[>] “This had never happened before”:Gary Hart, Right from the Start: A Chronicle of the McGovern Campaign (New York: Quadrangle, 1973), 255; for the Eagleton affair, 25594. See also Gordon L. Weil, The Long Shot: George McGovern Runs for President (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), and Haynes Johnson’s series in the Washington Post, December 3–6, 1972.
When Congress was considering: David Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 263–64.
“Consulting a psychiatrist”: ibid.
“technical terms”: Hart, Right from the Start, 253.
“psychosis”: The 1968 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defined psychosis as any break with reality, including illogical thinking of the sort common in depression.
what sank him: Eagleton’s electroshock had a conspicuous role in the press coverage of his revelations. The New York Times headline on July 26, 1972, read: “Eagleton Tells of Shock Therapy on Two Occasions.”
“is continuing to feed”: Jill Lawrence, “As Dean Forges Ahead, His Temperament Gets Closer Look,” USA Today, November 12, 2003.
[>] Even as we practically drown: Personal traits of political candidates have always been relevant, but the modern focus on “character” has taken a bizarre turn, beginning with the presidency of Richard Nixon. “The term itself,” writes David Greenberg, “previously referred to a vast range of attributes desirable in a leader: courage, generosity, honesty, decency. Now, the word, as it got thrown about, took on a meaning that was at once both more narrow (in that it focused on the skeletons in one’s closet) and more broad (in that it failed to distinguish between trivial and potentially dangerous shortcomings).” Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow, 265. As Greenberg points out, one big factor driving the change has been the nuclear threat. Before 1945, the president had serious responsibilities, but ones befitting someone with human strengths and weaknesses. In the nuclear age, the president became the man with his finger on the nuclear button, who in a moment could destroy the world. “sometimes must have”: Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” in Bob Dylan, Lyrics 1962–1985 (New York: Knopf, 1992), 177.
“passing easily from grave to gay”: Typescript of newspaper clipping, February 11, 1860, Jesse W. Fell Papers, Illinois Historical Survey. Written by Joseph J. Lewis, this piece was widely reprinted and became the basis for the first three Lincoln campaign biographies in book form. Harold K. Sage, “Jesse W. Fell and the Lincoln Autobiography,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 3 (1981), http://jala.press.uiuc.edu/3/sage.html, March 31, 2005.
“placed him under guard”: John Hill, “A Romance of Reality,” Menard Axis, February 15, 1862, Herndon’s Informants, 25. Hill was a political opponent of Lincoln’s, which makes his conclusion all the more striking.
“Many of Lincoln’s advisors”: Donald, Lincoln, 242. Donald is the source for the quotes from Knapp (citing “Praise for the ‘Most Available Candidate,’” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 71 [February 1978], 72), and Davis (citing Davis to John Wentworth, September 25, 1859, David Davis Papers, ISHL).
[>] The convention site: “The Republican Convention of 1860,” Chicago History 5, no. 11 (Spring 1960): 321–22.
he had locked up: Guelzo, Redeemer President, 243.
as Lincoln’s manager: Leonard Swett, “David Davis,” address to the Bar Association of Illinois, copy in Chicago Historical Society, 15–16. “It is my belief,” Swett wrote, “if all the other causes had existed as they did exist, and Judge Davis had not lived, Mr. Lincoln would not have been nominated “
“Things are working”: telegrams in the Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress.
[>] To prevail in November: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 188.
“no nervousness”: Charles S. Zane, “Lincoln As I Knew Him,” Sunset, October 1912, 438.
“I think the chances”: AL to Anson G. Henry, July 4, 1860, CWL, vol. 4, 82.
[>] “careworn”: Henry Villard, Lincoln on the Eve of ‘61, edited by Harold G. and Oswald Garrison Villard (New York: Knopf, 1941), 76.
“in good spirits”: Charles M. Segal, ed., Conversations with Lincoln (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1961), 38. Weed’s piece, originally published in the New York Times, February 14, 1932, was written in 1882, apparently from detailed notes made at the time of his interview with Lincoln.
“Let there be”: AL to Lyman Trumbull, December 10, 1860, CWL, vol. 4, 149–50. “If there is no struggle”: Frederick Douglass, “West India Emancipation,” August 3, 1857, in Robert James Branham and Phillip S. Foner, eds., Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787–1900 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998), 310, citing Two Speeches by Frederick Douglass, One on West India Emancipation . . . and the Other on the Dred Scott Decision . . . (Rochester, 1857).
If the losers: “No popular government,” Lincoln said, “can long survive a marked precedent, that those who carry an election, can only save the government from immediate destruction, by giving up the main point, upon which the people gave the election.” AL, “Message to Congress in Special Session,” July 4, 1861, CWL, vol. 4, 440.
[>] “We must settle this question”: 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, 1999), 20.
“Mediocre presidents”: Matthew Pinsker, interview with author, April 18, 2005.
“notions of freedom”: Horace Greeley, The American Conflict A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860–64, 2 vols. (Chicago: O. D. Case, 1866), vol. 1, 368.
“The present administration”: Joseph Gillespie, “A Period of Troubled Waiting for Mr. Buchanan’s Successor,” Intimate Memories, 333. This recollection of Gillespie’s, based on notes of a visit with Lincoln in January 1861, was first published in the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette in 1888.
On February 11, 1861: Sources for the departure scene include Villard, Lincoln on the Eve of 61, 71; Illinois State Journal, February 12, 1861; Victor Searcher, The Farewell to Lincoln (New York: Abingdon Press, 1965), 1, 6; and Weik, The Real Lincoln, 306–12.
[>] “My friends”: AL, “Farewell Address at Springfield, Illinois, A. Version,” February 11, 1861, CWL, vol. 4, 190.
“one term in the lower house”: AL, “Brief Autobiography,” June 15?, 1858, CWL, vol. 2, 459.
He’d had barely a year: AL, “Autobiography Written for John L. Scripps,” c. June 1860, CWL, vol. 4, 62.
“a plain working man”: Stowe, “Abraham Lincoln,” 283.
“The President-elect”: Paul Revere Frothingham, Edward Everett, Orator and Statesman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), 414.
“He was tall and ungainly”: Henry Watterson, “When Douglas Held Lincoln’s Hat,” Lincoln among His Friends, 286.
[>] “A husband and wife”: AL, “First Inaugural Address—Final Text,” March 4, 1861, CWL, vol. 4, 262–70.
“In your hands”: AL, “First Inaugural Address—First Edition and Revisions,” March 4, 1861, CWL, vol. 4, 261.
written out his suggestion: ibid., 261–62n.99.
[>] “were so great”: Helen Nicolay, “Characteristic Anecdotes of Lincoln,” Century Magazine, August 1912, 699. Nicolay cites a letter from John G. Nicolay, dated July 3, 1861, which refers to a conversation between AL and O. H. Browning.
“the dumps,” “keeled over”: Sam Ward to S.L.M. Barlow, March 31, 1861, in Samuel L. M. Barlow Papers, Huntington Library. Ward, a Washington power broker, wrote: “‘Abe’ is getting heartily sick of ‘the situation’—It is hard for the Captain of a new Steamer to ‘work his passage.’ On Friday he confessed to a friend of mine that he was in ‘the dumps’ & yesterday Mrs Lincoln told Russell that her husband had keeled over with sick headache for the first time in years.” “Sick headache” likely referred to mental trouble.
“found the duty”: AL, “Message to Congress in Special Session,” July 4, 1861,
CWL, vol. 4, 440.
called for 75,000 volunteers: AL, “Proclamation Calling Militia and Convening Congress,” April 15, 1861, CWL, vol. 4, 332.
More than 620,000: This figure includes 360,000 Yankees and at least 260,000 Rebels. Notes James M. McPherson, “The number of southern civilians who died as a direct or indirect result of the war cannot be known; what can be said is that the Civil War’s cost in American lives was as great as in all of the nation’s other wars combined through Vietnam.” Battle Cry of Freedom, 854.
With a spyglass: Donald, Lincoln, 306.
[>] Elmer Ellsworth: See Ruth Painter Randall, Colonel Elmer Ellsworth: A Biography of Lincoln’s Friend and First Hero of the Civil War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960).
“Excuse me, but I cannot talk”: New York Herald, May 25, 1861.
“open souled”: Mentor Graham, interview with WHH, May 29, 1865, Herndon’s Informants, 11.
[>] Lincoln called for the enlistment: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 348.
“A kind of shiver”: ibid., 362.
“with bowed head”: Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, 172–74.
Baker’s death smote: Noah Brooks, “Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, July 1865, 228.
probably typhoid: Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln, 208–9.
[>] Elizabeth Keckly: Though her book says “Keckley,” she signed her name “Keckly.” Fleischner, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly, 7.
“It is hard”: Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988; orig. 1868), 103. “He had a Sad Nature”: LeGrand B. Cannon to WHH, October 7, 1889, Herndon’s Informants, 679.
“look of depression”: Edward Dicey, Spectator of America, edited by Herbert Mitgang (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1971.; orig. Six Months in the Federal States [London: Macmillan, 1863], 90–92.
“sense enough to perceive”: ibid., 91.
[>] hang himself from a tree: Robert L. Wilson to WHH, February 10, 1866, Herndon’s Informants, 206–7. Wilson is the same man to whom Lincoln confessed, in his late twenties, that he wouldn’t carry a pocket knife for fear he might use it to kill himself. “I expect to maintain”: AL to William H. Seward, June 28, 1862, CWL, vol. 5, 292.
“The scenes on this field”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 413. “Shiloh,” McPherson writes, “launched the country onto the floodtide of total war.”
A compact, red-headed: Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, 284–85.
[>] “I was as nearly”: Recollected Words, 137, citing Henry C. Deming, Eulogy of Abraham Lincoln (Hartford, Conn.: A. N. Clark, 1865).
“were it not”: AL to William H. Seward, June 28, 1862, CWL, vol. 5, 292.
“idiot,” “baboon”: These and the other insults are in McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 364.
“I am thwarted and deceived”: ibid., 359.
“Perhaps McClellan’s career”: ibid.
Suspicious of her: Fleischner, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly, 209.
a term coined: Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln, 180.
But she quickly showed: R. Gerald McMurtry and Mark E. Neely, The Insanity File: The Case of Mary Todd Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993), 5.
“that he was constantly”: O. H. Browning, interview with John G. Nicolay, June 17, 1875, An Oral History, 3.
[>] “paroxysms of convulsive weeping”: Randall, Mary Lincoln, 260.
“Mother, do you see”: Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 104. On another occasion, Lincoln told William S. Wood, the commissioner of public buildings, that “the caprices of Mrs. Lincoln, I am satisfied, are the result of partial insanity.” Wood said Lincoln “exhibited more feeling than I had believed he possessed” and pronounced his wife ill. “Is the malady beyond medical remedy to check,” he asked, “before it becomes fully developed?” Michael Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000) , 203, citing Washington Sunday Gazette, January 16, 1887.
“It was brought to him”: Browning described this scene in two sources, which are combined here. The first sentence of the quotation is drawn from O. H. Browning, interview with John G. Nicolay, June 17, 1875, An Oral History, 3. The second sentence, beginning “I remained with” is from Browning, The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, edited by Theodore Calvin Pease and J. G. Randall, 2 vols. (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1925–33), vol. 1, 542–43.
His favorites included: In 1862, Artemus Ward, His Book included the dispatch “How Old Abe Received the News of His Nomination.” “There are several reports afloat,” it begins, “as to how ‘Honest Old Abe’ received the news of his nomination, none of which are correct. We give the correct report.”
The Official Committee arrived in Springfield at dewy eve, and went to Honest Old Abe’s house. Honest Old Abe was not in. Mrs. Honest Old Abe said Honest Old Abe was out in the woods splitting rails. So the Official Committee went out into the woods, where sure enough they found Honest Old Abe splitting rails with his two boys. It was a grand, a magnificent spectacle. There stood Honest Old Abe in his shirtsleeves, a pair of leather homemade suspenders holding up a pair of homemade pantaloons, the seat of which was neatly patched with substantial cloth of a different color. “Mr. Lincoln, Sir, you’ve been nominated, Sir, for the highest office, Sir—.” “Oh, don’t bother me,” said Honest Old Abe; “I took a stent this mornin’ to split three million rails afore night, and I don’t want to be pestered with no stuff about no Conventions till I get my stent done. I’ve only got two hundreds thousand rails to split before sundown. I kin do it if you’ll let me alone.”. . . In a few moments Honest Old Abe finished his task, and received the news with perfect self-possession. He then asked them up to the house, where he received them cordially. He said he split three million rails every day, although he was in very poor health.
“He offended many”: Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, 447–48.
[>] “Ashley, I have”: Recollected Words, 19, citing James M. Ashley, Reminiscences of the Great Rebellion: Calhoun, Seward, and Lincoln (n.p., 1890).
“If I listen”: Speed, Reminiscences, 30.
“sicker n your man”: Thomas, “Lincoln’s Humor,” 15.
“I think Jefferson Davis”: Clifton Fadiman, ed., The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), 358.
Lincoln said: Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Theologian of American Anguish (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 7.
“If we use defenses well”: George E. Vaillant, The Wisdom of the Ego (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 11.
[>] “weary, care-worn, and troubled”: Browning, Diary, vol. 1, 559–60.
“The struggle of today”: AL, “Annual Message to Congress,” December 3, 1861, CWL, vol. 5, 53.
loyal Kentuckians into spasms: Joshua Speed, for example, was furious, writing Lincoln, “I have been so much disturbed since reading . . . that foolish proclamation of Fremont that I have been unable to eat or sleep.” He feared it could crush the Union party in Kentucky. Joshua F. Speed to AL, September 3, 1861, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress.
“I think to lose Kentucky”: AL to Orville H. Browning, September 22, 1861, CWL, vol. 4, 532.
[>] By the beginning of 1862: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 494.
could turn him out of office: As McPherson explains, in Battle Cry of Freedom, 506, “The Democrats had received 44 percent of the popular votes in the free states in 1860. If the votes of the border states are added, Lincoln was a minority president of the Union states.”
“I have been anxious and careful”: AL, “Annual Message to Congress,” December 3, 1861, CWL, vol. 5, 48–49.
“is no more fit”: Douglass’ Monthly, August 1862.
At the same time: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 505–6.
[>] “He had given it”: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideo
n Welles, Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), vol. 1, 70–71. For a detailed discussion of this episode, see Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), 111–12. “This is not a question”: AL to Isaac M. Schermerhorn, September 12, 1864, CWL, vol. 8, 2.
On July 22: Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 117–23.
“The Prest. was in deep distress”: CWL, vol. 5, 486.
[>] “Sincere thanks”: Hannibal Hamlin to AL, September 25, 1862, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress.
“all that a vain man”: AL to Hannibal Hamlin, September 28, 1862, CWL, vol. 5, 444.
“wicked, inhuman and unholy”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 595.
“darkened with particular pain”: Burlingame, Inner World, 105, citing Stoddard, “White House Sketches,” New York Citizen, September 29, 1866.
“What has God”: ibid,, citing reminiscences of Andrew Curtin, governor of Pennsylvania, in William A. Mowry, “Some Incidents in the Life of Abraham Lincoln,” 1913, clipping in the Harry E. Pratt Mss., University of Illinois Library, Urbana-Champaign.
[>] “sunken” and “deathly”: Noah Brooks, who had met Lincoln in the 1850s in Illinois before decamping to California, went to Washington in November 1862 to report for the Sacramento Daily Union and found Lincoln “grievously altered . . . His hair is grizzled, his gait more stooping, his countenance sallow, and there is a sunken, deathly look about the large, cavernous eyes, which is saddening to those who see there the marks of care and anxiety, such as no President of the United States has ever before known.” Lincoln Observed, 13–14.
“fourth-rate man”: ibid., 24.
“Many speeches were made”: Browning, Diary, vol. 1, 599. “He soon came in”: ibid., 603–4.
In the midst of this melee: For the timing of this visit, see David Davis to Laura Swett, December 21, 1862, Davis Papers. Davis said he had seen Lincoln “the other day.” William McCullough: Details on McCullough’s life and death and his daughter’s depression are from “Lincoln’s Friend Miss Fanny McCullough,” by Grace Cheney Wight, typescript, ISHL; Carl Haverlin, A. Lincoln’s Letter to Fanny McCullough (Chicago: R. G. Newman, 1968); Bloomington Daily Pantagraph, December 12, 1862; and Don Sides, interviews with author, February 2–4, 2004.
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