Lincoln

by David Herbert Donald

549 “the public good”: Tidwell, Come Retribution, p. 234.

  549 “of such means”: Ibid., p. 235.

  549 retaliation against Lincoln: Joseph George, Jr., “‘Black Flag Warfare’: Lincoln and the Raids Against Richmond and Jefferson Davis,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 115 (July 1991): 317–318. Jefferson Davis himself knew of Confederate plans to kidnap Lincoln, and he was the more willing to entertain the idea, because he believed there had been several Northern-inspired plots against his own life. (Davis to J. William Jones, May 10, 1876, Davis Personal Papers, Virginia State Library; J. Thomas Scharf, interview with Jefferson Davis, July 8, 1887, in Baltimore Sunday Herald, July 10, 1887.) The Confederate President discussed the proposed kidnapping with his young adjutant, Colonel Walter H. Taylor, who was, Davis said much later, “the only man who ever talked to me on the subject of his [Lincoln’s] capture or at least the only one who I believed intended to do what he proposed.” But he declined to endorse Taylor’s plan “on the ground that the attempt would probably involve the killing, instead of bringing away the captive alive” (Davis to Taylor, Aug. 31, 1889, C. Seymour Bullock MSS, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina). Immediately afterward Davis reported this conversation to his wife, saying that “Taylor was a brave man and of course did not see that Mr. Lincoln could not be captured alive.” After Davis explained that “the plan was impracticable for that reason if for no other,” Taylor agreed to drop it, because he “would not lend himself to a plan of assassination any more than I would” (Varina Howells Davis to Henry T. Loutham, May 10, 1898, Jefferson Davis MSS, University of Alabama). For all these references on Davis, Taylor, and the kidnapping plot, I am indebted to Professor Joan E. Cashin.

  549 Thomas Nelson Conrad: For an excellent account of Conrad’s scheme, see Terry Alford, “The Silken Net: Plots to Abduct Abraham Lincoln During the Civil War” (unpublished paper, Annandale, Va., Apr. 21, 1987).

  549 “and at hand”: Anonymous to AL, Sept. 21, 1864, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  550 “plug-hat”: Lamon, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, pp. 266–269, places this episode in 1862, but Tidwell, Come Retribution, p. 237, shows that it occurred in Aug. 1864.

  550 “humiliating failure”: Alford, “The Silken Net.”

  550 “threats like these”: John W. Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), 2:425.

  550 “nineteen enemies”: Carpenter, Six Months, p. 276. See also Harry J. Carman and Reinhard H. Luthin, Lincoln and the Patronage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), chap. 11.

  550 “more substantial service”: Wayne C. Temple and Justin G. Turner, “Lincoln’s ‘Castine’: Noah Brooks,” LH 73 (Fall 1971): 170.

  551 “cases—not principles”: John T. Hall to AL, Oct. 17, 1864, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  552 “otherwise certainly attain”: Segal, Conversations, p. 361.

  552 “opinions are known”: David M. Silver, Lincoln’s Supreme Court (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956), pp. 207–208.

  552 “the rest hold back”: Segal, Conversations, p. 361.

  552 had given him: Kenneth A. Bernard, Lincoln and the Music of the Civil War (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1966), pp. 278–279.

  552 “than do it.”): Virginia Woodbury Fox, Diary, Dec. 10, 1864, Levi Woodbury MSS, LC.

  552 “a reasonable objection”: Undated memorandum of a conversation with AL, Lamon MSS, HEH.

  553 “if not fearful”: CW, 8:181.

  553 “whole detached force”: CW, 8:l48n.

  553 “bales of cotton”: W. T. Sherman to AL, Dec. 22, 1864, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  553 “a great light”: CW, 8:182.

  553 “any respect whatsoever”: Congressional Globe, 38 Cong., 2 sess. (Dec. 15, 1864), pp. 50–51.

  553 Era of Good Feeling: Washington Daily National Intelligencer, Jan. 17, 1865.

  554 “will of the majority”: CW, 8:149.

  554 “to a close”: Segal, Conversations, pp. 362–364.

  554 “man in America”: Fawn Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1959), p. 204.

  554 “in these matters”: Nicolay and Hay, 10:85; Donald, Sumner, p. 194n.

  554 influenced his change: Allan G. Bogue, The Earnest Men: Republicans of the Civil War Senate (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981), p. 253n.

  554 “all the evils”: CW, 8:254.

  555 “to be in it”: CW, 8:248.

  555 “they smelt Peace”: J. M. Ashley to WHH, Nov. 23, 1866, HWC; Arlin Turner, “Elizabeth Peabody Visits Lincoln, February, 1865,” New England Quarterly 48 (Mar. 1975): 119–120.

  555 was an armistice: Brooks D. Simpson, Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 73.

  555 ending the war: Kirkland, The Peacemakers of 1864, pp. 218–222, 236n.

  556 “shall be adopted”: CW, 8:151–152.

  556 “by Constitutional Amendments”: The best account of Singleton’s expedition is in Randall, Lincoln the President, 4:330–331.

  556 “when Savannah falls”: Blair’s detailed memorandum of his visit to Richmond and his conversations with Jefferson Davis, to which the cataloguer has given the date of January 12, 1865, is in the Lincoln MSS, LC. For an excellent account of the background of Blair’s mission, see Howard C. Westwood, “Lincoln and the Hampton Road Peace Conference,” LH 81 (Winter 1979): 243–256.

  557 “one common country”: CW, 8:220–221.

  557 two separate countries: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1895), ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 3, p. 297.

  557 meet with them: CW, 8:282.

  557 “one in authority”: Ibid.

  557 “so much husk”: Sandburg, 4:45.

  557 would be taken: Because there was no agenda and because no notes were taken, it is not possible to re-create the exact sequence of the topics discussed. The following pages draw on Lincoln’s brief report to Congress (CW, 8:284–285); on Stephens’s account in A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States (Philadelphia: National Publishing Co., 1870), 2:599–619; on Hunter’s report to Jefferson Davis, in Dunbar Rowland, ed., Jefferson Davis: Constitutionalist (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1923), 8:133–136; and on Campbell’s accounts in Reminiscences and Documents Relating to the Civil War During the Year 1865 (Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1887), pp. 8–19, and in Southern Historical Society Papers, new ser., 4 (Oct. 1917): 45–52. For a collation of these and other statements concerning the discussion, see Julian S. Carr, The Hampton Roads Conference (Durham, N.C.: 1917).

  559 “ended without result”: CW, 8:284–285.

  559 “in active exercise”: Southern Historical Society Papers, new ser., 4 (Oct. 1917): 48; Stephens, Constitutional View, 2:610–611.

  559 “of judicial tribunals”: Browning, Diary, 1:694.

  559 “of the Union”: Ibid., 1:699.

  560 “slavery as stated”: Stephens, Constitutional View, 2:617; Rowland, Jefferson Davis: Constitutionalist, 8:134; Southern Historical Society Papers, new ser., 4 (Oct. 1917): 51.

  560 was ratified: CW, 8:260–261.

  560 “and property destroyed”: John G. Nicolay, interview with John P. Usher, Oct. 11, 1877, Nicolay MSS, LC.

  561 “[the offer was] made”: Welles, Diary, 2:237.

  561 “come from us”: Francis Fessenden, Life and Public Services of William Pitt Fessenden (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1907), 2:7–8.

  561 “disapproved by them “: CW, 8:260–261.

  562 the Southern states: For an excellent account of Ashley’s bill and the proposed compromise between the President and Congress, see Belz, Reconstructing the Union, chap. 9.

  562 “an immense political act”: Charles Sumner to Francis Lieber, [Dec. 1864], Sumner MSS, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  562 “refuse to vote”: Hay, Diary
, pp. 244–246.

  562 “pass this Congress”: Belz, Reconstructing the Union, pp. 264–265.

  562 “and not ours”: Michael Les Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863–1869 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1974), p. 93.

  563 throughout the nation: On the problems connected with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, see J. G. Randall, Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1951), pp. 396–401.

  563 “on all sides”: LaWanda Cox, Lincoln and Black Freedom: A Study in Presidential Leadership (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1981), makes a powerful argument for Lincoln’s quiet support of Negro suffrage. See esp. pp. 117–119, 129–130.

  564 “He is dictator”: Benedict, A Compromise of Principle, p. 85.

  564 “St. Paul’s time”: Donald, Sumner, p. 203.

  564 “the proposed Senators?”: CW, 8:206–207.

  564 “and a wrong”: Donald, Sumner, p. 204.

  564 “centralized power”: Nicolay and Hay, 10:85.

  565 on his arm: Donald, Sumner, pp. 205–207.

  565 “at home and abroad”: Herbert Mitgang, ed., Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), p. 440.

  565 “end to end”: P. J. Staudenraus, ed.The Irrelevancy of the ‘Wadsworth Letter,’” , Mr. Lincoln’s Washington (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1967), p. 419.

  565 “from her escutcheon”: CW, 8:216–217, 235.

  565 “melancholy reflections”: Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 37.

  565 “Johnson speak outside”: For a full account of Johnson’s performance, see George Fort Milton, The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals (New York: Coward-McCann, 1930), pp. 145–148.

  565 “over the scene”: For Lincoln’s appearance at this time, see the photographs made by Henry F. Warren on the White House balcony, March 6, 1865, in Charles A. Hamilton and Lloyd Ostendorf, Lincoln in Photographs: An Album of Every Known Pose (Dayton, Ohio: Morningside, 1985), p. 400.

  566 “of prosperous peace”: Salmon P. Chase to Mary Lincoln, Mar. 4, 1865, Lincoln MSS, LC. Most observers said the sun came out when Lincoln began to speak. Chase, as usual self-centered, thought it burst forth when he stepped forward to administer the oath of office.

  566 the most memorable: The text is in CW, 8:332–333. The most thoughtful analysis of the second inaugural is William Lee Miller, “Lincoln’s Second Inaugural: The Zenith of Statecraft,” Center Magazine 13 (July-Aug. 1980): 53–64.

  566 “governing the world”: CW, 8:356.

  567 “of either party”: CW, 5:403–404.

  567 of exact retribution: Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 206–208.

  567 “the offence cometh!”: Matthew 18:7. (The Revised Standard Version offers a clearer translation of this somewhat puzzling verse: “Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the man by whom the temptation comes.”) See Fred Somkin, “Scripture Notes to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural,” Civil War History 27 (June 1981): 172–173. For other biblical quotations and resonances in the second inaugural, see Herbert Joseph Edwards and John Erskine Hankins, Lincoln the Writer (Orono: University of Maine, 1962), pp. 104–105.

  567 “righteous altogether’”: Psalms 19:9.

  567 never ending bloodshed: For astute commentary, see Don E. Fehrenbacher, Lincoln in Text and Context (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 162–163.

  567 “altar of Freedom”: CW, 8:116–117. The later discovery that only two of Mrs. Bixby’s sons were killed does not diminish the sincerity or eloquence of Lincoln’s letter. See F. Lauriston Bullard, Abraham Lincoln & the Widow Bixby (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1946). For years there has been controversy over John Hay’s assertion that he, rather than the President, was the author of the Bixby letter. Most experts question Hay’s claim, of which we have only indirect reports made many years later. See the pungent article in Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), pp. 28–29. But the question has recently been reopened by Michael Burlingame, who offers some suggestive but far from conclusive evidence pointing toward Hay’s authorship in “New Light on the Bixby Letter,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 16 (1995): 59–71.

  568 “printed in gold”: Mitgang, Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait, pp. 440, 442.

  568 away his manuscript: CW, 8:356; Christopher N. Breiseth, “Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: Another Debate,” JISHS 68 (Feb. 1975): 22; Carpenter, Six Months, p. 234.

  568 organically wrong: It has been suggested that Lincoln’s fatigue—as well as other characteristics, such as his exceptional height, his elongated fingers and large feet, and his problems with his eyes—was the result of the Marfan syndrome, a hereditary disorder of the connective tissues, manifested in skeletal, ocular, and cardiovascular disorders. The evidence for this diagnosis is slim; it is based on the occurrence of the Marfan syndrome in several twentieth-century members of the Lincoln family and on inferences from the President’s physical appearance. For a fascinating exploration of the whole issue, see Gabor S. Boritt and Adam Borit, “Lincoln and the Marfan Syndrome: The Medical Diagnosis of a Historical Figure,” Civil War History 29 (Sept. 1983): 213–229, which concludes: “The available evidence does not indicate that Lincoln suffered from the Marfan syndrome.” For a lighthearted analysis of the problem, see Gabor S. Boritt, How Big Was Lincoln’s Toe? or Finding a Footnote (Redlands, Calif.: Lincoln Memorial Shrine, 1989). See also Harold Schwartz, “Abraham Lincoln and the Marfan Syndrome” Journal of the American Medical Association 187 (Feb. 15,1964): 490–495; Harvey J. Wilner and Nathaniel Finby, “Skeletal Manifestations in the Marfan Syndrome,” ibid., 187 (Feb. 15, 1964): 128–133; and Harriet F. Durham, “Lincoln’s Sons and the Marfan Syndrome,” LH 79 (Summer 1977): 67–71.1 have also profited from a correspondence with Dick Levinson, of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, concerning the proposal to clone Lincoln’s DNA in order to determine whether the President suffered from the Marfan syndrome.

  568 that they steamed: Joshua F. Speed, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln and Notes of a Visit to California—Two Lectures (Louisville, Ky.: John P. Morton and Co., 1884), pp. 26–28.

  568 “next four years”: Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes (Buffalo: Stansil & Lee, 1931), p. 155.

  569 of theatrical entertainment: On Lincoln and the theater, see David C. Mearns, “Act Well Your Part,” in his Largely Lincoln (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961), pp. 114–149.

  569 enjoyed them all: The following pages draw heavily on R. Gerald McMurtry, “Lincoln Knew Shakespeare,” Indiana Magazine of History 31 (Dec. 1935): 265–277.

  569 understand their anxieties: For perceptive commentary on Lincoln’s interest in Shakespeare, see James A. Stevenson, “Abraham Lincoln’s Affinity for Macbeth,” Midwest Quarterly 31 (Winter 1990): 270–279; Charles B. Strozier, Lincoln’s Quest for Union: Public and Private Meanings (New York: Basic Books, 1982), pp. 228–231; and Fehrenbacher, Lincoln in Text and Context, pp. 157–163.

  569 “smells to heaven”: Carpenter, Six Months, pp. 49–50.

  569 “It is wonderful”: CW, 6:392. The reference to Henry VIII, which today is rarely performed or read, may seem puzzling, but the play was highly esteemed in the nineteenth century.

  569 “used to it”: CW, 6:558–559.

  569 and the opera: The definitive treatment is Bernard, Lincoln and the Music of the Civil War, esp. chap. 16.

  570 “to finish it”: James Grant Wilson, “Recollections of Lincoln,” Putnam’s Magazine 5 (Feb. 1909): 528–529; and 5 (Mar. 1909): 673.

  570 “roving and travelling”: WHH, interview with Mary Lincoln, Sept. 5, 1866, HWC.

  570 comfortably provided for: For Lincoln’s savings during the presidenc
y, see Pratt, Personal Finances, chap. 8.

  571 now in the army: On Robert’s enlistment and military service, see John S. Goff, Robert Todd Lincoln: A Man in His Own Right (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969), pp. 60–66.

  571 “and a few others”: CW, 8:367.

  571 “of the crew”: Pfanz, The Petersburg Campaign, p. 4. In Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961), chaps. 26–27 offer a full account of the Lincolns’ visit.

  572 “fatigued appearance”: John W. Grattan, “Under the Blue Pennant, or Notes of a Naval Officer,” p. 219, Grattan MSS, LC.

  572 “him very much”: Randall, Mary Lincoln, p. 371.

  572 “head of affairs”: George R. Agassiz, ed., Meade’s Headquarters, 1863–1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1922), pp. 324–325.