Overlooked Books: William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Herndon’s Life of Lincoln

Ever since Congress adopted legislation in 1968 declaring that a Presidents Day should be celebrated the third Monday of the month, the February birthdays of Washington and Lincoln have been obscured by the promise of shopping or travelling over a long holiday weekend. In the absence of distinct celebrations and days off, children are now less likely to associate six-year-old George “never-told-a-lie” Washington with the cherry tree or imagine “Honest Abe,” born in a log cabin, beating up bullies and freeing the slaves.

Unlike the cherry tree fable dreamed up by Parson Weems to teach kids not to lie, the Lincoln stories cannot be so readily dismissed. After all, he really was born in a log cabin, and though not as desperately poor as some have intimated, he spent most of his youth in the grueling task of clearing farmland in the backwoods of Indiana and Illinois. Teenage Abe beat up a bully or two and a good deal later issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln’s improbable ascent to the White House, his steadfast and ultimately victorious leadership of the nation during the Civil War, culminating in his assassination on Good Friday, seems drawn more from Holy Writ than history. If Washington was the nation’s Founder, then Lincoln was its Savior.

Of all the books about Lincoln, most of the sixteen thousand, inevitably and perhaps mercifully, have been overlooked. Here we consider one that deserves attention–– Herndon’s Life of Lincoln (1889).

Unlike conventional biographies drawn largely from interviews with established public figures and the subject’s immediate circle, Herndon interviewed or corresponded with upwards of 200 farmers, tradesmen and townspeople in Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois who might have remembered Abe and his family when he was growing up. Herndon’s reliance on what we might now call oral histories, reliable or otherwise, as well as on his personal observations, resulted in an account which Mary Todd, Lincoln’s widow, and her eldest son Robert Todd detested. And for good reason. Here was a story suggesting that Lincoln’s mother had been born out of wedlock, that teenage Abe’s first and dearest love was poor Ann Rutledge and not the privileged Mary Todd who he had married out of guilt and shame for having previously broken their very public engagement. Even more painful were Herndon’s accounts of Mary’s unprovoked rages, which led Lincoln to prefer “riding the circuit,” arguing cases in surrounding towns and villages, to going home.

While the Mary Todd allegations even now remain controversial, they should not obscure Herndon’s matchless accounts of Lincoln in the office, courtroom, and on the campaign trail. In the matter of law and politics, if not domesticity, one might imagine the junior partner taking a deferential approach toward a man who after all was the President who saved the Union. Not Herndon. With a year of college, he was far better read and more intellectually confident and curious than the largely self-educated Lincoln, who enjoyed poetry, dipped into Shakespeare and scripture, but rarely settled down with a good book. Politically, Herndon and Lincoln were Whigs and then Republicans, but on the slavery question, a youthful Herndon had turned abolitionist long before Lincoln, nine years his senior, had given the matter much thought. And though not ambitious for office, Herndon was an astute and energetic political operative who did not hesitate to advise, caution and criticize when Lincoln was elected to the Illinois assembly and then Congress. As state assemblyman, Lincoln enthusiastically supported an “internal improvements" (public works) program so “gigantic” that Herndon thought it would bankrupt the state. Herndon later suggested that having no “money sense,” Lincoln was as “inadequate managing the financial and commercial interests of a community or government as his own household.”          

But for all that, Herndon, having little money sense himself, admired Lincoln beyond all others, especially when it came to law and politics. Though Herndon became a capable and successful attorney in his own right—fees at Lincoln & Herndon were always split 50-50––Lincoln usually handled the major cases, including those argued in federal court. Herndon did much of the legal research that Lincoln found so tiresome. Lincoln otherwise worked hard to master the essentials of a case, though he had difficulty resisting the temptation to tell jokes and stories to anyone who happened to be in the office.

Shortly after the assassination on April 14, 1865, Herndon began feverishly compiling a list of Lincoln’s cases, clipping newspaper articles and putting together the extensive correspondence and interviews which would constitute the invaluable Lincoln Record. But, no longer practicing law, desperate for money, and drinking too much, Herndon retreated from Springfield to become “a gentleman farmer.” His long-planned article, much less a book, seemed out of the question.

Then a miracle. Jesse Weik, a student at what is now DePauw University in Newcastle, Indiana, had written Herndon in 1875 asking for a Lincoln autograph. Herndon did respond––six years later. There followed a meeting and extensive correspondence, though another six years would pass before a sober Herndon ventured to Newcastle to work with Weik organizing and re-writing Herndon’s research notes, correspondence and general commentary, brilliant or otherwise. Weik dealt with an extraordinary challenge, and though few would consider Herndon’s Lincoln a model of concision or organization, the talented young man succeeded well enough. Rightly, he is co-author.

As with Pepys' Diary or Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Herndon and Weik reward the patient reader with a feeling for the mundane. Here we see Abe coming to the office in the morning, hanging out with his cronies at the grocery store, spoiling his kids, and dealing with bullies in the courtroom or on the stump. We are moved by portrait of a gifted attorney at work and an ambitious politician who also comes across as kind, decent and unpretentious. In the end, thanks to Herndon and Weik, we also see mid-century America––a nation of enslaved people, half-starved woodmen, teenaged boys taking home-made flat boats down the river, fortunes made and lost in land deals, railroads spreading into the wilderness, and the telegraph connecting a nation headed for dissolution.

Birthday wishes for Abe, also remembering Billy, and Jesse, the kid who wanted an autograph.

See also:

• David H. Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon: A Biography (1948). The sole book-length account of Billy Herndon by a famed Lincoln scholar.
• Oh Mary! “Held over by popular acclaim.” Mary Todd hoping to break free from the White House in a campy, entertaining production, through June 28th at the Lyceum Theater.