[>] An old friend of the colonel’s: Details of Swett’s encounter with Fanny McCullough are in Leonard Swett to William W. Orme, December 9, 1862, William W. Orme Papers, Illinois Historical Survey.
“pacing the floor”: Laura R. Swett to David Davis, December 13, 1862, Davis Papers. Mrs. Swett described Fanny as “afflicted—crushed and I fear, broken hearted.” He had stayed: King, Lincoln’s Manager, 76.
“The cares of this Government”: David Davis to Laura Swett, December 21, 1862, Davis Papers.
“extreme pressure”: AL to John A. Dix, December 22, 1862, CWL, vol. 6, 14.
“Dear Fanny”: AL to Fanny McCullough, December 23, 1862, CWL, vol. 6, 16–17. An image of the letter is in Haverlin, A. Lincoln’s Letter.
[>] Speed had voted against: Joshua F. Speed to AL, November 14, 1860, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress.
The owner of eleven slaves: Pen Bogert, slave data on Joshua F. Speed, in the vertical file, “Farmington—African Americans,” Filson Historical Society Library, 1997. he told Lincoln so: Speed did not date this conversation, but he would have made known his opposition to the Emancipation Proclamation after the preliminary draft of September 22, 1862, and before it was issued on January 1, 1863. It may be that the conversation took place in mid-December 1862, when Speed was in Washington and visited with Lincoln at the White House. (On December 18, Lincoln endorsed a letter by Speed written on Executive Mansion stationery, which was dated December 9. AL to Edwin M. Stanton, December 18, 1862, CWL, vol. 6, 10n.1.)
he reminded Speed: Speed referred to these conversations three times. The existence of multiple, complementary accounts, the intrinsic importance of the material, and its complexity—Speed is reporting both sides of an exchange that alludes to a conversation two decades before—make it worth quoting the originals at length. In his Reminiscences (39), Speed wrote, “In the winter of 1841 a gloom came over him till his friends were alarmed for his life. Though a member of the legislature he rarely attended its sessions. In his deepest gloom, and when I told him he would die unless he rallied, he said, ‘I am not afraid and would be more than willing. But I have an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it.’” In a letter to Herndon on February 7, 1866 ( Herndon’s Informants, 197), Speed wrote: “At first I was opposed to the proclamation and so told him—I remember well our conversation on the subject—he seemed to treat it as certain that I would recognize the wisdom of the act when I should see the harvest of good which would erelong glean from it—In that conversation he alluded to an incident in his life long passed, when he was so much deppressed that he almost contemplated suicide—At the time of his deep deppression—He said to me that he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived—and that to connect his name with the events transpiring in his day & generation and so impress himself upon them as to link his name with something that would redound to the interest of his fellow man was what he desired to live for—He reminded me of the conversation,—and said with earnest emphasis—I believe in this measure (meaning his proclomation) my fondest hopes will be realized.” Herndon apparently told Speed that Lincoln had said essentially the same thing to him. Speed replied on February 14, 1866 (Herndon’s Informants, 213), that he was glad to learn this. “This,” he added, “connected with his allusion to me after his emancipation proclamation, as that being the fulfillment of his long cherished hope should I think be incorporated in his life [i.e., biography]—It was the fulfillment a day dream long indulged in—which few men live to realize.”
[>] “Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape”: AL, “Annual Message to Congress,” December 1, 1862, CWL, vol. 5, 537.
10. COMES WISDOM TO US
[>] “And even in our sleep”: Agamemnon, translated by Deirdre Von Dornum. For an interesting history of the translation of this passage, see Christopher S. Morrissey, “‘In Our Own Despair’: Robert Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Aeschylus’ Agamemnon,” Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of Canada, May 12, 2002. A summary of Morrissey’s findings is available at http://morec.com/rfk.htm.
“Almighty Architect”: AL, “Speech on the Sub-Treasury,” December [26], 1839, CWL, vol. 1, 178. Allen Guelzo, in Redeemer President (320), points out that this phrase was a favorite among freethinkers. It felicitously combines both the mechanistic notion of the universe and the traditional idea of God physically creating the world.
[>] “fire in the rear”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 591, citing Charles Sumner to Francis Lieber, January 17, 1863, in Edward L. Pierce, Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumner, 4 vols. (Boston, 1877–93), vol. 4, 114.
Lincoln hoped: In a diary entry on July 21, 1863, John Hay noted that Lincoln had a “long cherished & often expressed conviction that if the enemy ever crossed the Potomac he might have been destroyed.” Burlingame and Ettlinger, Inside Lincoln’s White House, 66.
a third of his army: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 664. McPherson writes, “Lee was profoundly depressed by the outcome of his campaign to conquer a peace. A month later he offered his resignation to Jefferson Davis. ‘No one,’ wrote Lee, ‘is more aware than myself of my inability for the duties of my position. I cannot even accomplish what I myself desire. How can I fulfill the expectations of others?’ Thus said a man whose stunning achievements during the year before Gettysburg had won the admiration of the Western world” (665).
“very happy”: Burlingame and Ettlinger, Inside Lincoln’s White House, 61.
“grieved silently”: ibid., 63.
[>] about 120 people: Edward K. Spann, Gotham at War: New York City, 1860–1865 (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Books, 2002), 101.
“oppressed,” “deep distress,” “My dear general”: AL to George C. Meade, CWL, vol. 6, 328.
“never sent”: envelope in the Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress.
“is in fine whack”: John Hay to John G. Nicolay, August 7, 1863, in Michael Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 49.
“somehow a sweet comfort”: undated newspaper clipping, “Mr. Lincoln’s Prayers Answered,” by General James F. Rusling, on file at the Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, Indiana.
“His step was slow”: Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 118–20.
“Man is born broken”: Eugene O’Neill, The Great God Brown, act 4, scene 1.
[>] “life force”: Raymond E. Fancher, Pioneers of Psychology (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), 112–13. Fancher is my authority for the discussion of psychology’s history before Freud and Kraepelin.
Both Kraepelin and Freud: For the ascension of these psychiatrists, I rely on Edward Shorter, A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac (New York: Wiley, 1997). For a short overview on Freud and religion from a sympathetic source, see “Freud and Religion,” the Freud Museum, www.freud.org.uk/religion.html.
“there is an unseen order”: James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 53.
[>] “a sense that”: ibid., 498.
one study of 271: Patricia E. Murphy et al., “The Relation of Religious Belief and Practices, Depression, and Hopelessness in Persons with Clinical Depression,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 68, no. 6 (December 2000): 1102–6.
A meta-analysis of depression: Timothy B. Smith, Michael E. McCullough, and Justin Poll, “Religiousness and Depression: Evidence for a Main Effect and the Moderating Influence of Stressful Life Events,” Psychological Bulletin 129, no. 4 (July 2003): 614–36.
“When I knew him”: Speed, Reminiscences, 32.
“It’s hard to imagine”: Jennifer Michael Hecht, interviewed by Krista Tippett, “A History of Doubt,” Speaking of Faith, Minnesota Public Radio, December 11, 2003, http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2003/12/11_doubt/webaudio.shtml.
“His mind was full”: Isaac Cogdal, interview with WHH, 1865–6
6, Herndon’s Informants, 441.
[>] “best cure for the ‘Blues’”: AL to Mary Speed, September 27, 1841, CWL, vol. 1, 261.
After Eddie Lincoln’s: Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln, 126.
“He examined the Arguments”: James Smith to WHH, January 24, 1867, Herndon’s Informants, 549.
The Lincolns later rented: Ronald C. White, Lincoln’s Greatest Speech (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), 130.
“Lincoln maintained”: WHH to F. Abbot, February 18, 1870, published as “Abraham Lincoln’s Religion,” The Index, April 2, 1870, 5–6.
“suffering was medicinal”: WHH to Ward Lamon, March 3, 1870, transcription by LSC.
“process of crystallization”: Lincoln Observed, 210–11.
[>] “God’s will be done”: B. B. Lloyd, interview with WHH, November 29, 1866, Herndon’s Informants, 426.
“so vast, and so sacred a trust”: AL, “Message to Congress in Special Session,” July 4, 1861, CWL, vol. 4, 440.
“Did you ever dream”: LeGrand B. Cannon to WHH, October 7, 1889, Herndon’s Informants, 679.
“in the hour of trial”: Ervin S. Chapman, Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1917), 504–6.
“There was something touching”: Lincoln Observed, 210–11.
“I am very sure”: ibid.
[>] “These are not . . . the days of miracles”: AL, “Reply to Emancipation Memorial Presented by Chicago Christians of All Denominations,” September 13, 1862, CWL, vol. 5, 420.
“I shall be most happy”: AL, “Address to the New Jersey Senate at Trenton, New Jersey,” February 21, 1861, CWL, vol. 4, 236.
“The will of God prevails”: reproduced from the original manuscript at the John Hay Library, Brown University.
[>] Most religious thinkers: Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 430–32.
“Mine eyes have seen”: Atlantic Monthly, February 1862, 10.
When the Rebels fared: Noll, America’s God, 425.
Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson: For a portrait of the cult around this fascinating figure, see Daniel W. Stowell, “Stonewall Jackson and the Providence of God,” in Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, eds., Religion and the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 187–207.
“We must work earnestly”: AL to Eliza P. Gurney, September 4, 1864, CWL, vol. 7, 535.
“I hope we are”: This exchange was reported in the Illinois State Journal, February 2, 1864.
“How was it”: Noll, America’s God, 426.
[>] “God is great”: James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 75, citing Mark Rutherford’s Deliverance (London, 1885).
“formally set apart”: David Wills to AL, November 2, 1863, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress.
[>] “felt religious More than Ever”: Mary Lincoln, interview with WHH, September 1866, Herndon’s Informants, 360.
“Four score and seven”: AL, “Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg—Final Text,” November 19, 1863, CWL, vol. 7, 23.
“The Civil War is”: Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 38.
[>] “ripe fruits of religion”: James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 266.
“Magnanimities once impossible”: ibid., 262.
“I shall do nothing in malice”: AL to Cuthbert Bullitt, July 28, 1862, CWL, vol. 5, 346.
The oft-quoted remark: Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, 193. For a treatment of the Lincoln-Douglass relationship, see David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln: A Relationship in Language, Politics, and Memory (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2001).
“awful change”: AL, “Stay of Execution for Nathaniel Gordon,” February 4, 1862, CWL, vol. 5, 128.
“Yours of the 23rd. is received”: AL to David Hunter, December 31, 1861, CWL, vol. 5, 84–85. A note on p. 85 has the contextual detail.
[>] “Speed, die when I may”: Joshua F. Speed, interview with WHH, June 10, 1865, Herndon’s Informants, 31. Lincoln used a similar image in his response to a serenade on November 10, 1864: “So long as I have been here I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man’s bosom.” CWL, vol. 8, 101.
“as if he had determined”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 721.
bouts of mania and depression: For a discussion of Sherman’s mental tumult while commanding the Department of the Cumberland in Kentucky—which led to the Cincinnati Commercial headline “GENERAL WILLIAM T. SHERMAN INSANE”—see John F. Marszalek, Sherman’s Other War: The General and the Civil War Press (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1999), 63–93. I also benefited from reading Dr. S. Nassir Ghaemi’s “General Sherman’s Illness,” unpublished ms.
“War, at the best”: AL, “Speech at Great Central Sanitary Fair, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” June 16, 1864, CWL, vol. 7, 394–95.
[>] his election was an “impossibility”: Thurlow Weed to William H. Seward, August 22, 1864, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress.
The influential editor: Harper, Lincoln and the Press, 309, citing Horace Greeley to George Opdyke, August 18, 1864.
“Negroes, like other people”: AL to James C. Conkling, August 26, 1863, CWL, vol. 6, 409.
“and come to stay”: ibid., 410.
[>] “I thought he might”: Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, 443.
“This morning, as for some days”: AL, “Memorandum Concerning His Probable Failure of Re-election,” August 23, 1864, CWL, vol. 7, 514.
Lincoln also laid plans: In a meeting with Frederick Douglass, Lincoln suggested—as Douglass recounted—“that something should be speedily done to inform the slaves in the Rebel states of the true state of affairs in relation to them and to warn them as to what will be their probable condition should peace be concluded while they remain within the Rebel lines: and more especially to urge upon them the necessity of making their escape.” Douglass to AL, August 29, 1864, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress. See also David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), 183–84.
“I wish it might be”: AL, “Speech to the One Hundred Sixty-fourth Ohio Regiment,” August 18, 1864, CWL, vol. 7, 504–5.
“It is not merely for to-day”: AL, “Speech to the One Hundred Sixty-sixth Ohio Regiment,” August 22, 1864, CWL, vol. 7, 512.
[>] General Sherman captured: “The impact of this event,” writes McPherson, in Battle Cry of Freedom (774–75), “cannot be exaggerated. Cannons boomed 100–gun salutes in northern cities. Newspapers that had bedeviled Sherman for years now praised him as the greatest general since Napoleon . . . The Richmond Examiner reflected glumly that ‘the disaster at Atlanta’ came ‘in the very nick of time’ to ‘save the party of Lincoln from irretrievable ruin.’”
the moment the war stopped: McPherson writes of Sherman, “Like Lincoln, he believed in a hard war and a soft peace. ‘War is cruelty and you cannot refine it,’ Sherman had told Atlanta’s mayor after ordering the civilian population expelled from the occupied city. But ‘when peace does come, you may call on me for anything. Then will I share with you the last cracker.’” Battle Cry of Freedom, 809.
“progress of our arms”: AL, “Second Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1865, CWL, vol. 8, 332–33.
[>] “the most pregnant and effective”: Thurlow Weed to AL, March 4, 1865, CWL, vol. 8, 356n.1.
“wear as well as”: AL to Thurlow Weed, March 15, 1865, CWL, vol. 8, 356.
[>] “I charge the whole guilt”: Noll, America’s God, 428, citing Henry Ward Beecher, “Address at the Raising of the Union Flag over Fort Sumter,” Patriotic Addresses (New York, 1887), 688–89.
“That indescribable sadness”: Johnson Brigham, James Harlan (Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1913), 338.
“We meet today not in sorrow”: AL, “Last Public Address,” April 11, 18
65, 399.
[>] “Now, by God”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 852.
On the morning of April 14: For the events of this day, I have relied largely on W. Emerson Reck, A. Lincoln: His Last 24 Hours (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987). For the cabinet meeting, see 31–40.
Lincoln had a long-standing: “There was more or less superstition in his nature,” Herndon wrote, “and, although he may not have believed implicitly in the signs of his many dreams, he was constantly endeavoring to unravel them. His mind was readily impressed with some of the most absurd superstitions.” Herndon’s Lincoln, vol. 3, 435.
“I had an ugly dream”: AL to Mary Lincoln, June 9, 1863, CWL, vol. 6, 256.
While he was in Richmond: Mary Todd Lincoln, interview with WHH, September 1866, Herndon’s Informants, 357–58.
“I think it must be from Sherman”: There are two firsthand sources of Lincoln’s conversation about his dream. Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s secretary of the navy, wrote in his diary that, when the conversation turned to Sherman, Lincoln said that word “would, he had no doubt, come soon, and come favorable, for he had last night the usual dream which he had preceding nearly every great and important event of the war.” In the dream, Lincoln said, “he seemed to be in some singular, indescribable vessel, and that he was moving with great rapidity” (Beale, Diary of Gideon Welles, 282–83). Frederick W. Seward, the son of Secretary of State William Seward, wrote, “The conversation turning upon the subject of sleep, Mr. Lincoln remarked that a peculiar dream of the previous night was one that had occurred several times in his life,—a vague sense of floating—floating away on some vast and indistinct expanse, toward an unknown shore. The dream itself was not so strange as the coincidence that each of its previous recurrences had been followed by some important event or disaster, which he mentioned. The usual comments were made by his auditors. One thought it was merely a matter of coincidences. Another laughingly remarked, ‘At any rate it cannot presage a victory nor a defeat this time, for the war is over.’ I suggested, ‘Perhaps at each of these periods there were possibilities of great change or disaster, and the vague feeling of uncertainty may have led to the dim vision in sleep.’ ‘Perhaps,’ said Mr. Lincoln, thoughtfully, ‘perhaps that is the explanation’” (Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat [New York: G. P. Putnam, 1916], 255).
Lincoln's Melancholy Page 41