Lincoln's Melancholy

by Joshua Wolf Shenk

  “Herndon was a rough-hewn man”: Randall, Mary Lincoln, 31.

  [>] “murders” politically: See George B. Forgie, Patricide in the House Divided: A Psychological Interpretation of Lincoln and His Age (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979).

  “bad son”: See Dwight G. Anderson, Abraham Lincoln: The Quest for Immortality (New York: Knopf, 1982).

  “haunted him”: Dwight G. Anderson, “Quest for Immortality,” in Gabor S. Boritt, ed., The Historian’s Lincoln: Pseudohistory, Psychohistory, and History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 254.

  [>] methods of psychobiography: I am paraphrasing David Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 268–69.

  [>] “a man known to have suffered”: Donna E. Shalala, “Promoting Mental Health for All Americans,” White House Conference on Mental Health, Washington, D.C., June 7, 1999. www.os.dhhs.gov/news/speeches/990607.html, March 28, 2005.

  “There are some people”: The ad continues, “Historically, those with mental illness have made overwhelmingly important contributions to society. Sir Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Ludwig van Beethoven, Virginia Woolf, Michelangelo and Vincent van Gogh are just a few of those with mental illness who have helped move society forward. Don’t hold people with mental illness back.” The credits for the ad list the “NJ Association of Mental Health Agencies, a public service campaign supported by an educational grant from Eli Lilly & Co.” Behavioral Health Management 19, no. 5 (September–October 1999).

  “the oldest type”: Oral History Association, “About OHA,” http://omega.dickinson.edu/organizations/oha/about.html, March 23, 2005.

  “that the Ann Rutledge story”: Douglas L. Wilson, interview with author, August 20, 2003.

  [>] “I was trained”: Rodney Davis, interview with author, August 21, 2003.

  That same year: John Y. Simon, “Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 11 (1990), http://jala.press.uiuc.edu/11/simon.html, March 31, 2005.

  “But when I examined the records”: Michael Burlingame, interview with author, August 21, 2003.

  Bibliography

  LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES

  Allegheny College Library, Meadville, Penn.

  Bobst Library, New York University, New York, N.Y.

  Bradley University, Peoria, Ill.

  Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Ill.

  Cincinnati Historical Society, Cincinnati, Ohio

  Cincinnati Medical Heritage Center, Cincinnati, Ohio

  Cincinnati Public Library, Cincinnati, Ohio

  Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Ky.

  Gilder-Lehrman Institute, New York, N.Y.

  Houghton Library, Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass.

  Illinois Historical Survey, University of Illinois, Urbana, Ill.

  Illinois State Archives, Springfield, Ill.

  Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield, Ill.

  Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Ind.

  John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, R.I.

  Knox College Library, Galesburg, Ill.

  Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, Ill.

  Lincoln Library, Springfield, Ill.

  Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, Ind.

  Lincoln Studies Center, Knox College, Galesburg, Ill.

  National Archives, Washington, D.C.

  Newberry Library, Chicago, Ill.

  New-York Historical Society, New York, N.Y.

  New York Public Library, New York, N.Y.

  Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio

  Pearson Museum, Southern Illinois University, Springfield, Ill.

  Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.

  Southern Illinois University Medical Library, Springfield, Ill.

  Spencer County Historical Society, Rockport, Ind.

  University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center, Chicago, Ill.

  University of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky.

  University of Louisville Archives and Records Center, Louisville, Ky.

  Widener Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

  Williams Research Center, New Orleans, La.

  INTERVIEWS

  Renato Alarcon, Beverley Ballantine, Dan Bassuck, Kim Bauer, Pen Bogert, Michael Burlingame, Jimmy Carter, Rosalynn Carter, David B. Cohen, Rodney Davis, Andrew Delbanco, David Herbert Donald, Kyla Dunn, Jennifer Fleischner, Gregory Fricchione, Bud Green, Allen C. Guelzo, Wade Hall, Norbert Hirschhorn, Harold Holzer, Steven Hyman, Kay Redfield Jamison, Fenton Johnson, Stanley Kunitz, Katie MacLennan, Stefanie Markovits, Barbara Mason, Victor McKusick, Richard Lawrence Miller, Richard D. Mudd, Michael Myers, Chris Offutt, Matthew Pinsker, Jennifer Radden, Ruth Richards, E. Anthony Rotundo, Steve Rubenzer, Scott Sandage, Karl E. Scheibe, Barry Schwartz, Thomas F. Schwartz, Don Sides, John Y. Simon, Lauren Slater, John Speed, John Sackett Speed, Edward Steers, Gregory Stephens, Charles Strozier, Richard Taylor, Wayne C. Temple, Tanya Weisman, Douglas L. Wilson

  BASIC LINCOLN TEXTS

  Basler, Roy P., ed. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 9 vols. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953. This is the standard edition of Lincoln’s works and includes all the Lincoln documents extant at publication. It is available at most good libraries and online, courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Association and the University of Michigan, www.hti.umich.edu/l/lincoln.

  Burlingame, Michael, ed. An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996. Nicolay was Lincoln’s chief White House secretary and the coauthor, with John Hay, of the first multivolume Lincoln biography. In 1875, Nicolay interviewed many close associates of Lincoln. Burlingame has published this material for the first time, with thorough annotation.

  Burlingame, Michael, ed. Lincoln Observed: The Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Brooks was a Washington correspondent for the Sacramento Daily Union, beginning in late 1862. He said he saw President Lincoln almost every day. Burlingame has brought Brooks’s dispatches together for the first time, with some letters shedding light on Lincoln.

  Fehrenbacher, Don E., and Virginia Fehrenbacher, eds. Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln. Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1986. The Fehrenbachers assembled Lincoln quotations—what people remember him having said in conversation—describing the context, judging authenticity, and giving the original source.

  Herndon, William H., and Jesse W. Weik. Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life. 3 vols. Chicago: Belford, Clarke, 1889. Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner, solicited hundreds of reminiscences after Lincoln’s death. In the 1880s, he teamed up with Weik, a young writer, to produce this book, which is still among the most influential and controversial works on Lincoln. The original edition is available in an electronic facsimile, published by Digital Scanning, Scituate, Mass., www.pdflibrary.com.

  Hertz, Emanuel, ed. The Hidden Lincoln: From the Letters and Papers of William H. Herndon. New York: Viking Press, 1938. Although a complete edition of Herndon’s letters on Lincoln is not yet available—the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College has been assembling the material—Hertz is the best stopgap.

  Mearns, David C., eds. The Lincoln Papers. 2 vols. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1948. In 1923, Robert Todd Lincoln conveyed his father’s papers to the Library of Congress, stipulating that they should be withheld from “official or public inspection or private view” until twenty-one years after his death.On July 26, 1947, the library opened the collection to scholars, and the librarian David Mearns assembled portions of the papers for publication the next year. The whole collection is now available online: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/malhome.html.

  Miers, Earl Schenck, ed. Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology, 1809–1865. 3 vols. Washington, D.C.: Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission, 19
60. These volumes assemble Lincoln’s known activities on every day of his life. The chronology can be searched online, courtesy of Brown University, at www.stg.brown.edu/projects/lincoln.

  Neely, Mark. The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. Indispensable for serious researchers, this book will also interest casual students. It offers entries on all the major characters and topics in Lincoln’s life, as well as biographers, collectors, historical sites, and so on.

  Rice, Allen Thorndike, ed. Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1971; orig. 1888. Rice was editor of the North American Review. In the 1880s, he solicited sketches on Lincoln from distinguished figures such as Ulysse S. Grant, Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman.

  Turner, Justin G., and Linda Levitt Turner, eds.. Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters. New York: Knopf, 1972. The standard edition of Mary Lincoln’s letters, woven together with a biographical narrative.

  Wilson, Douglas, and Rodney Davis, eds. Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. A transcribed and exceptionally well-annotated volume of Herndon’s “Lincoln Record,” along with interviews conducted by Jesse W. Weik. The editors are codirectors of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College.

  Wilson, Rufus Rockwell, ed. Lincoln among His Friends: A Sheaf of Intimate Memories. Caldwell, Ind.: Caxton Printers, 1942; Intimate Memories of Lincoln. Elmira, N.Y.: Primavera Press, 1945. Wilson assembled many of the best published pieces on Lincoln by people who knew him. These books are available at any good university or research library.

  For more reference works, online resources, and other supplementary material, visit www.lincolnsmelancholy.com.

  REFERENCE WORKS

  Barnhart, Robert K., ed. The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1994.

  Foner, Eric, and John A. Garraty, eds. The Reader’s Companion to American History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.

  Gregory, Richard L., ed. The Oxford Companion to the Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

  Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, Md.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; Center for Mental Health Services; National Institutes of Health; National Institute of Mental Health, 1999.

  Merck’s 1899 Manual of the Materia Medica, Together with a Summary of Therapeutic Indications and a Classification of Medicaments: A Ready-Reference Pocket Book for the Practicing Physician. Rahway, N.J.: Merck, 1999; facsimile of first edition, 1899.

  Wagner, Margaret E., Gary W. Gallagher, and Paul Finkelman, eds. The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002.

  Webster, Noah. American Dictionary of the English Language. New York: S. Converse, 1828.

  BOOKS, ARTICLES, LECTURES, AND FILMS

  Akiskal, Hagop, and Giovanni B. Casson, eds. Dysthymia and the Spectrum of Chronic Depressions. New York: Guilford Press, 1997.

  Allen, John W. Legends and Lore of Southern Illinois. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1963.

  Alloy, L. B. “Depressive Realism: Sadder but Wiser?” Harvard Mental Health Letter 11 (1995): 4–5.

  Alvarez, A. The Savage God: A Study of Suicide. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971.

  Anbinder, Tyler. Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

  Anderson, Dwight G. Abraham Lincoln: The Quest for Immortality. New York: Knopf, 1982.

  Anderson, William J. “Reminiscence of Abraham Lincoln.” Ms., Chicago Historical Society, February 18, 1921.

  Andrews, J. Cutler. The North Reports the Civil War. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1955.

  Angle, Paul M. “Lincoln’s First Love.” Bulletin of the Lincoln Centennial Association 9 (December 1, 1927): 1.

  ———. “The Minor Collection: A Criticism.” Atlantic Monthly, April 1929, 516–25.

  ———. “Here I Have Lived”: A History of Lincoln’s Springfield, 1821–1865. Chicago: Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, 1971; orig. 1935.

  ———. “The Recollections of William Pitt Kellogg.” Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 3 (September 1945): 319–39.

  ———. A Shelf of Lincoln Books: A Critical, Selective Bibliography of Lincolniana. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1946.

  ———, ed., with Richard G. Case. A Portrait of Abraham Lincoln in Letters by His Oldest Son. Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 1968.

  Appleby, Joyce. “New Cultural Heroes in the Early National Period. “ In Thomas L. Haskell and Richard F. Teichgraeber, eds., Culture of the Market Historical Essays. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 163–88.

  ———. Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2000.

  Aries, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood. New York: Vintage Books, 1962.

  Aring, Charles D. “Daniel Drake and Medical Education.” Journal of the American Medical Association 254, no. 15 (October 18, 1985): 2120–2.

  Arnold, Isaac N. The Life of Abraham Lincoln. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1909; orig.1880.

  Atkinson, Brooks, ed. The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson.New York: Modern Library, 1950.

  Baker, Jean H. Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton, 1987.

  ———. “The Lincoln Marriage: Beyond the Battle of Quotations.” 38th Annual Robert Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pa., 1999.

  Barbee, David Rankin. “President Lincoln and Doctor Gurley.” Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 5 (March 1948): 3.

  Baringer, William E. Lincoln’s Rise to Power. Boston: Little, Brown, 1937.

  ———. A House Dividing: Lincoln as President Elect. Springfield, Ill.: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1945.

  ———. Lincoln’s Vandalia. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1949.

  Barton, William E. The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln. New York: George H. Doren, 1920.

  ———. The Life of Abraham Lincoln. 2 vols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1925.

  ———. “Why Lincoln Was Sad.” Dearborn Independent, August 28, 1926, 21–22.

  ———. The Lineage of Lincoln. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1929.

  Barzun, Jacques. “Byron and the Byronic.” Atlantic Monthly, August 1953, 47–52.

  Bateman, Newton. “Abraham Lincoln.” Address, Gadmus Club, Galesburg, Ill., 1932.

  ———, ed. Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Sangamon County. Springfield,Ill.: Sangamon County Genealogical Society, 1987.

  ———, and Paul Selby, eds. Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois; with Charles Edward Wilson, ed. History of Coles County. Chicago: Munsell, 1906.

  Bates, David H. Lincoln in the Telegraph Office: Recollections of the United States Military Telegraph Corps During the Civil War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

  Bates, Edward. The Diary of Edward Bates, 1859–1866. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1933.

  Bayne, Julia Taft. Tad Lincoln’s Father. Lincoln, Neb.: Bison Books, 2001; orig. 1931.

  Beale, Howard K., ed. Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson. 3 vols. New York: W. W. Norton, 1960.

  Beam, Alex. Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America’s Premier Mental Hospital. New York: Public Affairs, 2001.

  Beecher, Catharine. A Treatise on Domestic Economy. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1842.

  Bennett, Lerone, Jr. Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream. Chicago: Johnson Publishing, 2000.

  Bentall, Richard P. “A Proposal to Classify Happiness as a Psychiatric Disorder.” Journal of Medical Ethics 18 (1992): 94–98.

 
Beveridge, Albert J. Abraham Lincoln, 1809–1858. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928.

  Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln: A Relationship in Language, Politics, and Memory. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2001.

  Boritt, Gabor S. “The Voyage to the Colony of Linconia: The Sixteenth President, Black Colonization, and the Defense Mechanism of Avoidance.” Historian 37 (1975): 619–32.

  ———. Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

  ———, ed. The Lincoln Enigma: The Changing Faces of an American Icon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

  Bowen, H. C. “Recollections of Abraham Lincoln.” New York Independent, February 11, 1909.

  Boyd, Maurice. William Knox and Abraham Lincoln: The Story of a Poetic Legacy. Denver: Sage Books, 1966.

  Braden, Waldo W., ed. Building the Myth: Selected Speeches Memorializing Abraham Lincoln. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

  Branham, Robert James, and Phillip S. Foner, eds. Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787–1900. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998.

  Bray, Robert. “Abraham Lincoln and the Two Peters.” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 22 (Summer 2001): 27–48.

  Brigham, Amariah. Remarks on the Influence of Mental Cultivation and Mental Excitement upon Health. Boston: Marsh, Capen & Lyon, 1833; reprinted in Gerald Grob, ed. The Beginnings of Mental Hygiene in America: Three Selected Essays, 1833–1850. New York: Arno Press, 1973.