21.William H. Herndon and Jesse William Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (Springfield, IL: Herndon’s Lincoln Publishing Co., 1888), 1:181.
22.Lincoln, Autobiography, June 1860.
23.Id.
24.Ron J. Keller, Lincoln in the Illinois Legislature (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2019), 19.
25.Id.
26.Id.
27.John G. Nocolay, conversation with Hon. J. T. Stuart, June 23, 1875, in Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Abraham Lincoln, 11.
28.John Todd Stuart, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, Illinois, June 23, 1875, in Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Abraham Lincoln, 11.
29.Id.
30.John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History (1914), 1:103.
31.Herndon and Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, 2:375.
32.The original source is Caroline Owsley Brown writing in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 15, no. 1 (1922): 490, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40186857.pdf.
33.This is from the Scripps autobiography that Lincoln prepared and was published first in the Chicago Press and Tribune in 1860 and then later issued by Horace Greeley as Tribune Tracts, no. 6.
34.Lincoln to Isham Reavis, November 5, 1855, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:328.
35.Conversation with Hon. J. K. Dubois in Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Abraham Lincoln, 30.
36.J. Rowan Herndon to Herndon, May 28, 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 7–8.
37.Blumenthal, A Self-Made Man, 1:91.
38.Lincoln gave this speech on June 20, 1848, to the U.S. House of Representatives.
39.Blumenthal, A Self-Made Man, 1:73.
40.Keller, Lincoln in the Illinois Legislature, 33.
41.Id. at 34.
42.Id. at 45.
43.Id.
44.Stephen A. Douglas, Letter to the Editor of the Illinois Patriot, March 8, 1837.
45.Robert L. Wilson to Herndon, February 10, 1866, in Herndon’s Informants, 204.
46.Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:120, fn. 209.
47.Lincoln: A Corporate Lawyer, 397.
48.Abraham Lincoln to William A. Minshall, December 7, 1837, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:107.
49.Kenneth J. Winkle, The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln (Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing/Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 164.
50.Lincoln speech in Chicago on October 27, 1854, as reported on October 30 in the Chicago Daily Journal.
51.Id.
52.Abraham Lincoln and Dan Stone, “Protest in Illinois Legislature on Slavery, March 3, 1837,” in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:74–75.
53.Address by Abraham Lincoln before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, as it appeared in the Sangamo Journal, February 3, 1838, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:108–15.
54.Id.
55.Id.
56.Id.
57.Id.
58.Id.
59.Id.
60.Id.
61.Id.
62.Id.
63.Id.
64.Id.
65.Id.
66.Id.
67.Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:151.
68.Abraham Lincoln, Speech on National Bank, December 20, 1839, in The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, 1:70.
69.Id. at 71.
70.Id. at 72.
71.Id. at 73.
72.Id.
73.George W. Smith, When Lincoln Came to Egypt (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), 51.
74.Id.
75.Hezekiah Morse Wead, Diary, July 15, 1847, in Herndon’s Informants.
76.Brian R. Dirck, Lincoln the Lawyer (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 25.
77.Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:184.
78.Sangamo Journal, April 13, 1843.
79.Id.
80.“Conversation with Hon. Stephen T. Logan,” in Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Abraham Lincoln, 38.
81.John G. Nicolay, conversation with Hon. Stephen T. Logan, Springfield, Illinois, July 6, 1875, in Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Abraham Lincoln, 37.
82.Id.
83.Id.
84.Id.
85.Usher F. Linder, Reminiscences of the Early Bench and Bar of Illinois (Chicago: Chicago Legal News Company, 1879), 155.
86.Reminiscences of R. R. Hitt, in Otis B. Goodall, “Hon. Robert Roberts Hitt,” Phonographic Magazine 7 (June 1, 1893): 206–7.
87.Illinois State Journal (Springfield), July 19, 1880.
88.Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:186.
89.Id.
90.McClernand was an Illinois Democratic legislative leader.
91.Howard Gillman et al., American Constitutionalism, vol. 1: Structures of Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), supplementary material, Field v. People of the State of Illinois, ex rel. McClernand, 3 Ill. 79 (1839).
92.Protest dated February 26, 1841, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:245–49.
93.Id. at 247.
94.Id. at 245–47.
95.Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:164.
96.Id.
97.Ivor D. Spencer, The Victor and the Spoils: A Life of William L. Marcy (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1959), 58–60.
98.Blumenthal, A Self-Made Man, 1:265.
99.Lost Townships (The Rebecca Letter), August 27, 1842, in The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, 1:163.
100.James Shields to Lincoln, September 17, 1842, in The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, 1:168.
101.Walter Barlow Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed. Michael Burlingame (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 16–18.
102.U.S. Constitution, Art. I, § 6, cl. 2.
103.Lincoln to John Todd Stuart, January 23, 1841, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:229.
104.Joshua F. Speed to Herndon, 1865–66, in Herndon’s Informants, 475.
105.Joshua F. Speed to Herndon, February 7, 1866, in Herndon’s Informants, 197.
106.Lincoln to Joshua F. Speed, July 4, 1842, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:289.
107.Herndon and Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, 1:513.
108.Conversation with Hon. O. H. Browning at Leland Hotel, Springfield, Illinois, June 17, 1875, in Oral History of Abraham Lincoln, 1–3; Herndon and Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, 1:229; and John Todd Stuart, interview with Herndon, in Herndon’s Informants, 64.
109.For an in-depth historical analysis of this theory, see Wayne Calhoun Temple, Abraham Lincoln: From Skeptic to Prophet (Mahomet, IL: Mayhaven Publishing, 1995).
110.Henry Clay Whitney, Life on the Sixth Circuit with Lincoln: With Sketches of Generals Grant, Sherman and McClellan, Judge Davis, Leonard Swett, and Other Contemporaries (1892), 460.
111.Edward Sylvester Ellis, The History of Our Country from the Discovery of America to the Present Time (1900), 782.
112.Daniel Webster, Andrew Jackson, in Andrew Sloan Draper, Draper’s Self Culture: Ideals of American History (1918), 135.
113.Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (G. Adlard, 1839), 1:412.
114.Id. at 262.
115.Robert V. Remini, “Texas Must be Ours,” American Heritage (February–March 1986): 37.
116.Id. at 38.
117.Henry Clay to the editors of the Washington Daily National Intelligencer, April 17, 1844, in The Papers of Henry Clay: The Rising Statesman, 1797–1814 (2015), 10:42.
118.Id. at 43–44.
119.Id. at 43.
120.Id.
121.Id. at 44.
122.Id. at 48.
123.Washington Globe, April 27, 1844.
124.Andrew Jackson to Francis Preston Blair, May 7, 1844, Manuscript/Mixed Material, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/maj017662/.
125.Andrew Jackson to Francis Preston Blair, March 10, 1845, Manuscript/Mixed Material, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/maj017996/.
126.See Eugene Irving McCormac, James K. Polk: A Political Biography (
1922), 590 n. 64.
127.Lincoln to Williamson Durley, October 3, 1845, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:347.
CHAPTER THREE: CLAY MAN IN THE HOUSE (1844–1850)
1.Robert Merry, A Country of Vast Designs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 131.
2.James J. Polk, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1845, via Avalon Project at Yale Law School.
3.Id.
4.Connecticut Herald 28, no. 41 (August 30, 1831).
5.James J. Polk, Inaugural Address.
6.Id.
7.Id.
8.Id.
9.Id.
10.Id.
11.Id.
12.Ron J. Keller, Lincoln in the Illinois Legislature (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2019), 108–9.
13.Id. at 109, quoting Douglas L. Wilson, Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Vintage, 1998), 210.
14.Joseph Gillespie to Herndon, January 31, 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), 181.
15.Ron Keller, Lincoln in the Illinois Legislature, 106, quoting Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (1900), 167.
16.Id., quoting Alton Telegraph, April 11, 1840.
17.Id., quoting Illinois State Register, October 16, 1840.
18.Id. at 108, quoting Ralph Gary, Following in Lincoln’s Footsteps: A Complete Annotated Reference to Hundreds of Historical Sites Visited by Abraham Lincoln (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2001), 13.
19.Lincoln to John Hardin, January 19, 1846, Springfield, Illinois.
20.Lincoln to John Hardin, February 7, 1846, Springfield, Illinois.
21.Id.
22.Abraham Lincoln, Handbill Replying to Charges of Infidelity, in Lincoln, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols., ed. Roy Basler et al. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), 1:383.
23.Sydney Blumenthal, A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016) 1:326–27; and Ida M. Tarbell, Abraham Lincoln and His Ancestors (1924), 270–71. I found a longer version of Lincoln’s reply that comes from the first Sandburg volume: Stephen Mansfield, Lincoln’s Battle with God: A President’s Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2012).
24.Published on July 7, 1847, in the New York Tribune; also in Blumenthal, A Self-Made Man, 1:336.
25.Blumenthal, A Self-Made Man, 1:342, citing the website for Ashland, Henry Clay’s estate.
26.Id., citing Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesmen of the Union (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 692–94.
27.Id. at 343.
28.Market speech, November 13, 1847.
29.Id.
30.Id.
31.Id.
32.Id.
33.Id.
34.Id.
35.Blumenthal, A Self-Made Man, 1:334.
36.Id.
37.Charles Dickens, American Notes (London: Hazell, Watson and Viney, 1932), 97.
38.Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, vol. 1 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 258, quoting Alexander MacKay, The Western World, or, Travels in the United States in 1846–47, 3 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1850), 3:177.
39.Chris DeRose, Congressman Lincoln: The Making of America’s Greatest President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 76.
40.Abraham Lincoln to Mary Todd Lincoln, April 16, 1848, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:465.
41.Id.
42.Interview with Orlando Ficklin, The Classmate: A Paper for Young People (Cincinnati), February 6, 1926.
43.Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois, October 16, 1854, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:252.
44.Speech of the Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, February 12, 1878, in Richard Malcolm Johnston and William Hand Browne, Life of Alexander H. Stephens (1883), 624.
45.Abraham Lincoln to William H. Herndon, February 2, 1848, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:448.
46.Congressional Globe, 30th Congress, 1st Session, Appendix, 163 (February 2, 1848).
47.Abraham Lincoln to William Herndon, January 8, 1848, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:430.
48.Abraham Lincoln, Remarks in the United States House of Representatives Concerning Postal Contracts, January 5, 1848, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:426, from Congressional Globe, 30th Congress, 1st Session, January 5, 1848.
49.Samuel C. Busey, Personal Reminiscences and Recollections of Forty-Six Years in the Medical Society of the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C., 1895), 25.
50.Congressional Globe, 30th Congress, 1st Session, 64 (1847).
51.Congressional Globe, 30th Congress, 1st Session, 95 (1848).
52.Abraham Lincoln, Speech in United States House of Representatives: The War with Mexico, January 12, 1848, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:432.
53.Henry Clay, The Works of Henry Clay, ed. Calvin Colton (1904), 67.
54.Id. at 68.
55.Abraham Lincoln, Speech in United States House of Representatives: The War with Mexico, January 12, 1848, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:433–38.
56.Id. at 432.
57.Id. at 433.
58.Id.
59.Id. at 440.
60.Id.
61.Id.
62.Abraham Lincoln to William H. Herndon, January 8, 1848, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:431.
63.Id. at 437.
64.Id. at 438.
65.Abraham Lincoln, Speech to the United States House of Representatives: The War with Mexico, January 12, 1848, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:438–39.
66.Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:267.
67.Osborn H. Oldroyd, ed., The Lincoln Memorial: Album-Immortelles (1882), 241.
68.Id.
69.Kenneth J. Winkle, Lincoln’s Citadel (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013), 252.
70.Id. at 35.
71.Id. at 48.
72.Id. at 47.
73.Id. at 59.
74.Id. at 42.
75.Speech by James Singleton in Jacksonville in 1858, quoted in the Lincoln Illinois correspondence, June 4, 1860, Missouri Republican (St. Louis), June 7, 1860, and in the Jacksonville correspondence, n.d., Missouri Republican (St. Louis), n.d., copied in the Illinois State Register (Springfield), September 24, 1858.
76.Caleb B. Smith to Allen Hamilton, February 15, 1848, Hamilton Papers; Thomas M. Brewer to William Schouler, March 28, 1848, Schouler Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society; and Mangum to William Graham, January 23, 1848, The Papers of Willie Person Mangum, ed. Henry Thomas Shanks (1956), 5:92–96.
77.Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:275.
78.Abraham Lincoln, Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, Marion Mills Miller, ed. (1907), 3:156.
79.Abraham Lincoln, Speech in United States House of Representatives on the Presidential Question, July 27, 1848, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:504.
80.Id. at 505.
81.Richard Carwardine, Lincoln’s Sense of Humor (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017), 24.
82.Id.
83.Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:502.
84.Id. at 509–10.
85.Id. at 514.
86.Id.
87.Abraham Lincoln to William H. Herndon, June 22, 1848, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:491.
88.Id. at 492.
89.Francis B. Carpenter, “A Day with Governor Seward at Auburn,” July 1870, Seward Papers, University of Rochester.
90.Frederick W. Seward, Seward at Washington as Senator and Secretary of State: A Memoir of His Life, with Selections from His Letters (1891), 1:80.
91.A Sketch of the Life and Character of Gen. Taylor (1847), 11–12.
92.Id.
93.Id. at 34–35.
94.Abraham Lincoln to William H. Herndon, January 8, 1848, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:430–31.
95.Abraham Lincoln to Davis, February 12, 1849, in Roy P. Basler, ed., Coll
ected Works of Abraham Lincoln: Supplement 1832–1864 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974), 14.
96.Abraham Lincoln to Mary Todd Lincoln, April 16, 1848, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:465–66.
97.Mary Todd Lincoln to Abraham Lincoln, May 1848.
98.Abraham Lincoln to William B. Warren and others, April 7, 1849, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:41.
99.Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:297, quoting Abraham Lincoln to William B. Warren and others, April 7, 1849, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:41.
100.Abraham Lincoln to Josiah M. Lucas, April 25, 1849, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:43.
101.Id.
102.Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:300.
103.Abraham Lincoln to Josiah M. Lucas, April 25, 1849, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:43.
104.Abraham Lincoln to Elisha Embree, May 25, 1849, in Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:51.
105.Thomas F. Schwartz, “An Egregious Political Blunder: Justin Butterfield, Lincoln, and Illinois Whiggery,” Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association 8 (1986), 15, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20148848?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents.
106.Abraham Lincoln to David Davis, July 6, 1849, in Lincoln, Collected Works, First Supplement, 16.
107.Kenneth J. Winkle, The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln (Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing/Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 248.
CHAPTER FOUR: LEARNING FROM FAILURE (1849–1856)
1.William Herndon, Herndon on Lincoln: Letters, ed. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis (Galesburg, IL: Knox College Lincoln Studies Center, 2016), 102.
2.David H. Donald, We Are Lincoln Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 96.
3.Id. at 28.
4.Id.
5.Leonard Swett to Herndon, January 17, 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), 168.
6.Donald, We Are Lincoln Men, 76.
7.John T. Stuart to Herndon, late June 1865, in Herndon’s Informants, 63.
8.David Davis to Herndon, September 19–20, 1866, in Herndon’s Informants, 346, 348.
9.Elizabeth Todd Edwards to Herndon, 1865–1866, in Herndon’s Informants, 443.
10.Kenneth J. Winkle, The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln (Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing/Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 229.
11.Gustave Koerner, Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, ed. Thomas J. McCormack (Cedar Rapids, IA: Torch Press, 1909), 2:112, accessed via HathiTrust.
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