Lincoln in the World

by Kevin Peraino

  29. On the Romantic era, see Winger, Lincoln, Religion, and Romantic Cultural Politics, passim; Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, p. 185; and McDougall, Throes of Democracy, pp. 167–71. Robert W. Johannsen deftly analyzes the Mexican War in the context of the Romantic era; see Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas, passim, but esp. pp. 31, 57–78, 108–11. On Lincoln and Byron, see William Henry Herndon interview with Joshua F. Speed, HI, p. 30; Joshua F. Speed to William Henry Herndon, Jan. 12, 1866, in ibid., p. 156; Henry C. Whitney to William Henry Herndon, Nov. 20, 1866, in ibid., pp. 403–4; Henry C. Whitney to William Henry Herndon, Aug. 27, 1887, in ibid., p. 632; Wilson, Honor’s Voice, pp. 190–97; Shenk, Lincoln’s Melancholy, pp. 27–31; ALAL, v. 1, p. 353 (kick feet up); Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” in McGann, Lord Byron, pp. 10, 21, 40, 47. Doris Kearns Goodwin, noting Lincoln’s affection for Byron and other writers, observes that “[i]t was through literature that he was able to transcend his surroundings.… Lincoln, this acolyte of pure reason and remorseless logic, was also a romantic” (Goodwin, pp. 51–53).

  30. Jon Meacham writes particularly skillfully about the intersection of the “personal” and the “political.” See, for example, Meacham, American Lion, p. xvii, and passim. Allen Guelzo, citing an observation by Mark Neely Jr., observes that Lincoln biographies tend to “travel either the road of personality-history (as blazed by William Henry Herndon) in which Lincoln’s achievements are explained in terms of temperament or genealogy; or else the road of public-history (the model for this being the ten-volume biography by Lincoln’s White House secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay) in which Lincoln is lauded mostly for his public management skills as a president, a politician, or a commander-in-chief.” Guelzo offers his brilliant “intellectual biography” of Lincoln as a “model” for other writers who aim to integrate “the old political Lincoln with the revived subjective Lincoln.” See Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, pp. 19 and 472.

  31. Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, pp. 147 (“victim’s sympathies”), 418 (“Power is poison” and “society at large”), 421 (“struggle … of forces”); Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, p. 276 (“door of escape”). See also Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, p. 6.

  32. Tocqueville quoted in Schlesinger, Imperial Presidency, pp. 125–26. George Herring, noting the “distinctive cast” of foreign policy in a democratic system that divides power between the executive and legislative branches, quotes another passage from Tocqueville arguing that democracies “obey the impulse of passion rather than the suggestions of prudence” and “abandon a mature design for the gratification of a momentary caprice” (Herring, pp. 7–8).

  33. Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 43, entry for Mar. 28, 1861; Carpenter, Inner Life, p. 150.

  34. For a trenchant analysis of Lincoln’s innovations in executive power, see Schlesinger, Imperial Presidency, pp. 58–69. Schlesinger draws in part on the work of historians Edward Corwin and Quincy Wright. See, for example, Corwin, The President, pp. 263–69; and Wright, Control of American Foreign Relations, pp. 33 and 280. The Lincoln quote is in Oates, “Abraham Lincoln: Republican in the White House,” p. 99. For a study of Union and Confederate state building during the Civil War, see Bensel, Yankee Leviathan (Cambridge, 1990), ch. 3.

  35. Howard Jones sees Lincoln as “a born diplomat” with “a calm and patient demeanor, a trusting yet careful and genteel temperament, unquestioned integrity, an interest in listening to advice and learning from those who disagreed with him, and a willingness to compromise on issues requiring no sacrifice of principles.” (Jones, Blue and Gray Diplomacy, p. 21.) Dean Mahin finds that Lincoln’s “experience as a lawyer, politician, legislator, and debater had honed his skills in communication, negotiation, and compromise” (Mahin, p. 9).

  36. Palmerston quoted in Bourne, Palmerston: The Early Years, p. 308 (“occult science”). On Washington’s farewell, evidence suggests that Lincoln likely read more than one biography of Washington that included the full text of the document. See Bray, “What Abraham Lincoln Read,” for a careful analysis of Lincoln’s reading habits. Bray considers Washington’s farewell to be “of obvious importance in the formation of Lincoln’s mature thought.” See also Lincoln, “Proclamation for Celebration of Washington’s Birthday,” Feb. 19, 1862, CWL, v. 5, p. 136; and Edward Haight to Lincoln, Feb. 17, 1862, ALP, LOC. Walter Lippmann, in his 1943 classic, U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic, makes much of Washington’s advice, and takes the famous phrase about “our interest guided by justice” as his epigraph. (Lippmann, U.S. Foreign Policy, epigraph and p. 177.)

  37. Lincoln to George Robertson, Aug, 15, 1855, CWL, v. 2, p. 318.

  38. Allen Guelzo, himself a top-notch Lincoln scholar, sees the past 15 years as the “golden age of Lincoln studies.” For a more thorough discussion of the methods used by Burlingame and other modern Lincoln biographers, see Guelzo, “The Bicentennial Lincolns,” Claremont Review of Books, v. 10, no. 1 (winter 2009–2010), pp. 45–46.

  39. Frederic S. Cozzens to Manton Marble, Oct. 12, 1867, Manton Marble Papers, LOC. A transcript of this letter is in the Ruth Randall Papers, LOC. Cozzens recalls in this letter that the Polish Count Adam Gurowski, who worked as a translator at the State Department for nearly two years, used to refer to Mary as “that ‘Sprinkfieldt B—ch,’ ” imitating the count’s accent. Since this is a recollection of a spoken phrase, I have regularized the spelling in the text. In 1862 Gurowski published a candid diary that was critical of many administration figures (including the president, who he wrote possessed a “rather slow intellect”). He was eventually fired from the State Department—which may account for some of his animosity toward Mary Lincoln. President Lincoln himself worried to his bodyguard that Gurowski might try to assassinate him. “It would be just like him to do such a thing,” Lincoln mused. See Lamon, Recollections, p. 274; and “Gurowski,” in Heidler and Heidler, eds., Encyclopedia of the American Civil War, pp. 902–3.

  40. Plumb to Thomas Corwin, Jan. 29, 1862, Plumb Papers, LOC; Pike to William Pitt Fessenden, Sept. 3, 1863, Pike Papers, LOC. In a letter to Pike in a separate collection of the diplomat’s personal papers, Adam Gurowski gripes about “pighead Lincoln”—another example of such intra-department grumbling. See Gurowski to Pike, Aug. 30, 1861, Pike Papers, University of Maine. Thomas Schoonover, in Dollars Over Dominion (Baton Rouge, 1978), makes good use of much of the Plumb and Pike correspondence, though he does not include Plumb’s account of the White House reception or the Pike material from Maine.

  41. See Magness and Page, Colonization After Emancipation (Columbia, Mo., 2011), for intriguing new evidence that Lincoln was more committed to colonization than previously understood. Eric Foner’s recent Pulitzer Prize winner, The Fiery Trial, offers much thoughtful discussion of Lincoln and colonization. Gary Dillard Joiner uses the Sherman quote in his study One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: The Red River Campaign of 1864 (Lanham, Md., 2003). The quote about “great blunders” is from Bigelow to Edward L. Pierce, Oct. 6, 1892, in Bigelow, Retrospections, v. 3, p. 628. Lippmann is quoted in Robert A. Divine, Second Chance (New York, 1967), p. 181; and McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State, p. 152. McDougall emphasizes the human element throughout his 1997 study of U.S. foreign policy. “Americans,” he writes, “are at once typically flawed human beings, unique individualists obsessed with both justice and money, and citizens of the most powerful, hence potentially the most corruptible, country on earth. That observation may be less than profound, but it is the beginning of wisdom about American behavior in the state of nature called world politics.… Much of the time we have simply been human, pursuing our short-term self-interest more or less skillfully, and the rest of the world be damned” (McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State, pp. 1–2). When it comes to Lincoln, the president’s law partner, William Herndon, was one of the earliest Lincoln biographers to challenge the apotheosis. “No man is absolutely perfect,” Herndon told a lecture audience in Dec. 1865. �
�We are not gods—nor goddesses, just yet” (Herndon, “Analysis of the Character of Abraham Lincoln,” p. 347). More recently, Jon Meacham has admired this quality in the best Lincoln biographies. See Meacham, “ ‘The Lincoln Anthology’ edited by Harold Holzer, ‘The Best American History Essays on Lincoln’ edited by Sean Wilentz, Ronald C. White’s biography ‘A. Lincoln’ and others,” The Los Angeles Times, Feb. 1, 2009.

  42. Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas, preface (first foreign war); David Davis to his wife, June 7, 1847, Davis Papers, ALPLM; Davis to his wife, June 25, 1847, ibid; Sangamo Journal, July 8, 1847. Robert W. Johannsen’s study of the war contends that “[i]t was the first American war to rest on a truly popular base” (Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas, p. 16). For the final quote see Melville to Gansevoort Melville, May 29, 1846, in Davis and Gilman, eds., The Letters of Herman Melville, p. 28; and Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas, p. 10.

  43. White, A. Lincoln, p. 139. On Lincoln lobbying for the congressional nomination, see, for example, Lincoln to Henry E. Dummer, Nov. 18, 1845, CWL, vol 1., p. 350; Lincoln to Benjamin F. James, Dec. 6, 1845, CWL, v. 1, pp. 351–52; Lincoln to N. J. Rockwell, Jan. 21, 1846, CWL, v. 1, p. 359. On the Lincolns’ aspirations for Washington, see also David Davis to his wife, Aug. 8, 1847, Davis Papers, ALPLM; and Burlingame, Inner World, p. 309 (“loom largely” etc.).

  44. Mary Lincoln biographer Ruth Randall, too, found this episode easy to visualize. She notes that her “imagination likes to play upon the Lincoln family” as they traveled on a riverboat during a leg of this trip (Randall, Mary Lincoln, p. 105). See also White, A. Lincoln, p. 139 (foliage etc.). The final quote is from Lincoln to William Henry Herndon, Dec. 13, 1847, CWL, v. 1, p. 420.

  CHAPTER ONE: LINCOLN VS. HERNDON

  1. Richard W. Thompson, “Abraham Lincoln,” Richard W. Thompson Papers, ALPLM, pp. 10, 14–15; Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 37 (nervous). For a description of the House chamber, see the Rockford Forum, May 2, 1848, in Riddle, Congressman Lincoln, p. 74; Watterston, A New Guide to Washington, pp. 24–26; Dickens, American Notes, pp. 293–95; Maria Horsford to her children, quoted in Findley, A. Lincoln: The Crucible of Congress, p. 97; John J. Hardin to [David Allen Smith], Jan. 23, 1844, Hardin Family Papers, Chicago History Museum, quoted in ALAL, v. 1, p. 262; John J. Hardin to Eliza Caldwell Browning, Dec. 26, 1843, Orville H. Browning Papers, ALPLM, quoted in ALAL, v. 1, p. 264. Michael Burlingame, in ALAL, v. 1, pp. 261–64 and 266–68, offers a particularly complete and vivid description of the House and Lincoln’s speech.

  2. On Lincoln’s public speaking anxieties, see Henry C. Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln (Boston, 1892), p. 37, cited in RW, p. 492; Lincoln to Herndon, Jan. 8, 1848, CWL, v. 1, p. 430; and ALAL, v. 1, pp. 267–68. For an excellent physical description of Lincoln, see Herndon, “Analysis of the Character of Abraham Lincoln,” pp. 356–59. See also Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln, p. 91; and Oates, With Malice Toward None, loc. 437 (pants).

  3. Lincoln, “ ‘Spot’ Resolutions,” Dec. 22, 1847, CWL, v. 1, p. 421.

  4. Watterston, A New Guide to Washington, pp. 25–26; Baker, p. 140 (red-and-gold). On Lincoln’s voice see Herndon, Herndon’s Lincoln, p. 248; and Thomas, Portrait for Posterity, p. 107. For Lincoln’s Mexican War remarks, see “Speech in the United States House of Representatives: The War with Mexico,” Jan. 12, 1848, in CWL, v. 1, pp. 431–42.

  5. Hudson River Chronicle (SingSing, N.Y.), Aug. 15, 1848, quoted in Foner, Fiery Trial, p. 53 (“abundance of gesture”); Omaha Daily Bee, Feb. 9, 1896, cited in ALAL, v. 1, p. 166 (hold him in place); William Henry Herndon to Truman Bartlett, July 19, 1887, in Hertz, The Hidden Lincoln, p. 191 (“bony forefinger”); Lincoln to Herndon, Feb. 1, 1848, in CWL, v. 1, p. 448 (rushed through).

  6. Merry, p. 27 (“silent contempt”); Beveridge, v. 2, p. 131 (lengthy diary); Boritt, “Lincoln’s Opposition to the Mexican War,” p. 91 (sending copies home); Lincoln to Herndon, Jan. 19, 1848, in CWL, v. 1, p. 445 (“I have made a speech”).

  7. Howe, What Hath God Wrought, pp. 738–39 (acted provocatively); Baltimore Patriot, n.d., copied in the Rockford Forum, Jan. 19, 1848; Illinois State Register, Jan. 14, 1848; Jan. 28, 1848; Mar. 10, 1848; Missouri Republican quoted in Greenberg, A Wicked War, p. 253.

  8. Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History, p. 184; Bauer, p. 384 (terms); Foote, Civil War, v. 1, locs. 258–70 (territory gained).

  9. HL, p. 177 (“very heart”); Herndon to Theodore Parker, Nov. 27, 1858, quoted in Newton, Lincoln and Herndon, pp. 245–46 (“mud instinct”); Herndon to Jesse Weik, Feb. 11, 1887, HW, LOC.

  10. Lincoln to Herndon, Feb. 1, 1848, CWL, v. 1, pp. 446–48. For the point about the signoff, see Donald, “We Are Lincoln Men,” pp. 78, 99–100.

  11. Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, p. 185 (romantic era). On the rationales for expansionism, see Weinberg, Manifest Destiny, pp. 13–16, 101. For the first Whitman quote, see Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sept. 23, 1847, quoted in McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State, p. 95 (“best kind”). See ch. 4, “Expansionism, or Manifest Destiny (so called),” for an insightful discussion of the topic. See also Howe, What Hath God Wrought, p. 769 (“miserable, inefficient”).

  12. Joseph Fort Newton, however, contends that Herndon was “essentially religious.” (Newton, Lincoln and Herndon, p. 154.) On Lincoln’s unorthodox religious beliefs see Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Grand Rapids, 1999); White, Lincoln’s Greatest Speech (New York, 2002); and Winger, Lincoln, Religion, and Romantic Cultural Politics (DeKalb, 2003). On Herndon the reformer, see Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, p. 60. Prof. Donald’s work represents the most thorough examination of the Lincoln-Herndon relationship. See Lincoln’s Herndon (New York, 1948); Lincoln (New York, 1995); and “We Are Lincoln Men”: Abraham Lincoln and His Friends (New York, 2003). Joseph Fort Newton’s study, Lincoln and Herndon (Cedar Rapids, 1910), also includes much useful material.

  13. Richard Carwardine has observed that Lincoln was “no provincial hick,” adding that his “horizons stretched across the 19th-century world.” Carwardine’s essay in The Global Lincoln collects much evidence to support this thesis. He also notes that “Lincoln’s reading gave him a keen sense of the United States’ escape from the autocratic forces of the Old World. In this he was essentially a creature of his time: in the young Republic the experience of the revolutionary generation shaped a persisting, if fading, collective American memory of the war of independence from tyrannical rule.” (Carwardine, “Lincoln’s Horizons,” Global Lincoln, pp. 32–37.) Cf. the traditional view, affirmed recently by George Herring, who observes that Lincoln “had traveled only to Canada, knew no foreign languages, and even by nineteenth-century-American standards would be considered provincial.” (Herring, p. 228.) See also Dennis F. Hanks interview with Herndon, June 13, 1865, in HI, p. 36 (“strings of them”); ALAL, v. 1, p. 18 (with respect); Lincoln, “Address to the New Jersey State Senate,” Feb. 21, 1861, in CWL, v. 4, p. 235 (“something more than common”); Washington’s farewell address is quoted in Ramsay, Life of George Washington, p. 298. Lincoln’s cousin Dennis Hanks recalls Lincoln borrowing Ramsay’s Washington. (Dennis F. Hanks interview with Herndon, June 13, 1865, in HI, p. 41.)

  14. Dennis F. Hanks to William Henry Herndon, Dec. 24, 1865, in HI, p. 146; HL, p. 49 (“field songs”); Lair, Songs Lincoln Loved, p. 19 (“None Can Love”); David Turnham to Herndon, Sept. 16, 1865, in HI, p. 129. For the Sinbad quote, I have used Sir Richard Burton’s 1885 translation, despite the fact that it was not yet available in Lincoln’s day. Burton’s translation is the most widely quoted, and no record exists of which edition Lincoln may have read. (Burton, trans., The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor [Lawrence, Kan., 1999], p. 15.) See also Oates, With Malice Toward None, loc. 226 (“spider”).

  15. Carpenter, Inner Life, pp. 97–98.

  16. Campanella’s Lincoln in New Orleans (Lafayette, 2010) is a terrific recent study. See pp. 1, 12–13, 70, 123, 156–57, and 235. See also Donald,
Lincoln, p. 34–35; Howe, What Hath God Wrought, p. 10; Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, pp. 17–18; Tocqueville quoted in Foner, The Fiery Trial, p. 10.

  17. Lincoln, “Communication to the People of Sangamo County,” Mar. 9, 1832, CWL, v. 1, pp. 5–8; and “Campaign Circular from the Whig Committee,” Mar. 4, 1843, CWL, v. 1, pp. 311–12. Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame has collected examples of anonymous newspaper articles, probably by Lincoln, that also make this point.

  18. This and the following paragraphs are drawn primarily from Herndon and Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, pp. 66–67 and 125–26; Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, pp. 4–5; Beveridge, v. 1, p. 118, and v. 2, p. 2; and Newton, Lincoln and Herndon, pp. 4–10. The editors of the best edition of Herndon’s Lincoln biography, Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, point out that in later years Herndon himself was not completely confident in his memory of the details of this incident. In 1888 he wrote to his collaborator, Jesse Weik: “Try and get me right—If L came up to Bogues mill I saw Lincoln, & if he did not then I did not see him at Bogues mill.” (Herndon to Weik, Nov. 10, 1888, HW, LOC.) See also Newton, Herndon and Lincoln, pp. 4–5; HL, p. 66 (“lost in boyish wonder”).

  19. ALAL, v. 1, p. 67 (“British Band”); Howe, What Hath God Wrought, pp. 418–19 (Black Hawk); Lincoln, “Speech in the U.S. House of Representatives on the Presidential Question,” July 27, 1848, CWL, v. 1, pp. 501–16 (mosquitoes); “Conversation with Hon. J. T. Stuart, June 23, 1875,” Hay Papers, Brown University, in Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln, p. 8.

  20. Royal Clary interview with Herndon, [Oct. 1866?,] in HI, pp. 370–73; ALAL, v. 1, p. 68; Browne, The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 107, quoted in ibid.

  21. In one 1836 article, published under the name “Johnny Blubberhead,” a writer who was likely Lincoln sarcastically “bemoaned the failure of the country to go to war with England in order to enhance Martin Van Buren’s electoral prospects.” In another ironic letter, Lincoln, pretending to be a Democratic congressman, lamented the fact that America would not gin up a war against France (ALAL, v. 1, pp. 107–8). The Lyceum speech is in CWL, v. 1, pp. 108–15. There is much debate among Lincoln scholars over the identity of the “towering genius” Lincoln sees as a threat in this speech. Edmund Wilson, the novelist Gore Vidal, and others have suggested that Lincoln may have been subconsciously referring to himself (Wilson, Patriotic Gore, pp. 106–8). Allen Guelzo suggests the genius is Martin Van Buren (Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, p. 91). Michael Burlingame nominates Stephen Douglas. (ALAL, v. 1, pp. 140–41.)