Lincoln (132 page)

72
“the said plaintiffs....
”.:
Atwood & Co.
v.
Shinn & Vittum,
Fulton County Circuit Court, May 1838, photostat, Lincoln Legal Papers.

73
of the agreement:
Rufus R. Wilson, ed.,
Uncollected Works of Abraham Lincoln
(Elmira, N.Y.: Primavera Press, 1947), 1:147–148, 150–152.

73
also surpassed them:
Beveridge, l:211–212n. For slightly different figures, see Duff, A.
Lincoln:
Prairie Lawyer,
p. 46.

73
central Illinois counties:
These and numerous other engagements are recorded in
Day by Day,
vol. I. See also Paul M. Angle, “Abraham Lincoln: Circuit Lawyer,”
Lincoln Centennial Papers, 1928
(Springfield, III.: Lincoln Centennial Association, 1928), pp. 19–41.

73
a fee book:
Stuart & Lincoln Fee Book, ISHL.

73
“hawk billed yankee”: CW
, 1:158–159.

74
six hundred acres:
Kent L. Walgren, “James Adams: Early Springfield Mormon and Freemason,”
JISHS
75 (1982): 121–136, and Wayne C. Temple, “An Aftermath of ‘Sampson’s Ghost’: A New Lincoln Document,”
LH
91 (Summer 1989): 42–48.

74
“Sampson’s Ghost”:
For these letters, see Wilson,
Uncollected Works,
1:153–161. The editors of the
Collected Works
excluded these letters because “internal evidence... does not determine Lincoln’s handiwork.”
CW,
1:89n.

75
“all his slanderers”: CW,
1:105–106.

75
“nothing but
lice”:
CW,
1:244.

75
to a duel:
Usher F. Linder,
Reminiscences of the Early Bench and Bar of Illinois
(Chicago: Chicago Legal News Co., 1879), pp. 62–63.

76
“not
legally
bound”: CW,
1:144. (The body of this quotation is italicized in the source.)

76
“to do so”: CW,
1:123.

76
“and great loss”: CW,
1:135.

76
“will be well”: CW,
1:135–136.

76
“would go down”: CW,
1:196.

76
“the present crisis”: CW,
1:216.

76
“carry the elections”: CW,
1:148.

76
“defraying its expense”: CW,
1:201.

76
“in a lump”: CW,
1:184.

77
“by country banks”: CW,
1:194.

77
“to resuscitate it”: CW,
1:159.

77
“that jumping scrape”: CW,
1:226.

77
“to the ground!”:
The best account of this episode is in chap. 4 of
Illinois’ Fifth Capitol: The
House That Lincoln Built and Caused to Be Rebuilt (1837–1865)
(Springfield, Ill.: Phillips Brothers Printers, 1988), by Sunderine Wilson Temple and Wayne C. Temple. See also Paul Simon,
Lincoln’s Preparation for Greatness: The Illinois Legislative Years
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), pp. 227–230.

78
“end the better”:
Ibid., p. 264.

78
“shall be beaten”: CW,
1:120.

78
required six months: CW,
1:151.

78
“be verry authentic”: CW
, 1:154.

78
“state, verry good”: CW,
1:184.

78
“driven into it”: CW,
1:205.

78
“coming presidential contest”: CW,
1:180–181, 201.

79
“our highest expectations”: Hidden Lincoln,
p. 289.

79
“not that much”: CW,
1:159–179. (Quotations are from pp. 177 and 163.) For a careful appraisal of this speech and its political significance, see Boritt,
Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream,
chap. 6.

80
“Hero of Tippecanoe”: CW
, 1:210.

80
“Our Political Institutions”:
The text of the address is in
CW,
1:108–115. For the circumstances in which it was delivered, see Thomas F. Schwartz, “The Springfield Lyceums and Lincoln’s 1838 Speech,”
Illinois Historical Journal
83 (1990): 45–49. This address has attracted more scholarly attention than anything else Lincoln wrote before 1858. Edmund Wilson first suggested that Lincoln’s fiery warning against a future Caesar “seemed to derive as much from admiration as apprehension” and argued that Lincoln “projected himself into the role against which he is warning.” Wilson,
Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 99–130. George B. Forgie’s
Patricide in the House Divided: A Psychological Interpretation of Lincoln and His Age
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1979), chap. 2, essentially adopts the Wilson argument, noting, however, that Lincoln was unconsciously projecting himself as the towering genius who threatened republicanism. Dwight G. Anderson, in
Abraham Lincoln: The Quest for Immortality
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), carried Wilson’s argument even further, to depict Lincoln as a “demonic” man, who “acted from motives of revenge” to strike down the Founding Fathers. In
Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1959), chap. 9, Harry V. Jaffa argued that in this address Lincoln was looking to the future, when the nation could be saved “by one who has all Caesar’s talent for domination, one who could, if he would, govern the people without their consent, but who prefers the people’s freedom to their domination” (p. 225). Other scholars, like George M. Fredrickson, “Lincoln and His Legend” (
New York Review of Books,
July 15, 1982, pp. 13–16), have suggested that these interpretations are exaggerated, and Richard O. Curry, “Conscious or Subconscious Caesarism?” (
JISHS,
Apr. 1984, p. 71) stresses that Lincoln, “a devout Whig, was utilizing standard Whig rhetoric—which continually employed the imagery of Caesarism in
attacking ‘King Andrew I.’” For a critical review of this literature, see Mark Neely, “Lincoln’s Lyceum Speech and the Origins of a Modern Myth,”
LL,
nos. 1776–1777 (1987). The imagery Lincoln used was conventional. See Major L. Wilson, “Lincoln and Van Buren in the Steps of the Fathers: Another Look at the Lyceum Address,”
Civil War History
29 (1983): 197–211.

80
“to our nature”: CW,
1:114–115.

80
“native Spanish moss”: CW,
1:109–110.

81 “religion
of the nation”: CW,
1:112.

81
“in the land”: CW,
1:69.

81
“or enslaving freemen “: CW,
1:113–114.

81
“knew no rest”: Herndon’s Lincoln,
2:375.

81
“he had lived”:
Joshua F. Speed to WHH, Feb. 1866, copy, Lamon MSS, HEH.

82
“[and] shoot editors”: CW,
1:111.

82
“as moral pestilences”: CW,
1:273.

82
“any other class”: CW,
1:278.

83
“Reason, all hail!”: CW,
1:279.

83
“one of the boys”:
WHH, monograph on “Lincoln & Mary Todd,” [1887], HWC.

83
“and faithful obedience”: CW,
1:156.

83
“coarse and vulgar fellow”:
Linder,
Reminiscences of the Early Bench and Bar,
pp. 62–63.

83
“shrunk from responsibility”: CW,
1:124–125.

83
“belong to him”:
Simon,
Lincoln’s Preparation for Greatness,
p. 171.

83
“a thousand years”: CW,
1:109.

83
“and my love”: CW,
1:178–179.

84
“have avoided it”: CW,
1:78.

84
“these girls look”:
Baker,
Mary Todd Lincoln,
p. 89.

84
sister, Mary Todd:
The standard, highly sympathetic life is Ruth P. Randall,
Mary Lincoln:
Biography of a Marriage
(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1953). Jean H. Baker,
Mary Todd Lincoln,
is more balanced. For Mary Todd’s family and Kentucky background, see William H. Townsend,
Lincoln and the Bluegrass: Slavery and Civil War in Kentucky
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1955).

84
“a merry dance”:
WHH, Jan. 16, 1886, HWC; WHH, monograph on “Lincoln & Mary Todd,” [1887], HWC.

85
“nature—and culture”:
WHH, interview with Mrs. N. W. Edwards, [Jan. 10, 1866], HWC.

85
“been
hard bargains”: Turner,
Mary Todd Lincoln,
pp. 18, 26.

85
“for policy”:
WHH, interview with N. W. Edwards, Sept. 22, 1865, HWC.

86
“a rising man”:
WHH, interview with Mrs. N. W. Edwards, [Jan. 10, 1866], HWC.

86
still sexually inexperienced:
For sensitive comment on this point, see Strozier,
Lincoln’s Quest for Union,
pp. 47–48.

86
“horrible and alarming”: CW,
1:280.

87
His nerve snapped:
Herndon’s elaborate story of how Lincoln failed to show up at the wedding ceremony planned for Jan. 1,1841, has been thoroughly discredited. See Randall,
Mary Lincoln,
chap. 4.

87
“her
—
and parted”:
WHH, interview with Joshua F. Speed, undated, HWC. I have reversed the order of the first two quoted sentences. For the best reconstruction of this interview, which was recorded on two separate pieces of paper, see Douglas L. Wilson, “Abraham Lincoln and ‘That Fatal First of January,’”
Civil War History
38 (1992): 104–106.