Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  156. Lincoln to Durley, Springfield, 3 Oct. 1845, CWL, 1:347–348.

  157. Illinois State Register (Springfield), 16 July 1858, 31 May 1860.

  158. Sangamo Journal, 4 June 1846.

  159. Speech in the House, 12 Jan. 1848, CWL, 1:432.

  160. Autobiography written for John L. Scripps, [ca. June 1860], CWL, 4:66.

  161. Illinois State Register (Springfield), 8 May 1846.

  162. Ibid., 10 July 1846.

  163. Shelby Cullom, in Walter B. Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed. Michael Burlingame (1916; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 154.

  164. Springfield correspondence, [11 July 1847], for the Boston Courier, in J. H. Buckingham, “Illinois as Lincoln Knew It: A Boston Reporter’s Record of a Trip in 1847,” ed. Harry E. Pratt (pamphlet; Springfield, IL, 1938), 33–34.

  165. Joshua Speed, quoting Lincoln, in Helen Nicolay, Personal Traits of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Century, 1912), 110–111.

  166. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds., Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), 243 (entry for 8 Nov. 1864).

  167. Boal to Richard Yates, Lacon, 25 Aug. 1850, Yates Papers, IHi.

  168. Julian M. Sturtevant Jr., quoting his father, Julian M. Sturtevant in a letter to William E. Barton, Cleveland, 2 Aug. 1919, Barton Papers, University of Chicago.

  169. Lawrence B. Stringer’s unpublished biography of Lincoln, written ca. 1927, p. 92, IHi.

  170. Handbill, “To the Voters of the Seventh Congressional District,” 31 July 1846, CWL, 1:382.

  171. “D.” to Allen Ford, n.d., Illinois Gazette (Lacon), 22 Aug. 1846.

  172. John Todd Stuart, interview with Herndon, [by 2 Mar. 1870], HI, 576.

  173. James H. Matheny, interview with Herndon, [by 2 Mar. 1870], HI, 576.

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

  175. J. Otis Humphrey to I. W. Read, n.p., 9 Mar. 1892, copy, Paul Angle Papers, ICHi.

  176. Green Caruthers, a fellow boarder at Springfield’s Globe Tavern, in John E. Remsburg, Abraham Lincoln: Was He a Christian? (New York: Truth Seeker Company, 1893), 200.

  177. Bledsoe, review of Ward Hill Lamon’s biography of Lincoln, Southern Review 12 (Apr. 1873):354.

  178. Gillespie to Herndon, Edwardsville, 8 Dec. 1866, HI, 506.

  179. Illinois Gazette (Lacon), 15 Aug. 1846.

  180. Illinois State Register (Springfield), 7 Aug. 1846, 28 July 1848.

  181. Judge Samuel Treat, statement for Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 483.

  182. Israel W. Crosby to the voters of the Seventh Congressional District, Springfield, 11 January, Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 15 Jan. 1847.

  183. Lincoln to Speed, Springfield, 22 Oct. 1846, CWL, 1:391.

  184. Lincoln to Andrew Johnston, Tremont, 18 Apr. 1846, and Springfield, 25 Feb. 1847, CWL, 1:378, 392. The poems can be found ibid., 1:367–369, 378–379, 385–389.

  185. Lincoln to Andrew Johnston, Springfield, 25 Feb. 1847, CWL, 1:392.

  186. Lincoln to Andrew Johnson, Tremont, 18 Apr. 1846, CWL, 1:378.

  187. Ward Hill Lamon, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847–1865, ed. Dorothy Lamon Teillard (2nd ed.; Washington, DC: published by the author, 1911), 166.

  188. CWL, 1:367–368.

  189. Ibid., 1:1.

  190. Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndon’s Lincoln, 201–202.

  191. Elizabeth Crawford to Herndon, 21 Feb. 1866, HI, 215–216.

  192. Lamon, Reminiscences of Lincoln, 150.

  193. Francis B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln: The Story of Picture (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1866), 59.

  194. Benjamin Brown French, Witness to the Young Republic: A Yankee’s Journal, 1828–1870, ed. Donald B. Cole and John J. McDonough (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989), 532 (entry for 24 Feb. 1867).

  195. Howard K. Beale and Alan W. Brownsword, eds., Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson (3 vols.; New York: W. W. Norton, 1960), 2:26 (entry for 9 May 1864).

  196. CWL, 1:385–386.

  197. Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, 2 Jan. 1882, H-W MSS DLC.

  198. Reminiscences of William P. Wood, Washington Sunday Gazette, 16 Jan. 1887.

  199. CWL, 7:368.

  200. Ibid., 1:412.

  201. Speech at Chicago, 10 July 1858, CWL, 2:500, 493.

  202. New York Weekly Tribune, 17 July 1848.

  203. Pittsburgh Journal n.d., copied in the New York Tribune, 7 June 1860.

  204. Reminiscences of E. B. McCagg, Chicago Tribune, 12, February 1900.

  205. Missouri Daily Republican (St. Louis), 12 July 1847.

  206. Allen Thorndike Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (New York: North American Review, 1886), 16.

  207. Cincinnati Commercial, 17 Sept. 1859, in Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait, ed. Herbert Mitgang (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), 137.

  208. Springfield correspondence, 6 Nov., New York Tribune, 10 Nov. 1860.

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

  210. Letter from an unidentified “man of high position,” Springfield, 4 June 1860, New York Tribune, 11 June 1860.

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

  212. “Lincoln in Massachusetts,” unidentified clipping, LMF.

  213. Gibson William Harris, “My Recollections of Abraham Lincoln,” Woman’s Home Companion, Dec. 1903, p. 15.

  214. Lincoln to Herndon, Washington, 10 July 1848, CWL, 1:497.

  215. Robert H. Browne, Abraham Lincoln and the Men of His Time (2 vols.; Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye, 1901), 1:86.

  216. Janet Jennings in Abraham Lincoln, Tributes from His Associates: Reminiscences of Soldiers, Statesmen and Citizens, ed. William Hayes Ward (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1895), 237–238.

  217. Reminiscences of R. H. Osborne, “Lincoln with His People,” Lerna, Illinois, Weekly Eagle, Lincoln anniversary issue, Feb. 1928, broadside, William E. Barton Papers, uncatalogued addendum, box 7, folder 129, University of Chicago.

  218. E. J. Edwards, quoting the conductor, Gilbert Finch, then retired and living in Connecticut, New York Times, 24 Jan. 1909.

  219. “A Story of Long Ago,” The Sunday Sun (Matoon, Illinois), 24 Aug. 1884; Jesse W. Weik, “Lincoln and the Matson Negroes: A Vista into the Fugitive-Slave Days,” Arena 17 (Apr. 1897):753.

  220. Duncan T. McIntyre, “Matson Slave Trial,” Oakland (Illinois) Herald, 17 July 1896.

  221. Hiram Rutherford, On the Illinois Frontier; Dr. Hiram Rutherford, 1840–1848, ed. Willene and George Hendrick (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), 137; Hiram Rutherford, interview with Jesse W. Weik, Oakland, Illinois, [3?] Apr. 1892, Weik, Real Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 372.

  222. Orlando B. Ficklin, “Gen. Usher F. Linder,” Charleston, Illinois, Courier, 15 Jan. 1885, copied in the Tuscola, Illinois, Review, 7 Sept. 1922.

  223. Duncan T. McIntyre, “Lincoln and the Matson Slave Case,” Illinois Law Review 1 (1906–1907):390–391.

  224. Ficklin’s recollection, in Weik, “Lincoln and the Matson Negroes,” 757.

  225. Ficklin, “Gen. Usher F. Linder.”

  226. “In the Matter of Jane, a Woman of Color,” Western Law Journal 5:205–206, quoted in Mark E. Steiner, An Honest Calling: The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006), 121.

  227. S. S. Ball, Report on the Condition and Prospects of the Republic of Liberia; Made to the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Colored Baptist Association (Alton, IL: Telegraph Office, 1848), quoted in Paul M. Angle, “Aftermath of the Matson Slave Case,” Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 3 (1944):148.

  228. Albert A. Woldman, Lawyer Lincoln (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937), 56; John J. Duff, A. Lincoln: Prairie Lawyer (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Win
ston, 1960), 144; Paul M. Angle’s comment in his edition of Henry C. Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 315n4.

  229. George Sharswood, An Essay on Professional Ethics (2nd ed.; Philadelphia: Johnson, 1860), 27.

  230. David Dudley Field, “The Study and Practice of the Law,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 14 (1844):347.

  231. Reminiscences of George Edmunds, Chicago Journal, 12 Feb. 1909.

  232. David Davis to William P. Walker, 31 Dec. 1844, in Harry Edward Pratt, “David Davis, 1815–1886” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1930), 34.

  233. Davis to Lincoln, Bloomington, 21 Feb. 1849, AL MSS DLC.

  234. Davis, speech of 4 July 1881, quoted in Pratt, “David Davis,” 21.

  235. F. of Circleville, Ohio, “The Profession of the Law,” Western Law Journal 7 (1849):110, 111, 98, 103.

  236. John W. Bunn, statement for Jesse W. Weik, in Weik, Real Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 198.

  237. Katherine Helm, The True Story of Mary, Wife of Lincoln (New York: Harper, 1928), 101–102.

  238. Herndon to Jesse Weik, Springfield, 18 Feb. 1887, H-W MSS DLC.

  239. Herndon, “Analysis of the Character of Lincoln,” 417–418.

  240. Mary Todd Lincoln, interview with Herndon, [Sept. 1866], HI, 359.

  241. Reminiscences of Annie Lanphier Walters, Chicago Examiner, 13 Feb. 1909.

  242. Lincoln to Speed, Springfield, 18 May 1843, CWL, 1:325.

  243. Robert Smith Todd to Ninian W. Edwards, Lexington, 13 Mar. 1844, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 72 (1979):275.

  244. Todd to Ninian Edwards, Dec. 1844, quoted by Albert S. Edwards, nephew of Mary Todd Lincoln, in Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 118.

  245. William H. Townsend, Lincoln and the Bluegrass: Slavery and Civil War in Kentucky (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1955), 136–137.

  246. Emilie Todd Helm, in Helm, Mary, Wife of Lincoln, 101; William E. Barton, memorandum of a conversation with Emilie Todd Helm, 6 Mar. 1921, William H. Townsend Papers, University of Kentucky, Lexington.

  247. Townsend, Lincoln and the Bluegrass, 136.

  248. Lexington Observer & Reporter, 3 Nov. 1847, in Townsend, Lincoln and the Bluegrass, 129.

  249. Clay, speech in Lexington, 13 Nov. 1847, Robert Seager and James F. Hopkins, eds., The Papers of Henry Clay (10 vols.; Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1959–1991), 10:364, 370–371, 372.

  250. David Davis to his wife, Springfield, 8 Aug. 1847, David Davis Papers, ICHi.

  Chapter 8. “A Strong but Judicious Enemy to Slavery”

  1. Mrs. Winfield Scott, speaking in 1855, quoted in Marian Gouverneur, As I Remember: Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century (New York: D. Appleton, 1911), 170.

  2. Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, Travels in the United States, etc. during 1849 and 1850 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851), 83.

  3. Charles Dickens, American Notes (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1842), 44, 45.

  4. Anthony Trollope, North America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1862), 301–302.

  5. Alexander MacKay, The Western World, or, Travels in the United States in 1846–47 (3 vols.; London: Richard Bentley, 1850), 3:177.

  6. Adolphe Fourier de Bacourt to an unidentified correspondent, Washington, [July 1840], in Bacourt, Souvenirs of a Diplomat: Private Letters from America during the Administrations of Presidents Van Buren, Harrison, and Tyler (New York: Holt, 1885), 72.

  7. Washington correspondence by Ben: Perley Poore, 3 Mar., Boston Atlas, 10 Mar. 1848.

  8. Mark Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life (New York: Free Press, 2005), 67.

  9. Carl Schurz to his wife, Washington, 15 Mar. 1854, Frederic Bancroft, ed., Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz (6 vols.; New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1913), 1:9.

  10. Carl Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (3 vols.; New York: McClure, 1907–1908), 2:20.

  11. Mary Abigail Dodge to an unidentified correspondent, Washington, 14 Dec. 1858, in Dodge, Gail Hamilton’s Life in Letters (2 vols.; Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1901), 1:203.

  12. Samuel D. Boyd to “dear cousin,” Martinsburg, [Illinois], 8 Aug. 1849, IHi.

  13. Jesse W. Fell to Hester V. Fell, Washington, 27 June 1841, Fell Papers, DLC.

  14. Wade to his wife, Washington, 29 Dec. 1851, Wade Papers, DLC.

  15. Rufus Rockwell Wilson, Washington: The Capital City, and Its Part in the History of the Nation (2 vols.; Philadelphia; J. B. Lippincott, 1901), 2:66–67.

  16. Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood, An Epistle to Posterity, Being Rambling Recollections of Many Years of My Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1897), 48–49, 56.

  17. “Washington Life,” Washington News, 12 Apr. 1851.

  18. MacKay, Western World, 1:181, 179.

  19. T. D. Weld to Angelina G. Weld, Washington, 1, 2 Jan., 9 Feb. 1842, Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, eds., Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke, 1822–1844 (2 vols.; Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 1934), 2:883, 885, 914.

  20. Lincoln to Caleb B. Smith, Washington, 31 May 1861, 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), 4:391; Mary Lincoln to Caleb B. Smith, [Washington, 31 May 1861], Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 87.

  21. Theodore Dwight Weld to Angelina G. Weld, Washington, 27 Dec. 1842, Barnes and Dumond, eds., Letters of Weld, 2:947.

  22. Illinois State Register (Springfield), 21 Sept. 1855; Theodore Dwight Weld to Angelina Grimke Weld, Washington, 1 Jan. 1842, Barnes and Dumond, eds., Letters of Weld, 2:883; Benjamin Brown French, Witness to the Young Republic: A Yankee’s Journal, 1828–1870, ed. Donald B. Cole and John J. McDonough (Hanover, NH: University Press, of New England, 1989), 208 (entry for 21 Jan. 1849); Giddings to his son Addison, Washington, 27 Dec. 1840, quoted in Richard W. Solberg, “Joshua Giddings: Politician and Idealist” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1952), 149.

  23. Washington correspondence, 21 Feb., New York Tribune, 22 Feb. 1859.

  24. Samuel C. Busey, Personal Reminiscences and Recollections of Forty-Six Years’ Membership in the Medical Society of the District of Columbia, and Residence in This City (Washington, DC: Dornan, 1895), 26.

  25. Nathan Sargent, Public Men and Events in the United States from the Commencement of Mr. Monroe’s Administration in 1817 to the Close of Mr. Fillmore’s Administration in 1853 (2 vols.; Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1875), 2:331.

  26. James Pollock, “Lincoln & Douglas,” undated manuscript, Lincoln Papers, RPB.

  27. Giddings diary, 18 Jan. 1849, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.

  28. Busey, Reminiscences, 28, 25.

  29. Ben: Perely Poore in Allen Thorndike Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (New York: North American Review, 1888), 218.

  30. David Rankin Barbee to Stephen I. Gilchrist, Washington, n.d., copy, William H. Townsend Papers, University of Kentucky.

  31. Hampton to Lincoln, Pittsburgh, 30 Mar. 1849, AL MSS DLC.

  32. Letter by J. A., Washington, 30 May, Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 22 June 1848.

  33. Washington correspondence by X, 13 Dec., New York Tribune, 15 Dec. 1848.

  34. Elizabeth P. Peabody to Horace Mann, Jr. n.p., [mid-Feb. 1865], in Arlin Turner, ed., “Elizabeth Peabody Visits Lincoln, February 1865,” New England Quarterly 48 (1975):119.

  35. Charles H. Brainard, “Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln,” Youth’s Companion, 9 Dec. 1880, 435–436.

  36. John J. Hardin to [David Allen Smith], Washington, 23 Jan. 1844, Hardin Family Papers, ICHi.

  37. Dickens, American Notes, 63, 65.

  38. Horace Greeley to O. A. Bowe, Washington, 28 Feb. 1849, Greeley Papers, DLC.

  39. Horace Greeley, Washington correspondence, 12 Dec., New Yo
rk Tribune, 15 Dec. 1843.

  40. Lincoln to Mary Todd Lincoln, Washington, 16 Apr. 1848, CWL, 1:465.

  41. Giddings to Laura Waters Giddings, Washington, 18 June 1848, Giddings Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.

  42. Yates to Catherine Geers Yates, Washington, 2 Jan. 1854, Richard Yates and Catharine Yates Pickering, Richard Yates: Civil War Governor, ed. John H. Krenkel (Danville, IL: Interstate Printers, 1966), 90.

  43. John J. Hardin to [David Allen Smith], Washington, 12 Jan. 1844, Hardin Family Papers, ICHi.

  44. Congressional Globe, 30th Congress, 1st Session, 17 (9 Dec. 1847).

  45. William L. Goggin of Virginia, quoted in the New York Tribune, 4 Sept. 1860.

  46. Letter by Mrs. Herediah Horsford, [ca. December 1847?] in Paul Findley, A. Lincoln: The Crucible of Congress (New York: Crown, 1979), 97.

  47. Washington correspondence, n.d., Maysville, Kentucky, Eagle, n.d., copied in the Indiana State Journal (Indianapolis), weekly ed., 30 Apr. 1849.

  48. Horace Greeley, Washington correspondence, 12 Dec., New York Tribune, 15 Dec. 1843.

  49. Hugo Reid, Sketches in North America with Some Account of Congress and the Slavery Question (London: Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1861), 87.

  50. Artemas Hale to his wife, Washington, 6 Feb. 1848, Hale Papers, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan.

  51. John J. Hardin to Eliza Caldwell Browning, Washington, 26 Dec. 1843, Orville H. Browning Papers, IHi; Baker to an unidentified legal client, 9 Dec. 1845, quoted in Gayle Anderson Braden, “The Public Career of Edward Dickinson Baker” (Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1960), 100.

  52. Washington correspondence by T[homas] M. B[rewer], 8 Mar. [Apr.], Boston Atlas, 13 Apr. 1848.

  53. Amos Tuck, Autobiographical Memoir of Amos Tuck (n.p., 1902), 83–84.

  54. Lincoln to Herndon, Washington, 13 Dec. 1847, CWL, 1:420.

  55. The National Era (Washington), 3 Feb. 1848. House rules adopted in the early 1840s permitted speeches of no more than an hour’s length. Often members would write out their speeches, inserting into the Congressional Globe not only the words uttered on the floor but also the words they were unable to deliver because of time constraints. Remarks of Congressman James Pollock of Pennsylvania, Congressional Globe, 30th Congress, 1st Session, 44 (18 Dec. 1847).