A Friend of Mr. Lincoln (50 page)

A
LTHOUGH
A Friend of Mr. Lincoln
is a work of fiction, it is not, I hope, an act of distortion. I've done my best to hew close to the historical record of Abraham Lincoln's life during his early years in Springfield. For storytelling purposes, however, I've taken the following liberties:

Cage Weatherby is a fictional character. At certain key points in the novel, I've substituted his presence for that of real-life personages who were part of Lincoln's circle.

Ellie is an imaginary elaboration of an unknown woman William Herndon referenced in the copious—and controversial—notes he collected on Lincoln's life.

Ashbel Merritt is also fictional, though something of a composite of Lincoln's doctor friends Anson Henry and Elias Merryman.

The trial in which Lincoln defends Cordelia is my invention, though it was suggested by Lincoln's 1841 case
Bailey v. Cromwell.
Likewise, what has become known as the “Matson Slave Case” was the inspiration for a fictional legal action late in the book.

I have brazenly moved the publication date of Longfellow's
Voices of the Night
from 1839 to 1838.

Of the dozens of authors whose books I regularly consulted while researching this novel, two proved completely indispensable.
Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln,
by Douglas L. Wilson, is a definitive and eloquent assessment of Lincoln at a time when his aspiring spirit and driving ambition were often in conflict. The second and third volumes of Richard Lawrence Miller's ongoing and deeply detailed biography,
Lincoln and His World,
provided me with a crucial political and social understanding of Illinois in the 1830s and 1840s.

Also important to me was Guy Fraker's
Lincoln's Ladder to the Presidency,
and I'm deeply grateful to Guy himself for his hospitality in giving me a tour of the old Eighth Judicial Circuit and for reading an early draft of this book and saving me from glaring mistakes. James Cornelius, Lincoln Curator at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, also scoured the book for mistakes (thanks to him, I don't have the Kanawha River running backwards!) and was always generous with guidance and insight. Bryon Andreasen, formerly the Research Historian at the Lincoln Library, was the first person I met when I visited Springfield. He made me feel instantly at home and looked upon my nonscholarly project with confidence-building enthusiasm.

For help in many areas of research I'm also grateful to Kevin Young
,
Josef Kleffman
,
Joshua Wolf Shenk, Alan Huffines, Wayne Temple, Erika Holst, Phil Funkenbusch, Curtis Mann, Mary Ann Warmack, Don Huber, Dan Okrent, Michael Zagst, Carla Smith
,
Jane Haake, Mark Johnson, and Bill Miller. And I was fortunate once again to have the best copyeditor in the business, my friend Jan McInroy.

I try to keep weepy-eyed effusions out of acknowledgments pages, but I'm not sure it would have been possible for me to sustain my writing career if I hadn't had the luck to live in a place, and at a time, where my friends could include such remarkably talented writers as Lawrence Wright, William Broyles, Elizabeth Crook, H. W. Brands, Gregory Curtis, Bill Wittliff, and James Magnuson. Each of them provided moral or editorial support or both while I was writing this book. Larry Wright and Bill Broyles read early drafts and made key suggestions, and Elizabeth Crook was there with telling feedback all the way through its composition. Speaking of dear friends, I sometimes find it hard to believe my luck through the decades in being edited at Knopf by Ann Close and represented at ICM by Esther Newberg. As long as they're both at their desks, it's still the golden age of publishing.

And my wife, Sue Ellen, to whom I've been married for forty years, and our three daughters and three sons-in-law and four grandchildren, remind me every day that writing fiction does not necessarily represent a desire to escape from reality, because there's no place I'd rather be than with them.

Stephen Harrigan is the author of nine previous books, including the
New York Times
best seller
The Gates of the Alamo
and
Remember Ben Clayton,
which among other awards won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Novel from the Society of American Historians. He is also a writer at large for
Texas Monthly
and a screenwriter who has written many movies for television. He lives in Austin, Texas.