Read Founders' Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln Online
Authors: Richard Brookhiser
Founders' Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln (50 page)
Stephens then said: “Life is all a mist, and in the dark our fortunes meet us.” The true half of that sentence was the second half: “in the dark our fortunes meet us.” God, time, chance, and men throw problems, crises, opportunities, blessings, and horrors at us. We may see some coming, but not all. When they come they are obdurate, inescapable, and we face them as best we can.
The false half of Stephens’s sentence was the first: “Life is all a mist.” Life is all a mist for most of us. We believe a mixture of traditions, lessons, and current opinions: what we have grown up with, what we have been taught, and what we have heard in the street. These are not always the best guides to action. Life had been all a mist for Alexander Stephens—sucked into secession, serving a rebel president with whom he disagreed, then driven to justifying it all afterward.
Lincoln, of all men, wanted not to live in a mist. In his worst moods he believed he was damned; at all times his mind taught him (wrongly
probably) that he was doomed, predetermined, caught in a mesh of causes. But he always wanted to see, know, and understand. Herndon noted the comprehensiveness of his curiosity, extending to clocks and omnibuses, but his greatest curiosity was about the great things. He wanted to know what America was, what men were, what God wanted. As he did when he was a boy, he would repeat the lessons of the founding fathers and God the Father until he knew them. What he learned was that all men are created free and equal, and that all men (the people) must understand and defend those truths. Then, because he was a politician, ambitious to lead, he did what he could to clear the mist.
Michael Knox Beran, Andrew Ferguson, Peter Field, and Lewis Lehrman gave me vital early advice. Roger Hertog and Eric Weider gave me generous support.
Theodore J. Crackel, J. Jefferson Looney, and Nicole Seary helped me sort through founders’ correspondence, real and bogus. Douglas L. Wilson gave permission to quote William Herndon’s 1870 letter on Lincoln and Jefferson. Thanks also to James G. Basker, Linda Bridges, Michael Burlingame, Allen Guelzo, Kale Kaposhilin, Charles Kesler, and Jonathan Leaf.
I would like to thank my editor and publisher, Lara Heimert, my editor Roger LaBrie, and my agent Michael Carlisle. As always, I thank my wife, Jeanne Safer.
Akhil Amar gave me the idea for this book, and the title. I hope he likes it.
I have not footnoted the King James Bible or readily available public documents—the Declaration, the Constitution, rebels’ ordinances of secession, and the like.
Correspondence of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson that is not found in common anthologies is readily available online; below I give the dates and the recipients.
Introduction
2
“
few millions
”
Rowland, I:181.
2
“
out West
”
Tocqueville, 86.
3
“
in despair
”
Martineau, II:3–17.
5
“
other pillars
”
Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, 1/27/38, SWI:28–36.
5
“
never been before
”
Autobiography Written for Campaign, c. 6/60, SWII:167.
6
“
charter of liberty
”
7th Lincoln/Douglas Debate, Alton, Illinois, 10/15/58, SWI:802.
7
“
apple of gold
”
Fragment on the Constitution and the Union, c. 1/61, CWIV:169.
7
“
real life
”
Weems, 9, 11–13.
7
“
made it?
”
4th Lincoln/Douglas Debate, Charleston, Illinois, 9/18/58, SWI:674.
7
“
fundamentally wrong
”
American Speeches
, 722.
8
“
with Hell
”
Chapman, 172.
Chapter One
13
“
mind and memory
”
To Jesse Lincoln, 4/1/54, SWI:300.
13
“
living history
”
Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum, SWI:36.
14
“
prostitution
”
HI, 36.
14
everything
Tarbell, I:17.
15
“
laughing
”
HI, 37.
15
worship God
HI, 40.
16
“
right off
”
HI, 503.
16
“
repeat it
”
HI, 106–107.
17
pedagogical tools
HI, 67.
17
“
run together
”
HI, 108.
19
one said twelve
HI, 113, 118.
19
to love it
HI, 118.
19
“
himself first
”
HI, 107.
20
to rest
HI, 560.
20
reader he was
Bray, 152, discusses similar behavior when Lincoln was slightly older.
20
smacked him for it
HI, 39.
20
“
sign his own name
”
Autobiography Written for Campaign, SWII:160.
20
“
hug it the tighter
”
To Joshua F. Speed, 2/25/42, SWI:91.
21
quart a day
Wood, 339.
21
“
in his life
”
HI, 97.
21
“
tried his manhood
”
HI, 96; see also 28, 36.
21
even better
HI, 454, 37.
22
“
‘farting’
”
Herz, 398–399.
23
“
yesterday
”
HI, 113.
23
“
rams’ horns
”
HI, 151.
23
“
better than the Bible
”
HI, 120.
24
of his stepbrother
To Thomas Lincoln and John D. Johnston, 12/24/48, SWI:224.
24
“
in any extremity
”
To John D. Johnston, 1/12/51, SWI:256.
Chapter Two
26
steamboat . . . foundered
See Levasseur II:158–164.
26
“
of his age
”
Brookhiser (
Washington
), 111.
27
“
country’s ruins
”
Ibid., 164.
27
two or three days
The story of Josiah Crawford loaning Weems’s
Life
is in HI, 125 and 455. But another old acquaintance remembered the book that Lincoln borrowed as David Ramsay’s
Life of George Washington
(HI, 41). Lincoln himself said that he encountered Weems “away back in my childhood, [during] the earliest days of my being able to read,” which would have been before he knew Crawford (who arrived in Indiana when Lincoln was seventeen) (Address to the New Jersey Senate, Trenton, 2/21/61, SWII:209).
27
“
not displeased
”
Mason L. Weems to Washington (undated), 1795.
28
not lying all the time
I have forgotten the name of the historian who said this to me, though not his remark.
28
“
industry and honor
”
Weems, 13.
28
“
of Latin
”
Weems, 54.
28
“
as a wizard
”
To Jesse W. Fell, 12/20/59, SWII:107.
29
“
this fall
”
Weems, 20.
29
“
a thousand fold
”
Weems, 23–25.
30
“
his good!
”
Weems, 27–28.
30
tend the farm?
Weems, 47.
30
“
his own merit
”
Weems, 42.
32
“
frost-bitten
”
Weems, 139–140.
32
“
live with us
”
Weems, 137, 143.
32
“
defend her or perish
”
Weems, 140.
32
“
about to fight for
”
Weems, 141.
33
“
was made
”
Address to the New Jersey Senate, op. cit., SWII:209–210.
34
revelation closed
H, 2–3.
Chapter Three
38
floating driftwood
HI, 12.
39
both came home
Hanks’s testimony is in HI, 457. Lincoln wrote that Hanks turned back at St. Louis (Autobiography for Campaign, SWII:163–164). See also Bray, 15, 232.
40
“
everything all over
”
H, 83.
40
saddled with debt
Donald, 54.
40
still in use
Thomas, 40.
40
“
Great God Almighty!
”
HI, 449.
40
“
I ever saw
”
H, 145.
41
with a romance
See Douglas Wilson, 114–124, and Donald, 608–609.
41
“
quick as a flash
”
HI, 534.
41
“
committing suicide often
”
HI, 243.
41
“
two weeks I think
”
Douglas Wilson, 121.
41
“
raining on her grave
”
HI, 557.
41
“
beat on her grave
”
HI, 27.
42
“
as he walked
”
H, 473.
42
“
never dare
”
HI, 205.
42
“
upon yourself
”
To Mary Owens, 8/16/37, SWI:21.
42
“
smaller attentions
”
HI, 262.
43
“
a fool of myself
”
To Mrs. Orville H. Browning, 4/1/38, SWI:39. The date of the letter suggests that Lincoln meant it as a joke. But the joke falls flat.
43
“
very much chagrined
”
To the people of Sangamon County, 3/9/32, SWI:5.
44
the expression was Jefferson’s
J, 632–633.
44
“
their esteem
”
To the people of Sangamon County, op. cit.
45
for all the spectators
HI, 451.
45
“
ready servant
”
Weems, 316.
46
“
crop of folly
”
Martineau, I:269, 273.
47
“
of Illinois
”
H, 140.
49
“
in a lump
”
To John Stuart, 1/20/40, SWI:66.
49
“
the general wreck
”
Guelzo, 92; CWI:200–201.
49
“
like the present
”
American Antislavery Writings
, 269.
50
“
of the District
”
Douglas Wilson, 165–166; Protest in the Illinois Legislature on Slavery, 3/3/37, SWI:18.
Chapter Four
52
“
more grieved
”
P, 415.
52
Christian antidote
Bray, 23.
52
in New Salem
One old acquaintance said Lincoln read
Common Sense
in New Salem (HI, 172); Herndon wrote that he also read
The Age of Reason
(H, 355).