The best regarded of the literary psychobiographies, Lincoln’s Quest for Union by Charles Strozier, distinguished itself by finding evidence of the Oedipus complex in Lincoln, hidden in plain sight. In one of his brief memoirs, Lincoln had described (in the third person) how he once shot a wild turkey when his father was away from the farm, but never after “pulled a trigger on any larger game.” In Lincoln’s sketch, this passage was followed by a report of the death of Lincoln’s mother—which juxtaposition Strozier found highly significant. Lincoln, he argued, felt guilty about shooting the turkey, a “symbolic way of communicating unconscious feelings” of guilt over his mother’s death, for which “he felt somehow responsible.” Strozier went on: “Lincoln wished his father away because he wanted to possess the mother. He could only realize the wish, however, by appropriating the magical power of the father’s gun as he struggled to beat out his father in competition for the mother. At some point, he must have felt victorious in that struggle, but the gun he appropriated proved more deadly than anticipated, for with it he killed the helpless turkey . . . In the confusion of mourning his mother’s death, Lincoln thus seemed to construct an unconscious explanation for her loss that ‘explained’ her death in terms of punishment for his own earlier forbidden sexual wishes. As punishment for his love, she died.” Strozier had worked wonders, fitting Lincoln’s life into Freud’s model for the origin of melancholia, when repressed feelings in the wake of a loved one’s death prevent healthy mourning.
Though historians argued fiercely about these works, the methods of psychobiography—the liberal use of Freudian jargon, the casual assignment of formal diagnoses, and the imputation of specific meanings to ambiguous episodes—became widespread in history and journalism. The basic assumption of psychotherapy, that the adult personality is rooted in childhood trauma, became conventional wisdom. Meanwhile, historians viewed the private lives of public figures in new ways. Richard Nixon’s presidency, as David Greenberg has shown in Nixon’s Shadow, was a turning point, as Nixon convinced many reasonable people that the mental life of an elected official was relevant to a study of his leadership. After that, little was out of bounds.
It’s not coincidental that a new attitude toward the private lives of public figures coincided with a new era in psychology. With a huge increase in psychiatric diagnoses, the advent of blockbuster drugs, and the mainstreaming of psychotherapy, new interest emerged in the depression of historic figures. References to Lincoln’s depression became common. On February 12, 1998, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration issued a press release saying that from the time he was a teenager, Abraham Lincoln “lived with what today some people think might have been depression and bipolar disorder.” This heavily qualified sentence was followed by the claim that “Abraham Lincoln is an inspiration to everyone who is living with depression and/or bipolar disorder.” Dozens of newspapers picked up the story. “Depression Hounded Abe,” ran the headline in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The Albany Times Union asked, “Is Honest Abe to be remembered now as Moody Abe?” In June 1999, in the first-ever White House Conference on Mental Health, Donna Shalala, the secretary of health and human services, began by quoting Lincoln, “a man known to have suffered bouts of depression.” That fall, a full-page ad in Behavioral Health Management—part of a public service campaign sponsored by Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac—showed a picture of Lincoln standing next to a height chart, drawn over with prison bars. “There are some people who think those with mental illness should be locked up and kept from society,” the ad reads. “Obviously, there is a flaw in that thinking.”
As the environment became suited for an open treatment of Lincoln’s depression, the material with which to do so came back into view. The rebirth of oral history played a large role. The Work Projects Administration’s interviews with African Americans in the 1920s and 1930s proved a prize cache of material. In the 1960s, a graduate of the WPA’s Federal Writers’ Project, Studs Terkel, started to collect his interviews with ordinary people into books. The resurgence of the field was marked by the founding, in 1966, of the Oral History Association, which celebrates “the oldest type of historical inquiry, predating the written word, and one of the most modern, initiated with tape recorders in the 1940s and now using 21st-century digital technologies.”
This set the stage for the fourth major period in Lincoln studies. In the 1980s, a number of scholars began, without each other’s knowledge, to reconsider oral histories of Lincoln in general, and the evidence of Herndon’s informants in particular. One was Douglas Wilson, a professor of English at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. A scholar of Thomas Jefferson’s literary career, Wilson decided in early 1988 to write an essay comparing Jefferson’s reading (which was famously voracious) with Abraham Lincoln’s (famously selective). Seeking primary sources on Lincoln’s reading, Wilson soon discovered that one of the few people who had investigated the subject firsthand was William Henry Herndon. He learned that Herndon’s original “Lincoln Record”—now called the Herndon-Weik Collection at the Library of Congress—was available, albeit in a microfilm version of Herndon’s original handwritten scratchings, plus the letters Herndon received from his correspondents. Wilson requested the fifteen reels of microfilm by interlibrary loan and began to read through them on his old plastic microfilm machine.
Like all good scholars of his era, Wilson knew, as he recalls, “that the Ann Rutledge story was a myth, that some people still believed it, but that it wasn’t true.” Over four months, he read all the original letters and interviews. He remembers saying to himself, “What’s wrong with this? I don’t see what’s wrong with this.” When he finished, he went to J. G. Randall’s Lincoln the President, David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln’s Herndon, and Ruth Painter Randall’s Mary Todd Lincoln. “Their arguments just weren’t convincing—not to someone who had just read the original material,” Wilson says. “And I could see at a glance how biased Mrs. Randall was and how selectively she used her evidence against Herndon. The same was true of Donald when he treated the Herndon records.” Wilson discussed his work with Rodney Davis, a historian at Knox College and an authority on early-nineteenth-century Illinois. Wilson proposed that they collaborate on a project to annotate and publish the Herndon records. Davis was at first skeptical. “I was trained to think of reminiscence as nuclear waste,” he says. “It was the kind of thing that you didn’t pay close attention to. But then Doug got into the Ann Rutledge business, and I must say I was overwhelmed with the weight of the testimony.”
That same year, 1988, John Y. Simon, a Civil War historian and the editor of the Ulysse S. Grant papers, gave a lecture on the Ann Rutledge story at a Lincoln conference. His idea had been to review the legend that had been properly cast out of the canon. But he had the same experience as Wilson, and his paper—the first one to publicly question the Randalls’ treatment of Ann Rutledge—created a sensation. Meanwhile, a historian at Connecticut College named Michael Burlingame had dug deep into not only Herndon’s interviews but a vast array of long-neglected primary sources on Lincoln’s character, relationships, and psychological experience. Burlingame, too, had been educated with a dim view of Herndon’s material. “But when I examined the records for myself, I saw: these aren’t the unreliable memories of old codgers drooling on their walkers and making up stories.” Rather, Burlingame approached each interview and each memory as a separate historical resource with its own mix of problems and merits. His 1994 book, The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln, included much new evidence.
Burlingame has now edited and brought out ten volumes of primary material, including the never before published interviews conducted by Lincoln’s White House secretary John G. Nicolay for a biography. (He has more source material ready for publication but has suspended work while he finishes a multivolume, cradle-to-grave biography of Lincoln.) In 1998, Rodney Davis and Douglas Wilson brought out Herndon’s Informants: Interviews, Letters, and Statements on Abraham Lincoln. This is
an edited and carefully annotated volume of Herndon’s original “Lincoln Record,” which is now understood to be one of the first oral history projects, if not the first. The same year, Wilson’s Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln offered a thorough treatment of Lincoln’s life from 1831 to 1842, drawing on the Herndon records and other material.
As it happened, just as Herndon’s Informants and Honor’s Voice were being published, I ran across a reference to Lincoln’s melancholy in On Suicide: Great Writers on the Ultimate Question. The book contained an excerpt from the sociologist Harold Kushner’s work on suicide, Self-Destruction in the Promised Land. In the excerpt, Kushner considered the cases of two historical figures who were suicidal. Meriwether Lewis almost certainly did kill himself. Lincoln considered self-destruction but, Kushner argued, employed adaptive mechanisms that turned the episode into an instrument of growth.
I was amazed by the story. I wondered why I hadn’t heard about it before, and if it meant that fresh work could be done on the subject. I assumed the answer would be no, but I put the question to Lincoln scholars. I wrote first to David Herbert Donald, whose prize-winning Lincoln was my introduction to the subject. Donald replied with an encouraging note, the first of many welcoming gestures from the giants on whose shoulders I clambered. Andrew Delbanco, the editor of The Portable Lincoln, invited me to a series of lectures, “The Anatomy of American Melancholy” (now published as The Real American Dream), which opened my eyes to the literary and intellectual culture of the nineteenth century. John Sellers, the curator of Lincoln material at the Library of Congress, gave me a beginner’s reading list and invited me to an annual symposium sponsored by the Lincoln Association of the Mid-Atlantic (now the Abraham Lincoln Institute). There, on March 28, 1998, I heard lectures by Burlingame and Wilson, both of whom addressed new findings of primary material by and about Lincoln; by Thomas Lowry, a retired psychiatrist, who with his wife, Beverly Lowry, had recently uncovered hundreds of previously unknown documents in Lincoln’s hand in the National Archives; and by Cullum Davis, editor of the Lincoln Legal Papers, a monumental effort to publish 100,000 primary documents on Lincoln’s legal career on CD-ROM.
I see now that I stumbled upon Lincoln’s melancholy at the precise moment when my interest could be pursued. The combination of newly discovered material and old material made easily accessible in edited and annotated volumes has been a boon to the field. The past seven years has also seen a massive body of material posted online, including The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln and the Lincoln papers at the Library of Congress, in which much of his incoming correspondence can be found, in addition to originals of many of his major works. With these advantages, conditions are as conducive as ever for building a study on the foundation of primary sources. Works on Lincoln in recent years bear the mark of increased appreciation for the firsthand observations of his life. At the same time, we’ve seen an increase in narrowly focused studies, some of which pluck out bits and pieces from the Lincoln record to assemble a cartoon portrait of modern fantasies.
While this study proceeds from a modern interest and sensibility, my purpose has been to understand as clearly as possible the way Lincoln lived, suffered, and grew. Whenever possible, in the source notes that follow I have referred to the letters, interviews, and sketches that draw out the words of people who knew Lincoln, who felt his presence in a room, and who saw the flash of his blue-gray eyes.
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS
Names
AL: Abraham Lincoln
WHH: William Henry Herndon
Books
CWL: Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 9 vols.
Day by Day: Earl Schenck Miers, ed., Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology, 1809–1865. 3 vols.
Herndon’s Informants: Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney Davis, eds., Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln.
Herndon’s Lincoln: William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life. 3 vols.
Hidden Lincoln: Emanuel Hertz, ed., The Hidden Lincoln: From the Letters and Papers of William H. Herndon.
Intimate Memories: Rufus Rockwell Wilson, ed., Intimate Memories of Lincoln.
Lincoln among His Friends: Rufus Rockwell Wilson, ed., Lincoln among His Friends: A Sheaf of Intimate Memories.
Lincoln Observed: Michael Burlingame, ed., Lincoln Observed: The Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks.
Lincoln Papers: David C. Mearns, ed., The Lincoln Papers. 2 vols.
MTL, Life and Letters: Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters.
An Oral History: Michael Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays.
Recollected Words: Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, eds., Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln: Allen Thorndike Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time.
Manuscript Collections
Barton Papers: William E. Barton Papers, University of Chicago
Davis Papers: David Davis Papers, Illinois State Historical Library
Hardin Papers: Hardin Family Papers, Chicago Historical Society
Herndon-Weik Ms.: William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik Manuscripts, Library of Congress
Holland Papers: Josiah G. Holland Papers, New York Public Library
Randall Papers: James G. and Ruth Painter Randall Papers, Library of Congress
Tarbell Papers: Ida B. Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College
Institutions
ISHL: Illinois State Historical Library (now the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library)
LSC: Lincoln Studies Center, Knox College
Full bibliographical information is given on the first reference; subsequently, last names and abbreviated titles are used. Full citations for most sources can be found in the Bibliography, excluding newspapers. Primary sources are identified where possible. Where titles or dates are given for published letters or interviews, they follow the form in the particular publication. For example, Lincoln’s letters and speeches follow the titles and dates used in the Collected Works.
In a work of this sort, based on research from diverse sources and accumulated over many years, facts may have been omitted and errors committed. Amplifications or corrections of textual or source material will be gratefully received, included in future editions, and posted at www.lincolnsmelancholy.net/errata.html. Send e-mails to [email protected].
INTRODUCTION
[>] In early May 1860: Details of the wigwam and convention are drawn from Wayne C. Temple, “Lincoln’s Fence Rails,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 47 (Spring 1954): 20–34; Richard J. Oglesby, statement to J. McCan Davis, Lincoln among His Friends, 191–94 (originally published as “Origin of the Lincoln Rail as Related by Governor Oglesby,” Century Magazine, June 1900, 271–75); Jane Martin Johns, Personal Recollections of Early Decatur, Abraham Lincoln, Richard J. Oglesby, and the Civil War (Decatur, Ill.: Decatur Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1912), 79–82; William E. Baringer, Lincolns Rise to Power (Boston: Little, Brown, 1937), 180–86; and Johnson to WHH, 1865–66, Herndon’s Informants, 462.
“to tease expectation”: Johnson to WHH, 1865–66, Herndon’s Informants, 462.
Lincoln was crouched: ibid.
“aroused me again”: AL to Jesse W. Fell, enclosing autobiography, December 20, 1859,
CWL, vol. 3, 512.
[>] “the most convincing”: Robert S. Harper, Lincoln and the Press (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951), 46–47.
lifted him up on their shoulders: Johnson to WHH, 1865–66, Herndon’s Informants, 463.
failed to rate a mention: James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 219.
“I am not in a position”: AL to Norman B. Judd, February 9, 1860, CWL
, vol. 3, 517. managing the convention: Oglesby headed up the committee to provide the convention meeting place. Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power, 181, citing Chicago Press & Tribune, April 23, 1860.
Oglesby had decided: Johns, Personal Recollections of Early Decatur, 80. John Hanks claimed that he came up with the idea. John Hanks to Illinois State Chronicle, reprinted in the Cincinnati Rail Splitter, August 15, 1860.
[>] “Lincoln’s name”: Lincoln among His Friends, 186.
“I then thought him”: Johnson to WHH, 1865–66, Herndon’s Informants, 463.
[>] “I’m not very well”: Milton H. Shutes, Lincoln and the Doctors: A Medical Narrative of the Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Pioneer Press, 1933), 74.
“No element”: Henry C. Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln (Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1892), 139.
“His melancholy dripped”: Herndon’s Lincoln, vol. 3, 588.
“There can be no new”: Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 97, citing Noah Brooks, “The Final Estimate of Lincoln,” New York Times, February 12,1898.
Lincoln once noted: AL, “Second Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions,” February 11, 1859, CWL, vol. 3, 362.
[>] “What happens over and over”: J. G. Randall, Lincoln the President, 2 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1945), vol. 1, viii.
[>] “like nuclear waste”: Michael Burlingame, The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), xxv.
“Evidence is then unearthed”: Randall, Lincoln the President, vol. 1, viii.
[>] “Ridiculous”: Ruth Painter Randall, draft ms., Randall Papers.
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