Lincoln's Melancholy

by Joshua Wolf Shenk

  7. THE VENTS OF MY MOODS AND GLOOM

  [>] the “blue mass”: Lincoln took “Blue pills—blue Mass when he had a sick head ache,” a symptom linked to melancholia. Ward Hill Lamon, interview with WHH, 1865–66, Herndon’s Informants, 466. There is a big story behind Lincoln’s use of this little pill. Today depression is considered a “biological brain disease,” but the blue mass aimed squarely at the guts, which a long medical tradition identified as the locus of emotional and behavioral health. Indeed, accounts of Lincoln blend reports of his constipation and his melancholy. Lamon, for example, said that when Lincoln had no “passages,” he got his sick headaches. John T. Stuart attributed Lincoln’s blues to the fact that his liver didn’t function properly. “It did not secrete bile,” he told Jesse W. Weik, “and his bowels were equally inactive. It was this that made him look so sad and depressed. That was my notion, and I remember I talked to him about it and advised him to resort to blue-mass pills which he did. This was before he went to Washington. When I came on to Congress in 1863, he told me that for a few months after his inauguration as President he continued the pill remedy, but he was finally forced to cease because it was losing its efficacy besides making him more or less irritable.” Weik, The Real Lincoln, 112.

  James Whorton, in Inner Hygiene: Constipation and the Pursuit of Health in Modern Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), explains that laxatives were also early antidepressants. While humoral theory has lost currency, and modern psychiatry focuses on the brain, recent research on the enteric nervous system—the “brain in the gut”—has given new credibility, and complexity, to old linkages between digestion and mood. See Michael Gershon, The Second Brain: The Scientific Basis of Gut Instinct and a Groundbreaking New Understanding of Nervous Disorders of the Stomach and Intestines (New York: HarperCollins, 1998).

  These small round pills: Details on the blue mass and the physiology of mercury are drawn from Norbert Hirschhorn, Robert G. Feldman, and Ian A. Greaves, “Abraham Lincoln’s Blue Pills: Did Our Sixteenth President Suffer from Mercury Poisoning?” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 44, no. 3 (Summer 2001): 315–22, and from Norbert Hirschhorn, interviews with author, September 22, 1999, and June 3, 2002. Hirschhorn argues that mercury poisoning affected Lincoln’s mood and performance.

  “drank his dram”: Nathaniel Grigsby, interview with WHH, September 12, 1865, Herndon’s Informants, 112.

  Corneau and Diller drugstore: The extant records of Lincoln’s charge account were assembled by James T. Hickey and published in The Collected Writings of James T. Hickey (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Society, 1984), 220–26.

  In 1899, when Merck: The list of treatments also includes several kinds of acids, alcohol, arsenic, belladonna, caffeine, camphor, cannabis, chloral hydrate (“as hypnotic”), cocaine, galvanism (i.e., therapeutic application of direct-current electricity), ignatia, morphine, musk, nitrous oxide, opium (“especially useful”), phosphorus, thyraden, Turkish baths, valerian, and zinc phosphide. Merck’s 1899 Manual of the Materia Medica: Together with a Summary of the Therapeutic Indications and a Classification of Medicaments (New York: Merck & Co., 1899; reprint, 1999), 145–46.

  The list also included chloroform, which, according to the physician and Lincoln biographer Milton Shutes, Lincoln used. Shutes recounts that, as president, Lincoln once went to see a dentist to have a tooth pulled. As the doctor adjusted his forceps around the tooth, Lincoln said, “Just a minute, please!” To the dentist’s surprise, he reached into his pocket for a small bottle of chloroform, took a few deep inhalations, and gave the signal to go ahead. Milton Shutes, Lincoln and the Doctors: A Medical Narrative of the Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Pioneer Press, 1933), 88.

  And all medicines: For a glimpse of the pharmaceutical market in Lincoln’s time, see James Harvey Young, “Marketing of Patent Medicines in Lincoln’s Springfield,” Pharmacy in History 27, no. 2 (1985): 98–102.

  [>] “You flaxen men”: Recollected Words, 186.

  “Your distemper must be rooted”: John Charles Bucknill and Daniel H. Tuke, A Manual of Psychological Medicine (New York: Hafner, 1968; orig. 1858), 155. For other versions of this story, see The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 8 (London, 1884), 174, and Cohen, Out of the Blue, 152–53.

  modern research: See Robert Provine, Laughter (New York: Viking, 2000), 189–207.

  “The exploration of medicinal mirth,” writes Provine, “begins with the description of laughter’s physiological profile . . . Laughter is the kind of powerful, bodywide act that really shakes up our physiology, a fact that has motivated speculations about its medicinal and exercise benefits since antiquity. During vigorous laughter, we take a deep breath, throw back our head, stretch the muscles of our face, jaw, throat, diaphragm, chest, abdomen, neck, back, and sometimes the limbs, and exhale in explosive, chopped ‘ha-ha-ha’s. When our breath is exhausted, we often take another deep breath and start the cycle all over again.” Research by William Fry has shown that for elevating heart rate, one minute of vigorous laughter is the equivalent of ten minutes on a rowing machine. In a simple sense, then, as Provine writes, “laughter may provide a gentle form of aerobic exercise.” There is also a connection between humor and one’s ability to manage stress. “The health-sustaining factor,” Provine writes, “may not be laughter itself but how laughter and humor are used to confront life’s challenges.” In one study, subjects best able to describe a bloody film in a humorous way also reported the least stress in their lives. In another study, subjects were shown a film of grisly industrial accidents, then told to narrate it using either a humorous or a serious style. The humor group had lower negative affect and tension. “To be effective,” Provine notes, “the humorous narrative need not be funny; it’s sufficient for the subjects simply to give it a try.” Perhaps the most powerful research concerns the analgesic, or pain-reducing, effect of humor. Several studies have found, for example, that people can withstand higher degrees of pain when they are being simultaneously amused.

  [>] The fact that people laugh: ibid., 201.

  And it flowers in groups: ibid., 25, 45.

  “The core of all humor”: Glenn Collins, “Toonology: Scientists Try to Find Out What’s So Funny about Humor,” New York Times, September 28, 2004.

  In a study of professional: Rhoda L. Fisher and Seymour Fisher, Pretend the World Is Funny and Forever: A Psychological Analysis of Comedians, Clowns, and Actors (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1981).

  at a house-raising: Dennis F. Hanks, interview with WHH, June 13, 1865, Herndon’s Informants, 42.

  the “country boys”: Joseph Gillespie to WHH, January 31, 1866, Herndon’s Informants, 182.

  [>] “Well, it may come pretty hard”: My language here closely follows Benjamin P. Thomas, “Lincoln’s Humor: An Analysis,” in Michael Burlingame, ed., “Lincoln’s Humor” and Other Essays (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 3–22, 7.

  “Thomas Lincoln . . . could beat”: Dennis Hanks, June 13, 1865, Herndon’s Informants, 37. In a campaign biography, which Lincoln read and corrected, he let stand the assertion that “from his father came that knack of story-telling, which has made him so delightful among acquaintances, and so irresistible in his stump and forensic drolleries.” W. D. Howells, Life of Abraham Lincoln (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960; orig. 1860), 20.

  a region known for conspicuous talent: Joseph Gillespie to WHH, December 8, 1866, Herndon’s Informants, 508.

  Though he was saturated: Thomas, “Lincoln’s Humor,” 16.

  “dirty and smutty”: H. E. Dummer, interview with WHH, 1865–66, Herndon’s Informants, 443.

  “I can contribute nothing”: Ward Hill Lamon, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Dorothy Lamon Teillard (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 16–17.

  [>] “Do you remember the story”: Moses Hampton to AL, March 30, 1849, Lincoln Papers, vol. 1, 169.

  “It was the wit he was after”: Thomas, �
�Lincoln’s Humor,” 13.

  “Fun and gravity”: Abner Y. Ellis to WHH, c. January 1866, Herndon’s Informants, 161.

  “The ground work”: John M. Scott to WHH, February 2, 1866, Herndon’s Informants, 193.

  “has the same effect on me”: Recollected Words, 437–38.

  “If it were not for these stories”: WHH to Jesse W. Weik, November 17, 1885, Hidden Lincoln, 104.

  [>] “in which every one present”: Robert L. Wilson to WHH, February 10, 1866, Herndon’s Informants, 202, 205.

  “Gloom and sadness”: WHH to Truman H. Bartlett, February 27, 1891, transcript by LSC, Truman Bartlett Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  “in special times”: Ward Hill Lamon, interview with WHH, 1865–66, Herndon’s Informants, 466.

  “It was wit & joke”: David Davis, interview with WHH, September 20, 1866, Herndon’s Informants, 350–51.

  “all at once burst out”: Frances Todd Wallace, interview with WHH, 1865–66, Herndon’s Informants, 485–86.

  “His mirth to me”: John M. Scott to WHH, February 2, 1866, Herndon’s Informants, 193.

  [>] Lincoln once told: Recollected Words, 81.

  “A central theme”: Fisher and Fisher, Pretend the World Is Funny and Forever, 48. Jackie Mason’s first career: ibid., 63–64.

  In court once: Thomas W. S. Kidd, address before the Bar Association of Sangamon County, April 25, 1903, Intimate Memories, 90.

  [>] He would go to his room: John T. Stuart, interview with WHH, December 20, 1866, Herndon’s Informants, 519.

  “repeated it over and over”: ibid.

  “Some of Shakespeare ‘splays”: AL to James H. Hackett, August 17, 1863, CWL, vol. 6, 392.

  In the fall of 1849: This story is drawn from W. J. Anderson, “Reminiscence of Abraham Lincoln,” February 18, 1921, ms., Chicago Historical Society. As a boy, Anderson was a music student of Lois E. Hillis, née Newhall.

  [>] Then, in 1845: Lincoln wrote of the poem, “I met it in a straggling form in a newspaper last summer, and I remember to have seen it once before, about fifteen years ago, and this is all I know about it.” AL to Andrew Johnston, April 18, 1846, CWL, vol. 1, 378. Maurice Boyd, William Knox and Abraham Lincoln: The Story of a Poetic Legacy (Denver: Sage Books, 1966), supposes that the newspaper was the Louisville Evening Post, citing Lincoln Lore, April 5, 1937.

  [>] “Beyond all question”: AL to Andrew Johnston, April 18, 1846, CWL, vol. 1,378.

  When he was president. Boyd, William Knox and Abraham Lincoln, xviii, citing James Grant Wilson, “Recollections of Lincoln,” Putnam’s Magazine, February 1909, 525. Knox died of a paralytic stroke on November 12, 1825, at thirty-six. Boyd, xxxiv.

  Compare Ecclesiastes 1:9: These texts are from ibid., viii.

  The last two verses: Lawrence Weldon, draft for speech, August 1, 1865, Herndon’s Informants, 89.

  Then, with his other hand: The text of Knox’s poem here is reproduced from the copy Lincoln presented to Lois Newhall. Boyd, William Knox and Abraham Lincoln.

  [>] “a reflex in poetic form”: Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, 213.

  “The music of Lincoln’s thought”: David J. Harkness and R. Gerald McMurtry, Lincoln’s Favorite Poets (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1959), 42.

  “For pure pathos”: Carpenter, The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln, 58.

  The one sustained effort For details of this trip, see Day by Day, vol. 1, 238.

  “Thinking I might aid”: AL to Andrew Johnston, April 18, 1846, CWL, vol. 1, 378.

  “That part of the country”: AL to Andrew Johnston, February 24, 1846, CWL, vol. 1, 367.

  [>] “If I read a book”: Emily Dickinson to T. W. Higginson, August 16, 1870, in Thomas H. Johnson, ed., The Letters of Emily Dickinson, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1958), vol. 2, 473–74.

  “My childhood’s home”: The text of Lincoln’s poems is reproduced from CWL, vol. 1, 367–70, 378–79, and 385–86. The poems were published in the Quincy Whig, May 5, 1847, with the two cantos collected as “The Return,” with the subtitles “Part I—Reflection” and “Part II—The Maniac.” AL to Andrew Johnston, February 25, 1847, CWL, vol. 1, 392n.3.

  Yet the typical course: A piece found in the Holland Papers, presumably written by Josiah G. Holland, begins:

  My early home! Fond memory loves

  To linger by thy hallowed shrine,

  Where joys that only childhood knows,

  Life’s brightest, gayest joys were mine.

  The poem meditates on the loss of “friends of my early days” and includes the image of a “lonely tomb” and a “shadowy past.” But at the end, the poem resolves that these influences “shall cheer me to my latest day . . . Andeachintruding fear allay.”

  [>] “the perceptions were sometimes”: Joseph Gillespie to WHH, January 31, 1866, Herndon’s Informants, 185.

  “The very spot”: “This stanza, apparently written for this letter only, does not appear in the manuscript containing both cantos.” CWL, vol. 1, 386n.5.

  [>] “I fear I shall meet”: WHH to Jesse W. Weik, February 6, 1887, Hidden Lincoln, 167.

  8. ITS PRECISE SHAPE AND COLOR

  [>] “What man actually needs”: Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 127.

  [>] “Lincoln was speculating”: WHH to Ward Hill Lamon, March 6, 1870, transcription by LSC.

  “Slavery is founded”: AL, “Speech at Peoria, Illinois,” October 16, 1854, CWL, vol. 2, 255.

  [>] the United States elbowed: The Gadsden Purchase in the early 1850s, by which the nation acquired additional land in present-day New Mexico and Arizona, brought America to its present borders, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.

  [>] “acts of aggression and encroachment”: John C. Calhoun, “The Southern Address,” in Richard K. Crallé, ed., The Works of John C. Calhoun, 6 vols. (Columbia, S.C.: A. S. Johnston, 1851), vol. 6, 290–313.

  The old lion: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 70–71.

  This prompted Harriet Beecher Stowe: James M. McPherson, introduction to Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (New York: Library of America, 1991; orig. 1852), xi.

  “We went to bed one night”: Albert J. Von Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns: Freedom and Slavery in Emerson’s Boston (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 207.

  “became the hallmark”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 76.

  “both injustice and bad policy”: AL and Dan Stone, “Protest in Illinois Legislature on Slavery,” CWL, vol. 1, 75.

  “evil”: AL to Williamson Durley, October 3, 1845, CWL, vol. 1, 347.

  “the one great question”: Discussing the political consequences of President Taylor’s death, Lincoln said, “I fear that the one great question of the day, is not so likely to be partially acquiesced in by the different sections of the Union, as it would have been, could Gen. Taylor have been spared to us.” This refers to the debate over the Compromise of 1850, which centered on slavery. AL, “Eulogy on Zachary Taylor,” July 25, 1850, CWL, vol. 2, 89.

  [>] “raise a hell of a storm”: Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, vol. 2, 182n.2, citing a conversation between Douglas and Kentucky senator Archibald Dixon.

  “[Douglas] took us by surprise”: AL, “Speech at Peoria, Illinois,” October 16, 1854, CWL, vol. 2, 282.

  [>] “safety valve”: Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 27.

  In part because: Beveridge (Abraham Lincoln, vol. 2, 67) writes, “When Lincoln came home after his first session in Congress, scarcely a town or hamlet in Illinois but was sending men and families to join the long caravans plodding across the plains toward the sunset.” As the Quincy Whig reported on February 19, 1850: “The fever is extending and increasing . . . affecting all classes . . . young men, middle-aged and old alike.”

  “If we do not exclude”: Foner, Free Soil, 57.

  Lincoln’s own Illinois: The constitution was
approved by the voters in March 1848. Kathryn M. Harris, “Generations of Pride: African American Timeline,” www.illinois history.gov/lib/GenPrideAfAm.htm, March 26, 2005.

  The state’s “black laws”: James M. McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and Acted During the War for the Union (New York: Pantheon, 1965), 7, citing Liberator, July 13, 1860.

  On his train ride home: Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977; orig. 1973), 451.

  [>] “It is estimated”: Details of Springfield during the fair week are drawn from the Illinois State Journal, October 1–6, 1854.

  a number of other prominent: Herndon’s Lincoln, vol. 2, 371.

  “It was a marked face”: Horace White, “Abraham Lincoln in 1854,” Putnam’s Magazine, March 1909, 724.

  [>] “You know I am never sanguine”: AL to John T. Stuart, January 20, 1840, CWL, vol. 1, 184.

  “The most trying thing”: Noah Brooks, “The Military Prospect,” June 14, 1864 (published in the Sacramento Daily Union, July 9, 1864), Lincoln Observed, 113.

  “ornamented with beauty”: Herndon’s Lincoln, vol. 3, 591.

  [>] “learned helplessness”: Learned helplessness theory originated with research by the psychologist Martin Seligman in the late 1960s and is described in his book Helplessness: On Depression, Development, and Death (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1975). In Seligman’s experiments, dogs given shocks were found to “give up” and accept further painful stimuli, even when they had a means of escaping them. This led to the idea that depression comes about when people who had been subject to painful early experiences give up, physically and emotionally, expecting pain or dismay even when they have the opportunity to alleviate it. An interesting footnote to this experiment is that five percent of the dogs passively accepted shock without having been put through the original trauma.

  “depressive realism”: Details of this experiment are drawn largely from L. B. Alloy and L. Y. Abramson, “Judgment of Contingency in Depressed and Nondepressed Students: Sadder but Wiser?” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 108, no. 4 (December 1979): 441–85. For a summary, see L. B. Alloy, “Depressive Realism: Sadder but Wiser?” Harvard Mental Health Letter 11 (1995): 4–5.