Lincoln's Mentors

by Michael J. Gerhardt

  President Donald Trump elevated, as Lincoln did, a portrait of Andrew Jackson as a symbol of the toughness a president requires, and he has repeatedly likened his presidency to that of Lincoln’s. On May 3, 2020, in the midst of the nation’s struggling with the deaths and economic destruction wrought by a pandemic, Trump convened a virtual town hall at the Lincoln Memorial in the hopes of showing solidarity with America’s greatest president. Faced with the fallout, protests, and violence spurred by George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, President Trump continued comparing himself to Lincoln, complaining that he was being “treated worse” than Lincoln ever was. Lincoln never lived to see the Union made whole, but making it whole was his last wish, “to cherish,” as he said in his second inaugural, “a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

  All presidents look to Lincoln as their metric. They claim Lincoln’s project as their own, hope to be associated with his achievements, and aspire to connect their stories with his. He has become a mentor to them all.

  Acknowledgments

  Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War have been with me since the beginning. I spent my first eighteen years living in Mobile, Alabama, where I read or heard about them often. My father and mother stressed the importance of education above all, and they instilled within me a love of learning. My father, born and raised in Alabama, shared with me and my brothers, Doug and Jim, his many books on the life of Lincoln and the battles of the Civil War. He loved taking us to the battlefields. I will never forget marveling at how small the battlefield was at Gettysburg. At school, I frequently heard about the “War Between the States,” the “Lost Cause,” and states’ rights as the main objective of the war. The textbooks I read taught me much about Lincoln’s rise to power and the war but little about Reconstruction.

  In college, my eyes widened as I learned more about Lincoln, the war, and its aftermath. C. Vann Woodward and Skip Gates taught me about the frustrations of Reconstruction, Edmund Morgan about the founding, and Rollin Osterweis about the oratory of both Clay and Lincoln. Robin Winks and I talked at length about our shared love of detective fiction, and his belief that historians are really detectives solving past mysteries has had a profound influence on my reading and writing as a legal academic for the past thirty years.

  Many people have helped me in trying to find a solution to the intriguing mystery about how Lincoln became Lincoln. The University of North Carolina Law School has supported me throughout this project. The law library at the UNC Law School, led by Anne Klinefelter, has been a great help throughout the writing of and research for this book. Research librarians Melissa Hyland and Nick Sexton have been invaluable resources. For several years, Nick patiently fielded my questions about Lincoln documentation, which he thoroughly addressed at every step along the way to completion of this book. I am grateful for enormously helpful assistance from UNC law students Anna Conaway, Rob Harrington, Tanner Caplan, Joseph Wakeford, and the indefatigable Hailey Klabo. I am especially grateful to Alex Grosskurth of UNC Law School and Michael Christ of the University of Chicago Law School for their meticulous review of the manuscript.

  Several libraries have been hospitable homes when I have visited them for research. My son Noah and I visited the Lincoln Library in Springfield, Illinois, and resident historians Ian Hunt, Christian McWhirter, Christian Schnell, and Samuel Wheeler could not have been more helpful. Noah and I toured not just the library but the town of Springfield. We visited Lincoln’s grave and traced the Blairs and the Dred Scott case in St. Louis. Characteristically, Noah asked terrific questions everywhere we went, and patiently scoured the secondary literature for this project. He is our resident Lincoln scholar.

  I spent days wading through the papers of the Blair family and Albert Beveridge at the Library of Congress. And the Yale library, which I loved as a student, welcomed me back with its friendly assistance on several lines of inquiries. I had fruitful conversations with many historians on this project. For their helpful feedback, I thank Mary Sarah Bilder, David Blight, Douglas Brinkley, Thavolia Glymph, Harold Holzer, and Robert Strauss. I cannot thank UNC historians Mike Morgan, Harry Watson, and Molly Worthen enough for their patience and insights in fielding my many questions about studying and writing about Lincoln. I am grateful, too, to John Meko, executive director of the Foundations of the Union League, and his wonderful team, for welcoming me into the Union League and sharing its rich archives, history, and remarkable artifacts and paintings with me. I could not cite all the archives and works I consulted throughout the writing of this book, but I am grateful to those who have collected and edited the corpus of Lincoln and of the papers of each of the people who were in his ambit and are mentioned herein.

  And there are some people I must thank because I could not have completed this book without them. Bob Strauss introduced me to my agent, Jane Dystel. Jane’s support, advice, patience, and confidence in this project have been invaluable and heartening. I am also grateful to her colleague Miriam Goderich and Geoff Shandler for their guidance and counsel. My colleague John Orth, my friend Jeff Rosen, and my wife, Deborah, carefully read through every word of the manuscript, for which I am eternally grateful. Our entire family—Deborah and our sons, Ben, Daniel, and Noah—stood by me and the idea of this book throughout its completion; they were patient, thoughtful sounding boards every day of this project. Peter Hubbard, Molly Gendell, and the wonderful team at Custom House have all worked tirelessly to make this a better work, though I alone am responsible for any errors.

  I had hoped I could share the finished product with my mother, whose love, unyielding support, and patience have brought me to this point in my life. She died weeks before I finished the book but not before telling me (as she did every time I spoke with her) how much she adored and respected my wife, Deborah, and our three sons. (We had that and many other things in common.) Truly, these two women have made me the man I am today. I had hoped to see my mother’s eyes light up when I gave her a signed copy of this book. She was the archivist and memory of our family’s history, and I would have loved for her to see how I used what she taught me. Instead, I have dedicated this book to her, my very first mentor, whose lessons on the importance of family, stories, and memory are imprinted on our hearts and souls forever.

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION: THE SEARCH FOR LINCOLN’S TEACHERS

  1.September 30, 1859, address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee Wisconsin, Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Society, 1859, Lincoln Fellowship of Wisconsin Madison (1943).

  CHAPTER ONE: FINDING HIS MENTORS (1809–1834)

  1.Abraham Lincoln, Autobiography, December 20, 1859, in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols., ed. Roy Basler et al. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955).

  2.Nathaniel Grigsby, interview with Herndon, September 12, 1865, in William Henry Herndon and Jesse William Weik, Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements About Abraham Lincoln, ed. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 113.

  3.Dennis F. Hanks, interview with Herndon, June 13, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 37.

  4.Id.

  5.David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 30.

  6.Id.

  7.Id. (different page).

  8.Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, vol. 1 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 25.

  9.Louis A. Warren, Lincoln’s Youth: Indiana Years, 1816–1830 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1959), 69.

  10.Kenneth J. Winkle, Abraham and Mary Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011), 14.

  11.Id.

  12.Id.

  13.Sarah Bush Johnson, interview with Herndon, September 8, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants.

  14.Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years (one-volume edition) (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954), 13.

&n
bsp; 15.Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:34.

  16.Donald, Lincoln.

  17.Sandburg, The Prairie Years, 71.

  18.Written to Jesse W. Fell on December 20, 1859, as an autobiographical sketch.

  19.Lincoln, Autobiography, June 1860.

  20.Sarah Bush Johnson, interview with Herndon, September 8, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants.

  21.Dennis Hanks to Herndon, June 13, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants.

  22.Id.

  23.Matilda Johnston Moore to Herndon, September 8, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 109.

  24.Id.

  25.Dennis Hanks to Herndon, September 8, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 106.

  26.Sarah Bush Lincoln to Herndon, September 8, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 107.

  27.Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:39.

  28.John Langdon Kaine, “Lincoln as a Boy Knew Him,” Century Magazine 85 (February 1913): 557; and Reply to loyal colored people of Baltimore upon presentation of a Bible, September 7, 1864, Lincoln, Collected Works, 7:542.

  29.William E. Barton, The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (George H. Doran Co., 1920), 47.

  30.Walter Barlow Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed. Michael Burlingame (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 61.

  31.Owen T. Reeves, Abraham Lincoln by Some Men Who Knew Him (Pantagraph Printing & Stationery Co., 1910), 21.

  32.Mason Locke Weems, A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington (1809), 8.

  33.Id. at 41, 129, 176, 179, 181, 186, 191.

  34.Abraham Lincoln, Address to the New Jersey State Senate, Trenton, New Jersey, February 21, 1861.

  35.William H. Herndon, Herndon’s Lincoln (Herndon’s Lincoln Pub. Co., 1888), 437.

  36.Id.

  37.Douglas L. Wilson, “Lincoln’s Rhetoric,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 34, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 1–17.

  38.Grimshaw’s History of the United States (1820).

  39.Abraham Lincoln, Speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, October 16, 1856.

  40.Abraham Lincoln, Peoria Speech, October 16, 1854.

  41.Dennis Hanks to Herndon, June 13, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 37.

  42.Richard Carwardine, Lincoln’s Sense of Humor (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017), 9.

  43.John L. Scripps to Herndon, June 24, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 57.

  44.Joseph C. Richardson to Herndon, September 14, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 120.

  45.Doris Kearns Goodwin, A Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 51.

  46.Sidney Blumenthal, A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 1 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), 36, originally Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1:86; and Whitney, Life of Lincoln, 1:48.

  47.Whitney, Life of Lincoln, 1:48.

  48.Originally in Herndon’s Informants, 58, 114–15.

  49.Dennis Hanks, interview with Herndon, June 13, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 41.

  50.Id.

  51.Id.

  52.Blumenthal, “Self-Made Man at 37” (originally in Herndon’s Informants, 127, 132).

  53.Blumenthal, “Self-Made Man at 46” (originally in Herndon’s Informants, at 355, 374, 457.

  54.Id.

  55.Herndon, Herndon’s Lincoln, 2:57.

  56.Herndon interview, September 8, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 103, 105.

  57.Harry L. Watson, Andrew Jackson v. Henry Clay: Democracy and Development in Antebellum America (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1998), 23–55.

  58.Henry Clay to B. B. Minor, May 3, 1851.

  59.U.S. Senate, Art & History, “Blount Expulsion,” https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/expulsion_cases/Blount_expulsion.htm.

  60.Henry Clay, Letter to Dr. R. Pindell, October 15, 1828, The Private Correspondence of Henry Clay, ed. Calvin Colton (1855), 207.

  61.Aaron Burr to Henry Clay, November 27, 1806, The Papers of Henry Clay: The Rising Statesman, 1797–1814 (2015), 1:256.

  62.Aaron Burr to Henry Clay, December 1, 1806, Papers of Henry Clay, 1:256–57.

  63.Defense of Aaron Burr, December 2, 1806; Defense of Aaron Burr, December 3, 1806, Papers of Henry Clay, 1:257–59.

  64.Henry Clay to Col. Thomas Hart, February 1, 1807, Papers of Henry Clay, 1:273.

  65.Dr. Anthony Hunn’s Reply to “Regulus,” June 7, 1808, Papers of Henry Clay, 1:338.

  66.Andrew Jackson, The Papers of Andrew Jackson: 1821–1824, ed. Harold D. Moser et al. (1980), xiii–xiv.

  67.John H. Eaton, The Life of Andrew Jackson (1817).

  68.Henry Clay, “On American Industry,” Speech before the House of Representatives, March 30 and 31, 1824, reprinted in The Speeches of Henry Clay: Delivered in the Congress of the United States, 268.

  69.Id. at 283.

  70.Donald, Lincoln, 110.

  71.Richard R. Stenberg, “Jackson, Buchanan, and the ‘Corrupt Bargain’ Calumny,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 58, no. 1 (1934): 61–85, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20086857.

  72.For a broader discussion of Jackson’s influence on modern campaigning, see Lynn Hudson Parsons, The Birth of Modern Politics: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Election of 1828 (Oxford University Press, 2009).

  73.Andrew Jackson, Veto Message Regarding Funding of Infrastructure Development, May 27, 1830, Miller Center, University of Virginia, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/may-27-1830-veto-message-regarding-funding-infrastructure.

  74.Id.

  75.Id.

  76.George Denison Prentice, Biography of Henry Clay, vol. 9 (1831).

  77.Dennis Hanks, interview with Herndon, June 13, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 41.

  78.Robert L. Wilson to Herndon, February 10, 1866, in Herndon’s Informants, 201.

  79.Mentor Graham to Herndon, May 29, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 8–9.

  80.Royal Clary, interview with Herndon, [likely October 1866], Herndon’s Informants, 370.

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

  82.Graham to Herndon (interview), Petersburg, Illinois, May 29, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 10.

  83.Id.

  84.Kunigunde Duncan and D. F. Nickols, Mentor Graham: The Man Who Taught Lincoln (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), 132.

  85.J. Rowan Herndon to Herndon, May 28, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 9.

  86.Hardin Bale to Herndon, 1866, in Herndon’s Informants, 528.

  87.Caleb Carman to Herndon, October 12, 1866, in Herndon’s Informants, 374.

  88.Lincoln, Collected Works, vol. 8, January 25, 1865.

  89.N. W. Branson to William Henry Herndon, August 3, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 90.

  90.Kenneth J. Winkle, The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln (Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing/Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 70.

  91.Id.

  92.T. G. Onstot, Pioneers of Menard and Mason County (1902), 70.

  93.Abner Y. Ellis to Herndon, Letter 173.

  94.Abner Y. Ellis to William Herndon, December 6, 1866, in Herndon’s Informants, 502.

  95.Lincoln, Autobiography, December 20, 1859.

  96.Id., June 1860.

  97.Id., December 20, 1859.

  98.Edward J. Kempf, Abraham Lincoln’s Philosophy of Common Sense: An Analytical Biography of a Great Mind (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1965), 1:171.

  99.John Todd Stuart, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], in Herndon’s Informants, 481.

  100.John Todd Stuart, interview with John G. Nicolay, June 23, 1875, in Michael Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006), 8–9.

  101.Id. at 9.

  CHAPTER TWO: FINDING THE PATH TO CONGRESS (1834–1844)

  1.Henry Clay, “The American System,” Speech
made in U.S. Senate, February 2, 3, and 6, 1832.

  2.Abraham Lincoln, Address to the People of Sangamon County, Mar. 9, 1832, http://history.furman.edu/benson/fywbio/LincolnSangamon_1832.htm.

  3.Id.

  4.Id.

  5.George D. Prentice, Biography of Henry Clay (1831), 25.

  6.Id. at 25–26.

  7.Abraham Lincoln, First Political Announcement, New Salem, Illinois, March 9, 1832.

  8.Id.

  9.Abraham Lincoln, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols., ed. Roy Basler et al. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), 1:5.

  10.Id. at 5–7.

  11.Id. at 8.

  12.Id.

  13.Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, vol. 1 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 73; and Abner Ellis to Herndon, January 1866, in William Henry Herndon and Jesse William Weik, Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements About Abraham Lincoln, ed. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 171.

  14.S. T. Logan interview with John G. Nicolay, July 6, 1875, in Michael Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006), 35.

  15.President Jackson’s Proclamation Regarding Nullification, December 10, 1832.

  16.Sydney Blumenthal, A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), 1:61.

  17.John Todd Stuart, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, Illinois, June 23, 1875, in Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Abraham Lincoln, 11.

  18.Id. at 10.

  19.Lincoln, Autobiography, June 1860, in Lincoln, Collected Works.

  20.John Todd Stuart, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, Illinois, June 23, 1875, in Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Abraham Lincoln, 10.