Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  110. Harriet A. Chapman to Herndon, Charleston, Illinois, 10 Dec. 1866, HI, 512–513.

  111. Joseph Gillespie to Herndon, Edwardsville, Illinois, 31 Jan. 1866, HI, 185.

  112. The Reverend Mr. Noyes M. Miner, “Personal Reminiscences of Lincoln,” manuscript, IHi.

  113. Clark, “The Kentucky Influence on the Life of Abraham Lincoln” (pamphlet; Address at Annual Meeting of the Lincoln Fellowship of Wisconsin, Madison, 13 Feb. 1961; Historical Bulletin No. 20, 1963), 4.

  114. Edgar K. Webb, “Lincoln’s Birthplace to Be Made a National Park,” unidentified clipping, 1905, Abraham Lincoln Association reference files, “Romance” folder, IHi; Richard A. Creal to Herndon, Larue County, Kentucky, 12 Mar. 1866, HI, 228.

  115. J. J. Wright, M.D., to Ida Tarbell, Emporia, Kansas, 18 Apr. 1896, Ida M. Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College.

  116. John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History (10 vols.; New York: Century, 1890), 1:27.

  117. E. R. Burba to Herndon, Hodgenville, Kentucky, 31 Mar. 1866, HI, 241.

  118. Alexander Sympson told this to Henry Clay Whitney. Whitney, Life on the Circuit, ed. Angle, 37.

  119. Charles Friend to Herndon, Sonora, Kentucky, 20 Aug. 1889, HI, 676.

  120. Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, 22.

  121. Samuel Haycraft to Herndon, Elizabethtown, Kentucky, [ June 1865], HI, 67.

  122. Austin Gollaher interviewed by J. C. M., Hodgenville correspondence, 23 Mar., Cincinnati Tribune, 24 Mar. 1895.

  123. Autobiography written for Jesse W. Fell, 20 Dec. 1859, CWL, 3:511.

  124. Mrs. Susie Yeager to James M. Yeager, 1890, New York Tribune, 26 Dec. 1897.

  125. Howells, Life of Lincoln, ed. Pratt, 20.

  126. Dennis Hanks, interview with Herndon, Chicago, 13 June 1865, HI, 39.

  127. William E. Barton to Robert Todd Lincoln, n.p., 15 Mar. 1919, copy, Barton Papers, University of Chicago.

  128. Interview with Fields Elkin, Elizabethtown, Kentucky, 21 June 1922, conducted by Louis A. Warren, copy, Lincoln files, “David Elkins” folder, Lincoln Museum, Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee.

  129. John Locke Scripps, Life of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler and Lloyd A. Dunlap (1860; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961), 37–38.

  130. Andrew R. L. Cayton, Frontier Indiana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 272.

  131. John Badollet, quoted in Cayton, Frontier Indiana, 265.

  132. William Makepeace Thayer, The Pioneer Boy and How He Became President (Boston: Walker, Wise, 1863), 79.

  133. Autobiography written for John Locke Scripps, [ca. June 1860], CWL, 4:61–62.

  134. Dennis Hanks to Herndon (interview), Chicago, 13 June 1865, HI, 36.

  135. Burba to Herndon, Hodgenville, 31 Mar. and 25 May 1866, HI, 240, 257.

  136. Scripps, Life of Lincoln, ed. Basler and Dunlap, 29.

  137. Dennis Hanks, interview with Herndon, Charleston, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 103–104.

  138. Reminiscence by an unidentified native of Kentucky, Springfield, Illinois, correspondence by Henry Villard, 29 Nov., New York Herald, 4 Dec. 1860.

  139. Sarah Bush Lincoln, interview with Herndon, Charleston, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 106.

  Chapter 2. “I Used to Be a Slave”

  1. Elias Pym Fordham, Personal Narrative of Travels in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky; and of a Residence in the Illinois Territory: 1817–1818 (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1906), 96.

  2. Dennis Hanks to Herndon, 12 Mar. 1866, and Augustus H. Chapman, statement for Herndon, [before 8 Sept. 1865], Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln [hereafter HI] (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 229, 98.

  3. J. Edward Murr, “The Wilderness Years of Abraham Lincoln,” 125–126, unpublished typescript, Murr Papers, DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana.

  4. Autobiography written for Jesse W. Fell, 20 Dec. 1859, Roy P. Basler et al., eds., Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln [hereafter CWL] (8 vols. plus index; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), 3:511; autobiography written for John Locke Scripps, [c. June 1860], ibid., 4:62.

  5. Lincoln to Andrew Johnston, Tremont, Illinois, 18 Apr. 1846, CWL, 1:378; “The Bear Hunt,” ca. 6 Sept.1846, ibid., 1:386.

  6. CWL, 4:62.

  7. Augustus H. Chapman, statement to Herndon, [before 8 Sept. 1865], HI, 98.

  8. Dennis Hanks, interview with Herndon, Charleston, Illinois HI, 8 Sept. 1865, 105.

  9. David Turnham to Herndon, Dale, Indiana, 21 Feb. 1866, HI, 217.

  10. Dennis Hanks to Herndon, 6 Jan. 1866, HI, 154.

  11. Herndon to Joseph Smith Fowler, Springfield, 18 Feb. 1887, Herndon Papers, IHi; Herndon to Cyrus O. Poole, Springfield, 5 Jan. 1886, and Herndon, “Lincoln’s Superstition,” H-W MSS DCL.

  12. Lincoln to Joshua F. Speed, Springfield, 4 July 1842, CWL, 1:289.

  13. Henry C. Whitney, “Lincoln a Fatalist,” Rockport, Indiana, Journal, 11 Feb. 1898.

  14. Autobiography written for John Locke Scripps, [ca. June 1860], CWL, 4:62.

  15. Herndon to Ward Hill Lamon, Springfield, 6 Mar. 1870, Lamon Papers, CSmH.

  16. William Faux, Memorable Days in America: Being a Journal of a Tour to the United States (London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1823), Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels, 1748–1846: A Series of Annotated Reprints of Some of the Best and Rarest Contemporary Volumes of Travel, Descriptive of the Aborigines and Social and Economic Conditions in the Middle and Far West, during the Period of Early American Settlement (32 vols.; Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1904–1907), 11:226.

  17. Dennis Hanks to Herndon (interview), Chicago, 13 June 1865, HI, 40.

  18. Lincoln to Fanny McCullough, Washington, 23 Dec. 1862, CWL, 6:16–17.

  19. Jesse W. Weik, The Real Lincoln: A Portrait, ed. Michael Burlingame (1922; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 293.

  20. William H. Townsend, Lincoln and the Bluegrass: Slavery and Civil War in Kentucky (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1955), 136.

  21. Nathaniel Grigsby, interview with Herndon, Gentryville, Indiana, 12 Sept. 1865, HI, 113.

  22. Interview with Gollaher by J. C. M., Hodgenville correspondence, 23 Mar., Cincinnati Tribune, 24 Mar. 1895.

  23. Felix Brown, “Depression and Childhood Bereavement,” Journal of Mental Science 107 (1962):770.

  24. Address by Clarence W. Bell in Mattoon, Illinois, 11 Feb. 1931, in the Lerna, Illinois, Eagle, 27 Feb. 1931.

  25. Unidentified clipping in Dennis Hanks Dowling’s scrapbook, quoted in William F. Sullivan, “Tales of Lincoln’s Early Life,” Paris, Illinois, News, 14 Feb. 1922; address by Clarence W. Bell in Mattoon, Illinois, 11 Feb. 1931, in the Lerna, Illinois, Eagle, 27 Feb. 1931.

  26. John B. Helm to Herndon, 1 Aug. 1865, HI, 82.

  27. Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, 19 Jan. 1886, H-W MSS DLC.

  28. Samuel Haycraft to John B. Helm, Elizabethtown, 5 July 1865; Presley Nevil Haycraft to John B. Helm, 19 July 1865; Samuel Haycraft to Herndon, Elizabethtown, [June 1865], HI, 85, 87, 68; Samuel Haycraft’s reminiscences, as told to John W. Cunningham, pastor of the Elizabethtown circuit of the Louisville conference of the Methodist Church South (1865–1866), St. Louis Globe Democrat, 13 Feb. 1897; Samuel Haycraft’s reminiscences, unidentified clipping from the Indianapolis Star, datelined Evansville, 12 Feb. [no year indicated], Eleanor Gridley clipping collection, owned by Charles Hand of Paris, Illinois; Samuel Haycraft’s reminiscences, Decatur, Illinois, Magnet, 28 Apr. 1869, copied in the Shelby County Leader, 3 July 1902; Samuel Haycraft quoted in Elizabethtown correspondence, n.d., Louisville Commercial, [ca. 1886], Lincoln Scrapbook, p. 10, Rare Book Room, DLC; William E. Barton, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (2 vols.; Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1925), 1:117n; Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, manuscript, 47, Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee; Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, 35; Lincoln Lore
, no. 1592 (Oct. 1970), 1–4.

  29. Sarah Bush Lincoln, interview with Herndon, near Charleston, Illinois, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 106.

  30. Dennis Hanks to Herndon (interview), Chicago, 13 June 1865, HI, 41.

  31. Augustus H. Chapman, statement for Herndon, [before 8 Sept. 1865], HI, 99.

  32. Sarah Bush Lincoln, interview with Herndon, near Charleston, Illinois, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 108.

  33. Walter B. Stevens, “Recollections of Lincoln,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 24 Jan. 1909, magazine section, p. 3.

  34. Augustus H. Chapman, statement for Herndon, [before 8 Sept. 1865], HI, 99.

  35. William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, ed. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis (1889; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 35n.

  36. Sarah Bush Lincoln, interview with Herndon, near Charleston, Illinois, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 108.

  37. Interview with Sarah Bush Lincoln, Tuscola, Illinois, Journal, n.d., copied in the Bloomington Pantagraph, 17 Dec. 1867.

  38. Augustus H. Chapman, statement for Herndon, [before 8 Sept. 1865], HI, 99; Chapman to Herndon, Charleston, Illinois, 8 Oct. 1865, ibid., 136.

  39. Joshua Speed, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln and Notes of a Visit to California: Two Lectures (Louisville, KY: John P. Morton, 1884), 36–37.

  40. Herndon to Caroline Dall, Springfield, 8 Jan. 1867, Dall Papers, MHi.

  41. Dr. James LeGrande, paraphrasing remarks he heard from his mother, Sophie Hanks, in an undated interview with Arthur E. Morgan, Morgan Papers, DLC.

  42. John Cunningham (b. 1828) of Mattoon, Illinois, unidentified clipping, in Carl Sandburg, Lincoln Collector: The Story of Oliver R. Barrett’s Great Private Collection (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950), 88; Charles H. Coleman, Abraham Lincoln and Coles County, Illinois (New Brunswick, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1955), 60.

  43. Interview with Sara Bush Lincoln, Tuscola, Illinois, Journal, n.d., copied in the Bloomington Pantagraph, 17 Dec. 1867.

  44. Amanda Poorman, daughter of Dennis Hanks, “New Stories about the Great Emancipator,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 26 May 1901.

  45. Augustus H. Chapman to Herndon, Charleston, Illinois, 8 Oct. 1865, HI, 137; Henry C. Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, ed. Paul M. Angle (1892; Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1940), 46.

  46. Rockport, Indiana, correspondence, 21 Dec., Chicago Times-Herald, 22 Dec. 1895.

  47. Lincoln to John D. Johnston, Washington, 24 Dec. 1848, CWL, 2:16.

  48. Dennis Hanks to Herndon, 26 Jan. 1866, HI, 176.

  49. Brief autobiography, [15?] June 1858, CWL, 2:459.

  50. Eulogy on Henry Clay, 6 July 1852, CWL, 2:124.

  51. Autobiography written for Jesse W. Fell, 20 Dec. 1859, CWL, 3:511.

  52. Autobiography written for John Locke Scripps, [ca. June 1860], CWL, 4:62.

  53. CWL, 1:1 (dated [1824–1826]).

  54. George Cary Eggleston, The First of the Hoosiers: Reminiscences of Edward Eggleston (Philadelphia: Drexel Biddle, 1903), 34.

  55. Unidentified source, quoted in D. D. Banta, “The Early Schools of Indiana—Third Installment,” Indiana Magazine of History 2 (1906): 136.

  56. Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, 21 Oct. 1885, H-W MSS DLC.

  57. Henry J. Raymond, The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Derby and Miller, 1865), 21.

  58. William Riley McLaren, “Reminiscences of Pioneer Life in Illinois,” quoted in John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Frontier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 153.

  59. Charleston, Illinois, Plaindealer, Feb. 1892, photocopy, Abraham Lincoln Association reference files, folder marked “Coles County,” IHi.

  60. Matilda Johnston Moore, interview with Herndon, near Charleston, Illinois, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 109.

  61. Mary Owens Vineyard to Herndon, Weston, Missouri, 22 July 1866, HI, 262.

  62. John Wickizer to Herndon, Chicago, 25 Nov. 1866, HI, 424.

  63. Speed, Reminiscences of Lincoln, 25–26.

  64. Article by Andrew M. Sweeney, Indianapolis Star, 12 Mar. 1933.

  65. Edward Eggleston, The Hoosier Schoolmaster (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1913), 131n.

  66. Ibid., 54; Benjamin Brown French to Mrs. Catherine J. Wells, Washington, 3 June 1862, French Family Papers, DLC.

  67. Albert Blair, in Walter B. Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed. Michael Burlingame (1916; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 97.

  68. “Robert Livingston Stanton’s Lincoln,” ed. Dwight L. Smith, Lincoln Herald 76 (1974):174.

  69. Joshua Speed, statement for Herndon, [by 1882], HI, 589.

  70. Leonard Swett’s address at the dedication of Augustus St. Gaudens’s statue of Lincoln in Chicago, Chicago Times, 23 Oct. 1887.

  71. Mrs. Allen Gentry (née Anna Caroline Roby), interview with Herndon, Rockport, Indiana, 17 Sept. 1865, HI, 132.

  72. Robert McIntyre, “Lincoln’s Friend,” Charleston, Illinois, Courier, n.d., Paris, Illinois, Gazette, n.d., Chicago Tribune, 30 May 1885.

  73. Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndon’s Lincoln, 28n.

  74. Ibid., 29; William Wood, interview with Herndon, 15 Sept. 1865, HI, 124.

  75. John Hanks, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 454.

  76. Sarah Bush Lincoln, interview with Herndon, near Charleston, Illinois, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 107.

  77. Elizabeth Crawford, interview with Herndon, 16 Sept. 1865, HI, 126; Elizabeth Crawford to Herndon, 4 Jan. 1866, ibid., 151.

  78. Leonard Swett in Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Lincoln, 459; Elizabeth Crawford to Herndon, 7 Sept. 1866, HI, 335.

  79. CWL, 3:362–363.

  80. John Locke Scripps, Life of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler and Lloyd A. Dunlap (1860; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961), 29, 30–31.

  81. Mentor Graham, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 450.

  82. Oakland City, Indiana, Enterprise, n.d., copied in the Indianapolis Journal, copied in a clipping marked “Times,” 27 Aug. 1899, Lincoln scrapbooks, vol. 2, InU.

  83. J. Rowan Herndon to Herndon, Quincy, Illinois, 28 May 1865, HI, 7.

  84. Herndon, quoting Lincoln, in Weik, Real Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 22.

  85. Definition of democracy, [1 Aug. 1858?], CWL, 2:532.

  86. Laurence Sterne, “Liberty and Slavery,” in William Scott, Lessons in Elocution or a Selection of Pieces in Prose and Verse for the Improvement of Youth in Reading and Speaking (Lancaster, PA: Robert Bailey, 1805), 212–213.

  87. Sarah Bush Lincoln, interview with Herndon, near Charleston, Illinois, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 107.

  88. John P. Gulliver, “A Talk with Abraham Lincoln,” New York Independent, 1 Sept. 1864.

  89. Joseph Nicholas Barker, “What I Remember of Abraham Lincoln,” undated manuscript, Lincoln Collection, Chicago History Museum.

  90. Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 27–28.

  91. John Langdon Kaine, “Lincoln as a Boy Knew Him,” Century Magazine 85 (Feb. 1913): 557; reply to loyal colored people of Baltimore upon presentation of a Bible, 7 Sept. 1864, CWL, 7:542.

  92. Speed, Reminiscences of Lincoln, 32–33.

  93. Noah Brooks, “Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, July 1865, in Michael Burlingame, ed., Lincoln Observed: Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 219.

  94. Anna L. Boyden, Echoes from Hospital and White House: A Record of Mrs. Rebecca R. Pomroy’s Experiences in War-Times (Boston: Lothrop, 1884), 62.

  95. CWL, 4:169.

  96. Lincoln to Speed, Springfield, 4 July 1842, CWL, 1:289.

  97. CWL, 2:141.

  98. Ibid., 2:467.

  99. F. B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln: The Story of a Picture (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1866), 230.

  100. Ibid., 246.

  101. CWL, 4:239.

  102. I
bid., 1:411; 7:368; 8:155, 333.

  103. Ibid. 7:368, 8:333.

  104. Ibid., 8:333.

  105. Ibid., 1:315; 2:461.

  106. Statement of Andrew H. Goodpasture, Petersburg, Illinois, 31 Mar. 1869, HI, 573.

  107. CWL, 1:115, 4:194.

  108. Ibid., 4:130.

  109. Ibid., 7:368.

  110. Lincoln paraphrased Jesus thus: “By the fruit the tree is to be known. An evil tree can not bring forth good fruit.” Lincoln to Williamson Durley, Springfield, 3 Oct. 1845, CWL, 1:347.

  111. Lincoln to Henry J. Raymond, 28 Nov. 1860, CWL, 4:146.

  112. Lincoln paraphrased Jesus thus: “out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.” CWL, 2:271.

  113. CWL, 2:501.

  114. Dennis Hanks, interview with Herndon, Charleston, Illinois, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 106; Robert McIntyre, “Lincoln’s Friend,” Charleston, Illinois, Courier, n.d., Paris, Illinois, Gazette, n.d., Chicago Tribune, 30 May 1885.

  115. Sarah Bush Lincoln, interview with Herndon, near Charleston, Illinois, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 107.

  116. Albert Hale to Theron Baldwin, Springfield, 15 June 1860, in Michael Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 97.

  117. Eggleston, Hoosier Schoolmaster, 84–85.

  118. William E. Barton, The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (New York: George H. Doran, 1920), 48.

  119. In 1888, John J. Hall, son of Matilda Johnston Moore, reported this to John E. Remsburg. Remsburg, Abraham Lincoln: Was He a Christian? (New York: Truth Seeker Company, 1893), 197.

  120. Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndon’s Lincoln, 62.

  121. [D. W. Dow], Peoria, Illinois, n.d., to the editor, “Editor’s Drawer,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1875, 155–156.

  122. George Tuthill Borrett, Letters from Canada and the United States (London: J. E. Adlard, 1865), 254 (letter dated “on board the Kangaroo,” Nov. 1864).

  123. Mary Todd Lincoln, interview with Herndon, [Sept. 1866], HI, 358, 360.

  124. Leonard W. Volk, “The Lincoln Life-Mask and How It Was Made,” Century Magazine 23 (Dec. 1881):226.

  125. Sarah Bush Lincoln, interview with Herndon, near Charleston, Illinois, 8 Sept. 1865, HI, 108.