Norman D. Hellmers, superintendent of the Lincoln National Home Site, guided me through the Lincoln home in Springfield and generously shared with me his enormously detailed knowledge of the history of the Lincoln family.
I have had the inestimable good fortune of receiving personally conducted tours of the White House, including the upstairs living quarters, from President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy and from President and Mrs. George Bush.
Numerous scholars and collectors have given me the benefit of their special information and insights, and I am especially grateful to Gabor S. Boritt, Michael A. Burlingame, Joan Cashin, Glen L. Carle, Stanley H. Cath, Eric T. Freyfogle, the late Arnold Gates, Robert Giroux, William F. Hanna, Harold Holzer, Ari A. Hoogenboom, Harold M. Hyman, Richard R. John, Jane Langton, Dick Levinson, John Niven, Matthew Pinsker, H. Douglas Price, Steven K. Rogstad, Scott Sandage, Rex Scouten, Louise Taper, Paul Verduin, and J. Harvey Young.
Through the generosity of Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., Philip B. Kunhardt III, and Peter W. Kunhardt, I have been permitted to borrow extensively from the incomparable Meserve-Kunhardt Collection of photographs. Gerald J. Prokopowicz and Carolyn Texley have been equally gracious in sharing the rich photographic resources of the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Rex W. Scouten, the curator of the White House, has made the Lincoln materials in that great collection available to me. Robert W. Remini helped me gain access to the Chicago Historical Society, where Diane Ryan made the collection of prints and photographs available. To Professor and Mrs. Gabor S. Boritt of Gettysburg College and to Mr. Jack Smith of South Bend, Indiana, I am indebted for permission to reproduce rare drawings and prints from their collections.
My interpretation of Lincoln’s political philosophy and religious views has been much influenced by the ideas of John Rawls, who collaborated with me in teaching the first seminar ever offered on Abraham Lincoln at Harvard University. Thanks to an invitation from John C. Perry and the other trustees of the Bemis Fund, I was encouraged to explore some of these ideas before my fellow townsmen in Lincoln, Massachusetts, in a public lecture titled “Learning to Be President.” I had a further occasion to test them when I delivered the Samuel Paley Lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where Yehoshua Arieli, Menahem Blondheim, and Shlomo Slonim were my gracious hosts. In January 1990,1 was afforded the opportunity of presenting a preliminary view of the Lincoln family in the White House when President George Bush invited me to give the inaugural lecture in his Presidential Lecture Series on the presidency.
I have learned most of all from the scholars who took time from their own important researches to read and criticize drafts of my chapters. Daniel Aaron of Harvard University went through every page of the manuscript, pointing out repetition and infelicitous language. My sections on Lincoln’s assassination have been greatly strengthened by the expert review that Terry Alford of Northern Virginia Community College gave them. Cullom Davis and William Beard of the Lincoln Legal Papers closely examined my chapters that deal with Lincoln’s legal practice, and they have saved me countless errors. Aida Donald, editor-in-chief of the Harvard University Press, gave the manuscript the benefit of her expert judgment of style and substance. Robert W. Johannsen of the University of Illinois reviewed the entire manuscript, offering especially valuable advice on Stephen A. Douglas and the Illinois Democratic party. A close reading by Mark E. Neely of St. Louis University caught dozens of errors, great and small, and provided much needed perspective on Lincoln’s handling of civil liberties. Wayne C. Temple, deputy director of the Illinois State Archives, gave a detailed criticism of the entire manuscript and shared with me his incomparable expertise on Lincoln’s early career.
To my editor, Alice E. Mayhew, and the other members of the editorial team at Simon & Schuster, including Sarah Baker, Eric Steel, and Roger Labrie, who have seen the book through the press, I am greatly indebted for encouragement and support. I also want to thank Victoria Meyer, who was in charge of publicity, and Frank and Eve Metz, at Simon & Schuster. Fred Wiemer did a superb job of copyediting my difficult manuscript. Saving me countless errors, Kathryn Blatt did the heroic work of proofreading the entire book.
With so much assistance I should have written a perfect book, but, of course, I haven’t. I alone am responsible for all errors and misinterpretations.
CHAPTER ONE
Annals of the Poor
Abraham Lincoln was not interested in his ancestry. In his mind he was a self-made man, who had no need to care about his family tree. In 1859, when friends asked him for autobiographical information to help promote his chances for a presidential nomination, he offered only the barest outline of his family history: “My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families—second families, perhaps I should say.” The next year, when John Locke Scripps of the Chicago Tribune proposed to write his campaign biography, Lincoln told him: “Why Scripps,... it is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life. It can all be condensed into a single sentence, and that sentence you will find in Gray’s Elegy,
The short and simple annals of the poor.
That’s my life, and that’s all you or any one else can make of it.”
I
Lincoln knew almost nothing about his mother’s family, the Hankses, who moved from Virginia to Kentucky about 1780. They were a prolific tribe, for the most part illiterate but respectable farmers of modest means. Their family tree is hard to trace because for generation after generation they tended to name all the males James or John, and the females Polly, Lucy, or Nancy. Abraham Lincoln’s mother was one of at least eight Nancy Hankses born during the 1780s. Abraham Lincoln believed that his mother was illegitimate. It was a subject that he rarely discussed, but in the early 1850s, while driving his one-horse buggy from Springfield over to Petersburg, Illinois, he found himself talking about it. He and his law partner, William H. Herndon, were about to try a case in Menard County Court that involved a question of hereditary traits, and Lincoln observed that illegitimate children were “oftentimes sturdier and brighter than those born in lawful wedlock.” To prove his point he mentioned his mother, who he said was “the illegitimate daughter of Lucy Hanks and a well-bred Virginia farmer or planter.” From “this broad-minded, unknown Virginian” Lincoln believed he inherited the traits that distinguished him from the other members of his family: ambition, mental alertness, and the power of analysis.
Lincoln may well have been correct in reporting that his mother was born out of wedlock. A grand jury in Mercer County, Kentucky, presented a charge of fornication against his grandmother Lucy (or “Lucey,” as it is spelled in the old records), and there were several recorded instances of bastardy among Hanks women of her generation. Since no wedding certificate was ever found for Lucy, there was room for endless speculation about Lincoln’s maternal grandsire.
But Lincoln’s remarks—if Herndon accurately reported them after a lapse of many years—were not based on any research into his Hanks ancestry. Instead they reflected his sense that he was different from the people with whom he grew up. Like other gifted young men, he wondered how he could be the offspring of his ordinary and limited parents. Some in Lincoln’s generation fancied themselves the sons of the dauphin, who allegedly fled to America during the French Revolution. Lincoln imagined a noble Virginia ancestor.
Of his Lincoln ancestors he knew only a little more than he did about the Hankses. From his father he learned that his grandfather Abraham, for whom he was named, had moved from Virginia to Kentucky in the early 1780s. There was a vague family tradition that earlier Lincolns had lived in Pennsylvania, where they had been Quakers, but, as he recorded, the family had long since “fallen away from the peculiar habits of that people.” Apart from that, William Dean Howells reported in his 1860 campaign biography, there was only “incertitude, and absolute darkness” about Abraham Lincoln’s forebears.
Further research would have showed that the Lincolns did come from Virginia and that an earlier gen
eration had indeed belonged to the Society of Friends in Pennsylvania. In turn, these could be traced to the original Samuel Lincoln, who emigrated from the County of Norfolk, England, and settled in Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1637. A weaver in England, Samuel became a prosperous trader and businessman in America, where he was a pillar of the church and begat eleven children who bore names like Daniel, Thomas, Mordecai, and Sarah, which became traditional in the family. Samuel’s grandson Mordecai (1686–1736) was perhaps the most successful member of the family. An ironmaster and wealthy landowner in Pennsylvania, he was a member of the eighteenth-century economic and social elite; he married Hannah Slater, who was at once the daughter, the niece, and the granddaughter of members of the New Jersey assembly and the niece of the acting royal governor of that colony. It was their son, John Lincoln (1716–1788), who moved to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he established himself on a large farm in fertile Rockingham County. John was so successful that he could afford to give his son, Abraham Lincoln’s grandfather, 210 acres of the best soil in Virginia. In sum, Abraham Lincoln, instead of being the unique blossom on an otherwise barren family tree, belonged to the seventh American generation of a family with competent means, a reputation for integrity, and a modest record of public service.
II
A closer study of the historical records would also have given Abraham Lincoln a different, and probably a kindlier, view of his father, Thomas. It was Thomas’s father, the senior Abraham Lincoln, who sold his farm in Virginia and led his wife and five children over the mountains to seek their fortune. They had heard much of the rich lands in Kentucky from their distant relative, Daniel Boone, and they found in that vast, largely unsettled territory, which was still part of the Commonwealth of Virginia, all the opportunities Boone had promised. Within a few years the Lincolns owned at least 5,544 acres of land in the richest sections of Kentucky.
But the wilderness was dangerous. In 1786, while Abraham Lincoln and his three boys, Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas, were planting a cornfield on their new property, Indians attacked them. Abraham was killed instantly. Mordecai, at fifteen the oldest son, sent Josiah running to the settlement half a mile away for help while he raced to a nearby cabin. Peering out of a crack between logs, he saw an Indian sneaking out of the forest toward his eight-year-old brother, Thomas, who was still sitting in the field beside their father’s body. Mordecai picked up a rifle, aimed at a silver pendant on the Indian’s chest, and killed him before he could reach the boy. This story in later years Thomas Lincoln repeated over and over again, so that it became, as Abraham said, “the legend more strongly than all others imprinted upon my mind and memory.”
Both Thomas Lincoln and his son seem to have overlooked the economic consequences of the tragedy. According to Virginia law, which prevailed in the Kentucky region, the ancient rule of primogeniture was still in effect, and Mordecai Lincoln, the oldest son, inherited his father’s entire estate when he came of age. In due course he became a respected citizen of Washington County, Kentucky, a man of considerable property, who was interested in breeding horses. The only Lincoln relative whom Abraham Lincoln ever knew, Mordecai was a man of considerable wit and great natural gifts, and his nephew once remarked that “Uncle Mord had run off with all the talents of the family.” He had also, in effect, run off with all the money. Left without a patrimony, the other two Lincoln boys had to fend for themselves.
Thomas, the youngest, had a difficult time. The tragedy abruptly ended his prospects of being an heir of a well-to-do Kentucky planter; he had to earn his board and keep. Abraham Lincoln never fully understood how hard his father had to struggle during his early years. It required an immense effort for Thomas, who earned three shillings a day for manual labor or made a little more when he did carpentry or cabinetmaking, to accumulate enough money to buy his first farm, a 238-acre tract on Mill Creek, in Hardin County, Kentucky. He became a familiar figure in Elizabethtown and Hogdenville, a stocky, well-built man of no more than average height, with a shock of straight black hair and an unusually large nose. “He was an uneducated man, a plain unpretending plodding man,” a neighbor remembered; one who “attended to his work, peaceable—quiet and good natured.” “Honest” was the adjective most frequently used to describe Thomas Lincoln, and he was respected in his community, where he served in the militia and was called for jury duty. Never wealthy, Thomas owned a respectable amount of property, by 1814 ranking fifteenth (out of ninety-eight listed) in the county.
In 1806 he married Nancy Hanks, and they probably lived at Mill Creek, about five miles north of Elizabethtown, where their first child, Sarah, was born. By 1809, Thomas Lincoln had bought another farm, this time one of three hundred acres, on the south fork of Nolin Creek (not far from Hogdenville). It was called the Sinking Spring Farm, because it had a magnificent spring that bubbled from the bottom of a deep cave. Here, on a little knoll near the spring, he built a one-room log cabin, measuring sixteen by eighteen feet. The sturdy building, which had only a dirt floor and no glass window, was as large as about 90 percent of the pioneer cabins of the region.
Here Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809. He had no recollection of the place of his birth, because his parents moved before he was two years old. The land on the Sinking Spring Farm proved very poor, “a barren waste, so to speak,” as one contemporary described it, “save some little patches on the creek bottoms,” and Thomas quickly learned that it would not support his family. He bought a smaller but more fertile farm, some ten miles to the northeast, on Knob Creek.
Here, once again, the family lived, as did most of their neighbors, in a one-room log cabin, but the setting was beautiful. The creek, which ran through the property, was so clear that you could see a pebble in ten feet of water; the bottomland, where Thomas planted corn, was rich and easy to cultivate; and on both sides rose small, steep hills, so clearly defined and separate as to be called “knobs”—after which the creek was named.
It was of this Knob Creek farm that Abraham Lincoln had his earliest memories, but few of them concerned his mother, who remains a shadowy image. It is not even clear what she looked like. No one ever bothered to draw a likeness of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and the age of photography was far in the future. Many years later those who had known her described her variously as being tall or of average height, thin or stout, beautiful or plain. Most agreed that she was “brilliant” or “intellectual.” According to tradition, she was able to read, but, like many other frontier women, she did not know how to write and had to sign legal documents with an X. Abraham must have remembered how his mother set up housekeeping, cooked the family meals, washed and mended the scanty clothing that her husband and children wore, and perhaps helped in the farming. But of her life on Knob Creek he recorded only that she gave birth to a third child, named Thomas, who died in infancy. On the rare occasions in later years when he mentioned her, he referred to his “angel mother,” partly in recognition of her loving affection, but partly to distinguish her from his stepmother, who was very much alive. If he ever said, as Herndon reported, “God bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her,” it was a tribute not so much to her maternal care as to the genes that she allegedly transmitted from his unnamed grandfather.
Lincoln’s Knob Creek recollections were of working in what he called “the big field,” of seven acres, where his father planted corn and the son followed, dropping two pumpkin seeds in every other hill on every other row. Once, as he remembered, there was a big rain in the hills, though not a drop fell in the valley, and “the water coming down through the gorges washed ground, corn, pumpkin seed and all clear off the field.” He also remembered going for two brief periods to an “A.B.C. school,” some two miles from the Lincolns’ cabin, where he was sent, according to a relative, “more as company for his sister than with the expectation that he would learn much.” It was first taught by one Zachariah Riney, about whom little is known except that he was a Catholic, and then by Caleb Hazel, who
, according to a contemporary, “could perhaps teach spelling, reading and indifferent writing and perhaps could cipher to the rule of three, but had no other qualifications of a teacher, except large size and bodily strength to thrash any boy or youth that came to his school.” Abraham probably mastered the alphabet, but he did not yet know how to write when the family left Kentucky.
In general, young Lincoln seems to have been an entirely average little boy, who enjoyed playing, hunting, and fishing. Perhaps he was quieter than his playmates and kept his clothes clean longer, but there was not much to distinguish him. As a relative declared, “Abe exhibited no special traits in K[entuck]y except a good kind—somewhat wild nature.”
III
In 1816, when Abraham was only seven years old, the Lincolns moved across the Ohio River to Indiana. Many years later he stated, quite accurately, that his father left Kentucky “partly on account of slavery; but chiefly on account of the difficulty in land titles in Ky.” In Thomas Lincoln’s mind the two causes were interrelated. He had religious grounds for disliking slavery. He and his wife joined the Separate Baptist Church, whose members accepted traditional Baptist beliefs, like predestination and opposition to infant baptism, but refused to endorse any formal creed. Adhering to a very strict code of morality, which condemned profanity, intoxication, gossip, horse racing, and dancing, most of the Separate Baptists were opposed to slavery. Abraham shared his parents’ views. He was “naturally anti-slavery,” he remarked in 1864, adding, “I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel.”
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