Lincoln Part 1

LINCOLN.

by DAVID HERBERT DONALD.

Preface

The only time I ever met President John F. Kennedy, in February 1962, he was unhappy with historians. A group of scholars had been in the Oval Office hoping to enlist him in a poll that ranked American presidents. I was not one of those visitors, but the next day when I gave a talk in the White House about Abraham Lincoln, the subject was much on his mind. He voiced his deep dissatisfaction with the glib way the historians had rated some of his predecessors as "Below Average" and marked a few as "Failures." Thinking, no doubt, of how his own administration would look in the backward glance of history, he resented the whole process. With real feeling he said, "No one has a right to grade a President-not even poor James Buchanan-who has not sat in his chair, examined the mail and information that came across his desk, and learned why he made his decisions."

This book was conceived in the spirit of President Kennedy's observations. In tracing the life of Abraham Lincoln, I have asked at every stage of his career what he knew when he had to take critical actions, how he evaluated the evidence before him, and why he reached his decisions. It is, then, a biography written from Lincoln's point of view, using the information and ideas that were available to him. It seeks to explain rather than to judge.

My biography is based largely on Lincoln's own words, whether in his letters and messages or in conversations recorded by reliable witnesses. I have tried as far as possible to write from the original sources-that is, from firsthand contemporary accounts by people who saw and talked with the President. Of course, I have consulted the voluminous secondary literature, but I have used it chiefly for letters and doc.u.ments that I could not find elsewhere. My approach was made possible by the availability of the Abraham Lincoln Papers in the Library of Congress (now fortunately on microfilm). After use by Lincoln's authorized biographers, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, in 1890, these papers were sealed until 1947 and therefore could not be consulted for the major biographies by Albert J. Beveridge, William E. Barton, Carl Sandburg, and J. G. Randall.*

The results of my inquiries can most readily be defined in negative terms. This book is not a general history of the United States during the middle of the nineteenth century. I have stuck close to Lincoln, who was only indirectly connected with the economic and social transformations of the period. It is not even a history of the Civil War. There is, for example, almost nothing in the following pages about the internal affairs of the Confederacy, because these were matters that Lincoln could not know about. It is not a military history; I have not described campaigns and battles that Lincoln did not witness. I have not offered a broad philosophical discussion of the origins of the Civil War and I have not addressed the question of whether it was the first modern war. These are important subjects, but they did not present themselves to Abraham Lincoln in any practical way. I have not asked whether Lincoln freed the slaves or the slaves freed themselves, because Lincoln never considered these roads to emanc.i.p.ation as mutually exclusive. Certainly he knew that thousands of slaves, in individual heroic acts of rebellion, were leaving their masters to seek freedom behind the Union lines, but he also knew that ending the inst.i.tution of slavery required official action on the part of the United States government.

In focusing closely on Lincoln himself-on what he knew, when he knew it, and why he made his decisions-I have, I think, produced a portrait rather different from that in other biographies. It is perhaps a bit more grainy than most, with more attention to his unquenchable ambition, to his brain-numbing labor in his law practice, to his tempestuous married life, and to his repeated defeats. It suggests how often chance, or accident, played a determining role in shaping his life. And it emphasizes his enormous capacity for growth, which enabled one of the least experienced and most poorly prepared men ever elected to high office to become the greatest American President.

More important, this biography highlights a basic trait of character evident throughout Lincoln's life: the essential pa.s.sivity of his nature. Lincoln himself recognized it in a letter he wrote on April 4, 1864, to Albert G. Hodges, a fellow Kentuckian, who asked him to explain why he had shifted from his inaugural pledge not to interfere with slavery to a policy of emanc.i.p.ation. After relating how circ.u.mstances had obliged him to change his mind-how emanc.i.p.ation and the use of African-American soldiers had become military necessities-the President concluded: "In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."

From his earliest days Lincoln had a sense that his destiny was controlled by some larger force, some Higher Power. Turning away from orthodox Christianity because of the emotional excesses of frontier evangelicalism, he found it easier as a young man to accept what was called the Doctrine of Necessity, which he defined as the belief "that the human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control." Later he frequently quoted to his partner, William H. Herndon, the lines from Hamlet:

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

From Lincoln's fatalism derived some of his most lovable traits: his compa.s.sion, his tolerance, his willingness to overlook mistakes. That belief did not, of course, lead him to lethargy or dissipation. Like thousands of Calvinists who believed in predestination, he worked indefatigably for a better world-for himself, for his family, and for his nation. But it helped to buffer the many reverses that he experienced and enabled him to continue a strenuous life of aspiration.

It also made for a pragmatic approach to problems, a recognition that if one solution was fated not to work another could be tried. "My policy is to have no policy" became a kind of motto for Lincoln-a motto that infuriated the sober, doctrinaire people around him who were inclined to think that the President had no principles either. He might have offended his critics less if he had more often used the a.n.a.logy he gave James G. Blaine when explaining his course on Reconstruction: "The pilots on our Western rivers steer from point to point as they call it-setting the course of the boat no farther than they can see; and that is all I propose to myself in this great problem."

Both statements suggest Lincoln's reluctance to take the initiative and make bold plans; he preferred to respond to the actions of others. They also show why Lincoln in his own distinctively American way had the quality John Keats defined as forming "a Man of Achievement," that quality "which Shakespeare possessed so enormously... Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."

Much of the research for this biography was made possible through a generous grant from the Division of Research Programs of the National Endowment for the Humanities (Grant No. RO-212889). I am particularly indebted to Charles Ambler and George R. Lucas, Jr., in that division for their a.s.sistance.

I am also grateful to Dean Henry Rosovsky, Dean Michael Spence, and Dean Phyllis Keller, who were instrumental in arranging leaves of absence from my teaching duties at Harvard University.

Throughout the project I was fortunate to have the a.s.sistance of Laura Nakatsuka, who not merely performed expert secretarial services but proved a highly efficient research sleuth, uncovering Lincoln items in a dozen or more ma.n.u.script collections.

Several gifted Harvard undergraduate and graduate students have performed invaluable work as research a.s.sistants who scoured the newspapers and periodicals for material on Lincoln, and I am indebted to them all: Richard Bennett, Steven Chen, Martin Fitzpatrick, Elaine Goldenberg, Sally Hadden, Zachary Karabell, Timothy McCarthy, Matthew Pinsker, Gerald Prokopowicz, and Ronald Ryan.

The tedious work of verifying facts and checking quotations in my ma.n.u.script fell to Thomas J. Brown, Fred Dalzell, and Michael Vorenberg, and I thank all three for helping me to eliminate errors of fact and interpretation. Mr. Vorenberg, who is preparing the authoritative history of the Thirteenth Amendment, offered incisive criticisms that have greatly influenced my treatment of colonization and emanc.i.p.ation. On legal and const.i.tutional issues I have profited much from Dr. Brown's unfailingly helpful suggestions.

To the blessed librarians everywhere my obligation is great. As always, Nathaniel Bunker, the Charles Warren Bibliographer at Harvard University, has been responsive to my needs for nineteenth-century American newspapers and ma.n.u.scripts on microfilm. Thomas F. Schwartz, state historian of Illinois, graciously made available the immense resources of the Henry Horner Collection at the Illinois State Historical Library and patiently answered my frequent questions. Cheryl Schnirring did the same for the ma.n.u.script collections in that same great library, and Cheryl Pence a.s.sisted in my search for nineteenth-century Illinois newspapers. John Hoffmann was my gracious host at the Illinois Historical Survey in Urbana. At the Chicago Historical Society, Theresa A. McGill provided invaluable a.s.sistance, and Sherry Byrne of the University of Chicago Library helped me locate newspaper files. Dallas R. Lindgren served as my guide to the rich collections of the Minnesota Historical Society. At the Huntington Library, John H. Rhode-hamel, Lita Garcia, and Karen E. Kearns were helpful in securing microfilm of important ma.n.u.script collections. Daniel Weinberg and Thomas Trescott of the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago have energetically a.s.sisted me in dozens of bibliographical searches.

At the Lincoln Legal Papers, perhaps the most important archival investigation now under way in the United States, I was welcomed by the director, Cullom Davis, and by the a.s.sistant editor, William Beard, and was given full access to the enormous treasure-house of legal doc.u.ments that they have built up.

Norman D. h.e.l.lmers, 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, d.i.c.k 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, Ma.s.sachusetts, in a public lecture t.i.tled "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 ma.n.u.script, pointing out repet.i.tion and infelicitous language. My sections on Lincoln's a.s.sa.s.sination 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 ma.n.u.script the benefit of her expert judgment of style and substance. Robert W. Johannsen of the University of Illinois reviewed the entire ma.n.u.script, 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script. Saving me countless errors, Kathryn Blatt did the heroic work of proofreading the entire book.

With so much a.s.sistance 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 st.u.r.dier 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 a.n.a.lysis.

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 b.a.s.t.a.r.dy 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 n.o.ble 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 "incert.i.tude, and absolute darkness" about Abraham Lincoln's forebears.

Further research would have showed that the Lincolns did come from Virginia and that an earlier generation 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, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 (16861736) 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 a.s.sembly and the niece of the acting royal governor of that colony. It was their son, John Lincoln (17161788), 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