Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  138. Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndon’s Lincoln, 128; J. McCan Davis to Ida Tarbell, Springfield, Illinois, 11 Mar. 1895, copy, J. G. Randall Papers, DLC; Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, 143.

  139. Ninian W. Edwards, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 447.

  140. James H. Matheny, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 472.

  141. McCormack, ed., Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, 1:443.

  142. Belleville Advocate, 18 Apr. 1840.

  143. Letter by an unidentified correspondent, Waterloo, Illinois, 26 Aug., Illinois State Register (Springfield), 4 Sept. 1840; Belleville Advocate, 29 Aug. 1840.

  144. Letter by “Patriot,” Mt. Vernon, Illinois, 3 Oct., Illinois State Register (Springfield), 16 Oct. 1840.

  145. Quincy Whig, 23 May 1840.

  146. Letter by “Patriot,” Mt. Vernon, Illinois, 3 Oct., Illinois State Register (Springfield), 16 Oct. 1840.

  147. Letter by an unidentified correspondent, Equality, Illinois, 14 Sept., Illinois State Register (Springfield), 25 Sept. 1840.

  148. Judge William H. Stickney of Chicago related this story in a letter to the Palatine, Illinois, Enterprise, n.d., copied in the Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 13 Feb. 1884.

  149. Andrew J. Galloway’s reminiscences, Chicago Tribune, 12 Feb. 1900.

  150. Letter by “Patriot,” Mt. Vernon, Illinois, 3 Oct., Illinois State Register (Springfield), 16 Oct. 1840.

  151. Gibson W. Harris, “My Recollections of Abraham Lincoln,” Women’s Home Companion, Nov. 1903, p. 10.

  152. J. A. Powell to the editor of The Century, copy, and Powell to John G. Nicolay, Homer, Illinois, 11 Feb. 1889, both in the Nicolay Papers, DLC.

  153. Lincoln to William G. Anderson, Lawrenceville, 31 Oct. 1840, CWL, 1:211.

  154. Letter by “A Looker-on,” Clinton County, Illinois, 23 Oct. Sangamo Journal, 8 Nov. 1839.

  155. “An Old Jackson Man,” Nos. I, II, III, IV, VII, Sangamo Journal, 6 and 13 Mar., 10 Apr. 1840.

  156. “Son of an Old Ranger” to the editor, Macoupin County, 20 Feb., The Old Soldier, 1 Apr. 1840.

  157. Sangamo Journal, 27 Mar. 1840.

  158. William G. Green, interview with James Q. Howard, [May 1860], AL MSS DLC.

  159. “A Citizen,” Sangamo Journal, 3 and 10 July 1840.

  160. Herndon to “Fellow Citizens,” Springfield, 14 July 1840, Illinois State Register (Springfield), 17 July 1840.

  161. “Quiz” [Archer Herndon] to Van Buren, Springfield, 14 July, Sangamo Journal, 17 July 1840.

  162. Davis to William P. Walker, Bloomington, Illinois, 16 Nov. 1840, David Davis Papers, IHi.

  163. Joshua Speed, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 475.

  164. Edward H. Thayer, quoted in Thomas Dale Logan, “Lincoln, the Early Temperance Reformer,” The Christian Century, 13 Feb. 1909, p. 152.

  165. Lincoln to Stuart, Springfield, 1 Mar. 1840, CWL, 1:206.

  166. Nance to John Taylor, Rock Creek, 30 Jan. 1838, Records of the Auditor’s Office, Springfield Land Office, Illinois State Archives, Springfield.

  167. Sangamo Journal, 14 Apr. 1838.

  168. Lincoln to John Todd Stuart, Springfield, 26 Mar. 1840, CWL, 1:208.

  169. Anson G. Henry to John J. Hardin, Springfield, 11 Nov. 1843, Hardin Family Papers, ICHi.

  170. T[homas] D[rummond] to the editor, Springfield, 19 Dec., Rock River Express (Rockford), 26 Dec. 1840.

  171. William H. Fithian to Amos Williams, Springfield, 12 Dec. 1840, Woodbury Collection, Illinois Historical Survey, University of Illinois, in Donald G. Richter, Lincoln: Twenty Years on the Eastern Prairie (Mattoon, IL: United Graphics, 1999), 40.

  172. Springfield correspondence by Virginius [George T. M. Davis], 4 Jan., Alton Telegraph, 16 Jan. 1841.

  173. Springfield correspondence, 11 June, New York Herald, 26 June 1860.

  174. Reminiscences of John A. McClernand, Chicago Tribune, 12 Feb. 1900.

  175. Illinois State Register (Springfield), 11 Dec. 1840.

  176. Lucian P. Sanger to Augustus A. Evans, Springfield, 5 Dec. 1840, Augustus A. Evans Papers, Missouri Historical Society.

  177. Illinois State Register (Springfield), 16 Feb. 1844.

  178. Joseph Gillespie to Herndon, Edwardsville, Illinois, 31 Jan. 1866, HI, 188.

  179. Springfield correspondence by “Pompey,” 4 Dec., Peoria Register and North-Western Gazette, 11 Dec. 1840.

  180. Adam W. Snyder to Gustave Koerner, Springfield, 21 Feb. 1841, John Francis Snyder Papers, IHi.

  181. Adam W. Snyder to Gustave Koerner, Springfield, 6 Feb. 1841, John Francis Snyder Papers, IHi.

  182. James Harvey Ralston to “Dear Sir,” Springfield, 30 Jan. 1841, Ralston Papers, IHi.

  183. John J. Hardin to John Todd Stuart, Springfield, 20 Jan. 1841, Hardin Family Papers, ICHi.

  184. Stuart to John J. Hardin, Washington, 30 Jan. 1841, Hardin Family Papers, ICHi.

  185. William H. Fithian to Amos Williams, Springfield, 29 Dec. 1840, Woodbury Collection, Illinois Historical Survey, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in Richter, Lincoln: Twenty Years on the Eastern Prairie, 40.

  186. Rodney O. Davis, “Illinois Legislators and Jacksonian Democracy, 1834–1841” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1966), 288–292; “The Case Stated,” by “a member of the House,” Sangamo Journal, 5 Feb. 1841.

  187. Sangamo Journal, 12 Feb. 1841; letter dated Springfield, 13 Feb., ibid., 19 Feb. 1841.

  188. Protest dated 26 Feb. 1841, CWL, 1:244–249.

  189. Remarks made on 26 Feb. 1841, in CWL, 1:244.

  190. James C. Conkling in Francis Fisher Browne, The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: N. D. Thompson, 1886), 171.

  191. Illinois State Register (Springfield), 12 Mar. 1841, in CWL, 1:244n.

  192. Clark E. Carr, The Illini: A Story of the Prairies (Chicago: McClurg, 1904), 148.

  193. Koerner, Memoirs, 1:480.

  194. Northwestern Gazette and Galena Advertiser, 17 Feb. 1841, in CWL, 1:237–238.

  195. Springfield correspondence by “A Member of the Lobby,” 23 Dec. 1840, Quincy Whig, 9 Jan. 1841.

  196. Henderson’s reminiscences, Omaha Daily Bee, 9 Feb. 1896.

  197. Editorial copied in the Sangamo Journal, 15 Oct. 1841.

  198. Alton Telegraph quoted in Lincoln Day by Day, 1:164 (entry for 20 July 1841).

  199. Sangamo Journal, 12 Nov. 1841.

  200. Ibid., 15 Oct. 1842.

  201. Herndon to Ward Hill Lamon, 25 Feb. 1870, Lamon Papers, CSmH.

  202. Lyman Trumbull to Walter Trumbull, n.p., n.d., in Horace White, The Life of Lyman Trumbull (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 427.

  203. Samuel C. Parks, The Geat Trial of the Nineteenth Century (Kansas City, MO: Hudson-Kimberly, 1900), 141.

  204. Bledsoe, review of Ward Hill Lamon’s biography of Lincoln, Southern Review 12 (Apr. 1873):364.

  Chapter 6. “It Would Just Kill Me to Marry Mary Todd”

  1. William H. Herndon to Truman Bartlett, Springfield, 22 Sept. 1887, Bartlett Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society; Michael Burlingame, The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 268.

  2. Caleb Carman to Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 12 Oct. 1866, 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), 374; Lynn McNulty Greene to Herndon, Avon, Illinois, 3 May 1866, ibid., 250; statement by Benjamin R. Vineyard, enclosed in Vineyard to Jesse W. Weik, St. Joseph, Missouri, 14 Mar. 1887, ibid., 609–610; Mary Owens Vineyard to Herndon, Weston, Missouri, 23 May and 6 Aug. 1866, ibid., 256, 265; Johnson Gaines Green, interview with Herndon, [1866], ibid., 530; Esther Summers Bale, interview with Herndon, [1866], ibid., 527; William G. Greene to Herndon, Tallula, Illinois, 23 Jan. 1866, ibid., 175; Mentor Graham, interview with Herndon, 2 Apr. 1866, ibid., 243.

  3. Mary Owens to Thomas J. Nance, Green City, Kentucky, 11 Apr. 1835, Fern Nance Pond, e
d., “New Salem Community Activities: Documents,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 48 (1955):100–101.

  4. Lincoln to Mrs. Orville H. Browning, Springfield, 1 Apr. 1838, 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), 1:117.

  5. Mary Owens Vineyard to Herndon, Weston, Missouri, 22 July and 23 May 1866, HI, 263, 256.

  6. Parthena Hill, interview with Walter B. Stevens, 1886, in Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed. Michael Burlingame (1916; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 9.

  7. Lincoln to Mrs. O. H. Browning, Springfield, 1 Apr. 1838, CWL, 1:117–119.

  8. Lincoln to Mary Owens, Vandalia, 13 Dec. 1836, CWL, 1:54–55.

  9. Parthena Hill, interview with Walter B. Stevens, 1886, in Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 10.

  10. Mary Owens Vineyard to Herndon, Weston, Missouri, 23 May 1866, HI, 256.

  11. Mary Owens Vineyard to Herndon, Weston, Missouri, 22 July 1866, HI, 262.

  12. Johnson Gaines Greene, interview with Herndon, [1866], HI, 531; William G. Greene to Herndon, Tallula, Illinois, 23 Jan. 1866, HI, 175; William G. Greene in George A. Pierce, “Lincoln’s Love,” dispatch dated “on the cars,” 16 Apr., Chicago Inter-Ocean, 23 Apr. 1881. Pierce has Greene quoting Mary Owens speaking in an ungrammatical, unsophisticated fashion. Her son protested, maintaining that she spoke like the well-educated woman that she was. Because Mary Owens claimed she had a good education and because her letters are perfectly grammatical and many others testified to her intelligence and refinement, I have recast Pierce’s words to make her language suit her known character and background. Benjamin R. Vineyard to Jesse W. Weik, St. Joseph, Missouri, 13 Jan. 1887, HI, 599.

  13. L. M. Greene to Herndon, Avon, Illinois, 30 July 1865, HI, 81.

  14. Johnson Gaines Green interview with Herndon, [1866], HI, 530–531.

  15. Lincoln to Mary Owens, Springfield, 7 May 1837, CWL, 1:78.

  16. Lincoln to Mary Owens, Springfield, 16 Aug. 1837, CWL, 1:94.

  17. Mary Owens Vineyard to Herndon, Weston, Missouri, 22 July 1866, HI, 263.

  18. Harold D. Lasswell, Power and Personality (New York: W. W. Norton, 1948), 38, 39. A prominent Washington journalist who observed the political world from 1961 to 1999 wrote that the typical successful public figure in the capital longed to be “a praised person,” a desire formed in childhood. Meg Greenfield, Washington (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 32. In a study of highly ambitious entrepreneurs, Orvis F. Collins and his colleagues found that many of their subjects had in childhood either lost a parent or suffered from other forms of emotional abandonment. Collins et al., The Enterprising Man (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1964), 54–56.

  19. Lasswell, Power and Personality, 50. An unusually prominent business executive, Jim Barksdale, told an interviewer who asked him why he worked hard even though he had far more money than he could ever need: “I am very conscious of coming from the South. I know that people laugh at the southern accent. I know of many successful people with hardscrabble backgrounds. Many of us are driven to overcome what we came from.” The media mogul Ted Turner “has attributed his relentless ambition to a ‘latent inferiority complex’ based on his childhood inability to satisfy a demanding father … in the middle of a speech, Turner held up a copy of a business magazine with his face on the cover and called out, ‘Is this enough for you, dad?’ ” Dinesh D’Souza, The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno-Affluence (New York: The Free Press, 2000), 107–108.

  20. Scripps to William Herndon, Chicago, 24 June 1865, HI, 57.

  21. Autobiography written for John L. Scripps, [ca. June 1860], CWL, 4:61, 62.

  22. Brief autobiography, [15?] June 1858, CWL, 2:459.

  23. Stephen T. Logan, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 6 July 1875, Michael Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 38.

  24. Stephen Fiske, “When Lincoln Was First Inaugurated,” Ladies’ Home Journal 14 (Mar. 1897):8.

  25. “A Talk with Abraham Lincoln,” John P. Gulliver, New York Independent, 1 Sept. 1864.

  26. Autobiographical sketch enclosed in Lincoln to Jesse W. Fell, Springfield, 20 Dec. 1859, CWL, 3:511.

  27. This story was told many times to Lawrence B. Stringer by Col. Robert B. Latham, a founder of the town, to whom Lincoln made the remark. Stringer, “The Lincoln Town,” unpublished essay, 11, Stringer Papers, IHi.

  28. CWL, 1:8–9, 320.

  29. Hall to William E. Barton, Worcester, Massachusetts, 3 Oct. 1922, in a scrapbook marked “The Life of Lincoln, Vol. 2,” Barton Papers, University of Chicago.

  30. CWL, 1:8.

  31. Burlingame, Inner World of Lincoln, 236–257.

  32. Lincoln to Speed, Springfield, 25 Feb. 1842, CWL, 1:281.

  33. Henry C. Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, ed. Paul M. Angle (1892; Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1940), 411.

  34. Mrs. Elizabeth L. Norris (née Humphreys) to Emilie Todd Helm, Garden City, Kansas, 28 Sept. 1895, Elizabeth L. Norris Papers, IHi; Sarah Rickard, sister of Mrs. William Butler, interviewed by Nellie Crandall Sanford, Kansas City Star, 10 Feb. 1907. Mrs. Norris was the niece of Elizabeth Humphreys Todd and lived with the Todds while attending school in Lexington. She and Mary were good friends.

  35. Octavia Roberts Corneau, “My Townsman—Abraham Lincoln,” 9, typescript of a talk given to the Lincoln Group of Boston, 18 Nov. 1939, Abraham Lincoln Association Reference Files, “Reminiscences,” folder 5, IHi.

  36. James C. Conkling to Mercy Levering, Springfield, 21 Sept. 1840, Conkling Papers, IHi.

  37. Mary Edwards Raymond, Some Incidents in the Life of Mrs. Benjamin S. Edwards (n.p., 1909), 11–12.

  38. Elizabeth Todd Edwards, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 443.

  39. Ninian W. Edwards, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 446; Katherine Helm, The True Story of Mary, Wife of Lincoln (New York: Harper, 1928), 62–63.

  40. Lincoln to Mary Owens, Springfield, 7 May 1837, CWL, 1:78.

  41. Herndon to Ward Hill Lamon, Springfield, 6 Mar. 1870, Lamon Papers, CSmH.

  42. Reminiscences of Catherine Bergen Jones, daughter of the Reverend Mr. John G. Bergen, who founded the first Presbyterian Church in Springfield, in Eugenia Jones Hunt, My Personal Recollections of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, ed. Helen A. Moser (Peoria, IL: Helen A. Moser, 1966), 5.

  43. Reminiscences of Elizabeth Harmon, Vermilion County Museum, in Donald G. Richter, Lincoln: Twenty Years on the Eastern Prairie (Mattoon, IL: United Graphics, 1999), 225.

  44. Mrs. Charles Ridgely (née Jane Maria Barret, 1836–1922), who attended the Jacksonville party, told this story to Caroline Owsley Brown. Brown, “Springfield Society Before the Civil War,” [Edwards Brown Jr.], Rewarding Years Recalled (privately published, 1973), 35–36. This is a fuller version of Mrs. Brown’s article, originally written for the “Anti-Rust Club,” than the one of the same title published in Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 15 (1922).

  45. Helm, Mary, Wife of Lincoln, 80–81, 83.

  46. Mrs. John Lyman Child, interviewed by Katherine Pope, “Memories of Lincoln’s Day,” Streator, Illinois, Independent Times, clipping [1920], Emanuel Hertz Scrapbooks, vol. 9, p. 2235, DLC.

  47. Emilie Todd Helm, interview with Jesse W. Weik, 22 Mar. 1887, HI, 612.

  48. Norman F. Boas, “Unpublished Manuscripts: Recollections of Mary Todd Lincoln by Her Sister Emilie Todd Helm; An Invitation to a Lincoln Party,” Manuscripts 43 (Winter 1991):25.

  49. Harriet A. Chapman, interview with Jesse W. Weik, [1886–1887], HI, 646.

  50. Douglas Wilson, Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 213–230. I have relied heavily on Wilson’s persuasive account, based on a careful, sensitive analysis of the confusing evidenc
e about the courtship.

  51. Elizabeth and Ninian W. Edwards, interview with Herndon, 27 July 1887, HI, 623.

  52. Joshua F. Speed, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 474.

  53. Orville H. Browning, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 17 June 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Lincoln, 2.

  54. Sarah Rickard interviewed by Nellie Crandall Sanford, Kansas City Star, 10 Feb. 1907.

  55. Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, 11 Jan. 1889, H-W MSS DLC. Herndon claimed that Joshua Speed informed him of this collusion.

  56. Notes of a conversation with Mrs. Benjamin S. Edwards, 1895, “Lincoln Marriage” folder, Ida M. Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College.

  57. Reminiscences of H. M. Powel, Taylorville, Illinois, Semi-Weekly Breeze, 12 Feb. 1909. As a youth of 12 and 13, Powel (b. 1839) recalled, he was hired to spend the night at the Lincoln home while Lincoln was away on business. From the summer of 1851 to the fall of 1853, Powel said, he often visited the Lincolns. His father was Richard Powel (1801–1875), born in Pennsylvania and living in Parkersburg, Virginia, in September 1851, when he moved his family to Springfield, where they lived until 1853, when they settled in Taylorville. Portrait and Biographical Record of Christian County, Illinois (Chicago: Lake City, 1893), 286.

  58. William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, ed. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis (1889; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 134.

  59. Mary Lincoln to Abram Wakeman, Washington, 30 Jan. [1865], in Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 200.

  60. Mary Todd Lincoln to Eliza Stuart Steele, Chicago, May [23, 1871], Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 588.

  61. William H. Townsend, Lincoln and His Wife’s Home Town (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1929), 46; Jean Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 24, 28–32, 330–332, 333; Charles B. Strozier, Lincoln’s Quest for Union: Public and Private Meanings (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 72–73. Mary Lincoln’s letters say almost nothing about her father, mother, or stepmother.

  62. Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndon’s Lincoln, 133, quoting a statement given by Mrs. Edwards on 3 Aug. 1887.