sarah Bush Lincoln, interview with Herndon, near Charleston, Illinois, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 106–107.

  151. Francis Marion Van Natter, Lincoln’s Boyhood: A Chronicle of His Indiana Years (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1963), 36.

  152. Elizabeth Crawford, interview with Herndon, 16 Sept. 1865, HI, 127.

  153. Notes of Anna C. O’Flynn’s interview with Joseph Gentry, ca. 1895, Anna C. O’Flynn Papers, Vincennes University.

  154. James LeGrande, recalling the words of his mother, undated memo, Arthur E. Morgan Papers, DLC.

  155. Joseph C. Richardson, interview with Herndon, [14? Sept. 1865], HI, 119.

  156. Interview with Joseph C. Richardson, correspondence dated “down the Ohio and round about,” 10 Sept., Chicago Tribune, 21 Sept. 1890, p. 25.

  157. Mrs. Eli Grigsby, wife of Sarah Lincoln Grigsby’s great nephew, was asked if the relatively prosperous Grigsbys looked down on Sarah as the child of a poor family. “ ‘Well,’ she answered hesitantly, ‘Sally was hired help and you know how you’d feel about that.’ ” Indianapolis Star, 11 Feb. 1940.

  158. “Young Abe in Indiana,” correspondence dated “down the Ohio and round about,” 10 Sept., Chicago Tribune, 21 Sept. 1890, p. 25.

  159. Redmond Grigsby in the Lincoln City, Indiana, correspondence, 1 Oct. [1902], Evansville Journal News, clipping, LMF Rockport, Indiana, correspondence, 21 Dec., Chicago Times Herald, 22 Dec. 1895.

  160. Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, 36.

  161. Joseph C. Richardson, interview with Herndon, [14? Sept. 1865], HI, 119–120.

  162. Nathaniel Grigsby, interview with Herndon, Gentryville, Indiana, 12 Sept. 1865, HI, 114.

  163. Joseph C. Richardson, interview with Herndon, [14? Sept. 1865], HI, 120.

  164. Elizabeth Crawford, interview with Herndon, 16 Sept. 1865, and letter to Herndon, 4 Jan. 1866, HI, 127, 152.

  165. James Gentry, interview, correspondence dated “down the Ohio and round about,” 10 Sept., Chicago Tribune, 21 Sept. 1890, p. 25.

  166. Green B. Taylor, interview with Herndon, 16 Sept. 1865, HI, 130; Nathaniel Grigsby, interview with Herndon, Gentryville, Indiana, 12 Sept. 1865, ibid., 114.

  167. Clara Stillwell, “A Few Lincoln-in-Indiana Stories,” typescript, pp. 4–5, Lincoln Papers, Lilly Library, InU.

  168. Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, 43.

  169. Unidentified clipping in Dennis Hanks Dowling’s scrapbook, quoted in William F. Sullivan, “Tales of Lincoln’s Early Life,” Paris, Illinois, News, 14 Feb. 1922.

  170. Horace White to Jesse W. Weik, New York, 14 Dec. 1913, in Weik, Real Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 382.

  171. Nathaniel Grigsby, interview with Herndon, Gentryville, Indiana, 12 Sept. 1865, HI, 112.

  172. Enclosure in T. Hardy Masterson to George H. Honig, Kennett, Missouri, 21 Oct. 1927, copy, Papers of the Southwestern Indiana Historical Society, Willard Library, Evansville.

  173. Dennis Hanks to Herndon, 27 Dec. 1865, HI, 147.

  174. J. Rowan Herndon to Herndon, Quincy, Illinois, 3 July 1865, HI, 69.

  175. Nathaniel Grigsby interview with Herndon, Gentryville, Indiana, 16 Sept. 1865, HI, 128.

  176. Dennis Hanks to Herndon (interview), Chicago, 13 June 1865, HI, 42, 39; Dennis Hanks, interview with Herndon, Charleston, Illinois, 8 Sept. 1865, ibid., 105.

  177. John Rust, recalling what Green Taylor told him in 1865, Grandview, Indiana, Monitor, 25 Oct. 1928; Green B. Taylor, interview with Herndon, 16 Sept. 1865, HI, 130; Anna C. O’Flynn, “The Environments of Abraham Lincoln in Indiana: The Best Witnesses,” talk delivered to the Southwestern Indiana Historical Society, 17 Nov. 1925, copy, Southwestern Indiana Historical Society Papers, Willard Library, Evansville.

  178. James W. Wartmann to Herndon, Rockport, Indiana, 21 July 1865, HI, 79; John W. Lamar, interview with Anna C. O’Flynn, 1895, Ida M. Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College.

  179. Church records, entry for 10 Jan. 1830, Louis A. Warren, Lincoln’s Youth: Indiana Years, 1816–1830 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1959), 207.

  180. Van Natter, Lincoln’s Boyhood, 152; Andrew W. Sweeney’s reminiscences of conversations with Grigsby, Indianapolis Star, 16 Apr. 1933.

  181. Jesse K. Dubois, interview with Herndon, 1 Dec. 1888, HI, 718–719.

  182. Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, 62–63.

  183. George Close, interview with James Q. Howard, [May 1860], AL MSS DLC.

  184. Reminiscences of Robert War
nick, Decatur Review, 22 Mar. 1903.

  185. Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, p. 86, manuscript at Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee. This passage does not appear in the published version of Whitney’s biography.

  186. William Butler, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 13 June 1875, in Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Lincoln, 20.

  187. George Close, interview with James Q. Howard, [May 1860], AL MSS DLC.

  188. John Hanks, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 456.

  189. Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, 67.

  190. William C. Smith, in Joseph Stevens, History of Macon County, Illinois (Philadelphia: Brink, McDonough, 1880), 145.

  191. John J. Hall, paraphrased in Dr. W. H. Doak, Martinsville, Illinois, to his nephew, Dr. W. D. Ewing of Cambridge, Ohio, [1 Feb. 1923], Terre Haute, Indiana, Star, 11 Feb. 1923.

  192. Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (New York: J. B. Ford, 1869), 60.

  193. Mary Todd Lincoln quoting her husband, interview with Herndon, [Sept. 1866], HI, 359.

  Chapter 3. “Separated from His Father, He Studied English Grammar”

  1. Lincoln to Herndon, Washington, 10 July 1848, in Roy P. Basler et al., eds., Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln [hereafter CWL] (8 vols. plus index; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), 1:497.

  2. Lincoln to Martin S. Morris, Springfield, 26 Mar. 1843, CWL, 1:320.

  3. Mentor Graham to Herndon (interview), Petersburg, Illinois, 29 May 1865, Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln [hereafter HI] (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 9; Hardin Bale to Herndon (interview), Petersburg, Illinois, 29 May 1865, ibid., 13.

  4. Charles Maltby, The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln (Stockton, CA: Daily Independent Steam Print, 1884), 25.

  5. John E. Roll interviewed in the Chicago Times-Herald, 25 Aug. 1895.

  6. Caleb Carman to Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 30 Nov. 1866, HI, 429; Carman to Osborn H. Oldroyd, Petersburg, 2 Apr. 1882, Carman Papers, IHi.

  7. Clawson Lacy in Volney Hickox, “Lincoln at Home,” Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 15 Oct. 1874.

  8. Caleb Carman to Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 30 Nov. 1866, HI, 429.

  9. Clark E. Carr, My Day and Generation (Chicago: McClurg, 1908), 107.

  10. Caleb Carman, interview with Herndon, Petersburg, 12 Oct. 1866, HI, 373.

  11. Clawson Lacy in Volney Hickox, “Lincoln at Home,” Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 15 Oct. 1874.

  12. Henry E. Dummer, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 442.

  13. Henry C. Whitney to Herndon, Chicago, 17 Sept. 1887, HI, 644.

  14. Bledsoe, review of Ward Hill Lamon’s biography of Lincoln, Southern Review 12 (Apr. 1873):347.

  15. Ellis’s undated statement, enclosed in Ellis to Herndon, Moro, Illinois, 23 Jan. 1866, HI, 171, 174.

  16. William Herndon, “A Story of Lincoln or a Story which he loved to tell,” H-W MSS DLC, in Paul M. Zall, ed., Abe Lincoln Laughing: Humorous Anecdotes from Original Sources by and about Abraham Lincoln (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 100–101.

  17. John B. Weber to Herndon, Pawnee, Illinois, 5 Nov. 1866, HI, 396.

  18. Scrapbook, pp. 45, 47, George Alfred Townsend Papers, DLC.

  19. Caleb Carman to Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 30 Nov. 1866, HI, 429.

  20. Ellis’s undated statement, enclosed in Ellis to Herndon, Moro, Illinois 23 Jan. 1866, HI, 173.

  21. Herndon to “Mr. Noyes,” Chinquapin Hill, Illinois, 4 Feb. 1874, Herndon Papers, IHi.

  22. Swett to Herndon, Chicago, 17 Jan. 1866, HI, 165–166.

  23. Herndon interviewed by George Alfred Townsend, Springfield correspondence, 25 Jan., New York Tribune, 15 Feb. 1867.

  24. William Schouler, “Political and Personal Recollections, Number Eight,” Boston Journal, 18 Mar. 1870.

  25. Springfield correspondence, 4 Sept., New York Evening Post, 8 Sept. 1860.

  26. Henry Onstot witnessed this scene. Onstot quoted in Erastus Wright to Josiah G. Holland, Springfield, 10 July 1865, Holland Papers, New York Public Library.

  27. Coleman Smoot to Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 7 May 1866, HI, 254.

  28. CWL, 4:64; John Hanks to Herndon (interview), Chicago, 13 June 1865, HI, 44.

  29. John Hanks interview with Herndon [1865–1866], HI, 457.

  30. Herndon to Isaac N. Arnold, 21 Oct. 1882, in Arnold, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1884), 31n.

  31. Autobiography written for John Locke Scripps, [ca. June 1860], CWL, 4:64.

  32. Caleb Carman to Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 30 Nov. 1866, HI, 429.

  33. William H. Herndon interview, Springfield correspondence by V. H., July 1867, Cincinnati Commercial, 25 July 1867.

  34. Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 21 Aug. 1879.

  35. Thomas S. Edwards, interviewed by John Hay, Sept. 1860, Michael Burlingame, ed., Lincoln’s Journalist: John Hay’s Anonymous Writings for the Press, 1860–1864 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998), 10.

  36. John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Frontier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 112–113.

  37. Charles James Fox Clarke to his mother, Mrs. Mary Clarke, New Salem, 3 Aug. 1834, Clarke Papers, IHi.

  38. T. G. Onstot, Pioneers of Menard and Mason Counties (Forest City, IL: T. G. Onstot, 1902), 219, 157.

  39. Stephen A. Douglas to Julius N. Granger, Jacksonville, 11 Mar. 1834, Robert W. Johannsen, ed., The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), 5.

  40. Sarah M. Worthington, “Stories of Pioneer Mothers in Illinois,” manuscript, IHi, quoted in Faragher, Sugar Creek, 114.

  41. William Brown to Jeremiah Brown Jr., Dillon, Illinois, 20 Apr. 1830, typed copy, Jesse W. Fell Papers, DLC.

  42. Charles James Fox Clarke to Hollis J. Clarke, New Salem, 15 Mar. 1835, photocopy, Clarke Papers, IHi.

  43. Temperance Address, delivered in Springfield, 22 Feb. 1842, CWL, 1:274.

  44. Robert D. Miller, Past and Present of Menard County, Illinois (Chicago: Clarke, 1905), 43.

  45. Onstot, Pioneers of Menard and Mason Counties, 121.

  46. Douglas to Gehazi Granger, Jacksonville, 9 Nov. 1835, Johannsen, ed., Letters of Douglas, 21.

  47. Allen to Eleazar Baldwin, New Salem, 5 May 1832, typed copy in the New Salem Museum, copied in “John Allen Residence,” p. 31, typescript in the Sangamon Valley Collection, Lincoln Public Library, Springfield.

  48. William G. Greene to Herndon, Tallula, Illinois, 29 May 1865, HI, 11.

  49. Henry C. Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, vol. 1 of A Life of Lincoln, ed. Marion Mills Miller (2 vols.; New York: Baker and Taylor, 1908), 80.

  50. Autobiography written for John Locke Scripps, [ca. June 1860], CWL, 4:64.

  51. Thomas P. Reep, Lincoln at New Salem (Chicago: Old Salem Lincoln League, 1927), 21.

  52. Mentor Graham to Herndon (interview), Petersburg, Illinois, 29 May 1865, HI, 9.

  53. Royal Clary, interview with Herndon, [Oct. 1866?], HI, 370.

  54. Close, interview with James Q. Howard, [May 1860], AL MSS DLC.

  55. William G. Greene to Herndon (interview), Elm Wood, Illinois, 30 May 1865, HI, 17–18.

  56. “Stories of Lincoln, Reminiscences Missed by His Biographers Gathered in the ‘Old Salem’ Region,” unidentified clipping, LMF.

  57. Havana correspondence, 14 Dec. 1865, Chicago Republican, n.d., copied in the Belleville Advocate, 5 Jan. 1866.

  58. Harvey Lee Ross, Lincoln’s First Years in Illinois, ed. Rufus Rockwell Wilson (1889; Elmira, NY: Primavera Press, 1946), 5.

  59. Reep, Lincoln at New Salem, 55.

  60. Greene interviewed by Adolph Bristol, Tallula, Illinois, correspondence, 29 Oct., Chicago Inter-Ocean, 4 Nov. 1876; George Kirby paraphrased in Paul Hull, “Another Lincoln Tale,” New York Mail and Express, 1 Feb. 189
6, p. 11; Greene, interviewed by George A. Pierce, correspondence dated “on the cars,” 12 Apr., Chicago Inter-Ocean, 30 Apr. 1881; Greene to Herndon, 11 June 1865, HI, 33; Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, 85–86; William Makepeace Thayer, The Pioneer Boy and How He Became President (Boston: Walker, Wise, 1863), 249–253.

  61. Thomas S. Edwards, interviewed by John Hay, Sept. 1860, Burlingame, ed., Lincoln’s Journalist, 10.

  62. Russell Godbey, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 449.

  63. Reminiscences of Uncle Johnny Potter, Washington correspondence by Walter B. Stevens, 17 Dec., St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 20 Dec. 1888.

  64. John Todd Stuart’s interview with James Q. Howard, [May 1860], copy in John G. Nicolay’s hand, John Hay Papers, RPB.

  65. Henry McHenry, interview with Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 29 May 1865, HI, 14.

  66. Reminiscences of John Watkins, paraphrased by Thomas P. Reep, based on an interview conducted by Reep in 1890, in Reep’s interview with Joseph F. Booton, Petersburg, Illinois, 18 Oct. 1934, typescript, pp. 19–21, IHi.

  67. Autobiography written for John L. Scripps, [ca. June 1860], CWL, 4:62.

  68. Graham to Herndon (interview), Petersburg, Illinois, 29 May 1865, HI, 10.

  69. Robert H. Browne, Abraham Lincoln and the Men of His Time (2 vols.; Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye, 1901), 1:159.

  70. Interview with Nancy Rutledge Prewitt, conducted by Margaret Flindt, Fairfield, Iowa, correspondence, 10 Feb., Chicago Inter-Ocean, 12 Feb. 1899.

  71. William G. Greene interviewed by Paul Hull, “Another Lincoln Tale,” New York Mail and Express, 1 Feb. 1896, p. 11.

  72. J. B. Turner to his wife, Washington, 19 Sept. 1862, in Mary Turner Carriel, The Life of Jonathan Baldwin Turner (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), 250–251.

  73. Jason Duncan to Herndon, [late 1866–early 1867], HI, 539.

  74. [Cornelius A. Runkle’s reminiscences] in Noah Brooks, Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of American Slavery (New York: Putnam’s, 1894), 186.

  75. George S. Coe’s recollections in E. J. Edwards, “President Lincoln and ‘Fee-nance,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 27 May 1910; E. D. Keyes, Fifty Years’ Observations of Men and Events, Civil and Military (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884), 383; George Templeton Strong, Diary of the Civil War, 1860–1865, ed. Allan Nevins (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 188, 204 (entries for 23 Oct. 1861 and 29 Jan. 1862).