Book Reviews

Book Reviews Lincoln’s Sons. By Ruth Painter Randall. (Boston : Little, Brown, and Company, 1955, pp. mi, 373. Illustrations, bibliography, and index. $5.00.) An impressive demonstration of the objective approach in biography has been made during the past decade by the late James Garfield Randall and Ruth Painter Randall. The concluding number of Randall’s four-volume set, Lincoln the President, is recently from the press and Mrs. Randall’s Lincoln’s Sons is now in print. This last work and its com- panion volume, Mary Lincoln. Biography of a Marriage, published in 1953, cover the domestic life of the Lincolns. It seems incredible that within a period of ten years, by the use of authentic sources, these two writers have been able to completely nullify the generally accepted stories of the Lincoln home life. For sixty years or more William Herndon was considered the outstanding authority in this phase of Lincolniana. However, the place of distinction which Professor Randall occupied among trained historians allowed him to successfully challenge, where others had failed, the validity of Herndon’s widely used compilation of folklore and traditions relating to the Lincoln family. Mrs. Randall’s first book brought to the attention of the reading public the great injustice done to the widow of Abraham Lincoln by the one-time law partner of her hus- band. Now in the author’s second volume she comes to the defense of another member of the Lincoln household, Robert Todd Lincoln, who was also greatly misrepresented by Herndon. While the casual reader will be entertained by the escapades of Willie and Tad, serious students of the Eman- cipator will be especially interested in the first objective biographical study of Robert, the only one of the four Lincoln boys to reach maturity. The introductory paragraphs to the book, however, make it clear that the author is to confine herself to Robert‘s per- sonality and to purposely avoid his public and business career. His relation to his parents, especially his mother, is of great interest. His attempt to protect her from Herndon’s vicious attacks is praiseworthy. Those who have charged Robert with mercenary incentives in relation to his mother’s confinement in a sanatorium for a season will do well to observe new evidence on the question introduced by the author. Some students will have difficulty in following 196 Indiana Magazine of History Mrs. Randall’s argument that a barrier was built up between father and son. However, the author’s explanation of Rob- ert’s attitude towards the memory of his father in later years seems to be well presented. The fact that Robert Lincoln on his first attempt failed to pass the Harvard entrance examinations placed some- what of a stigma on his early efforts in the field of learning. Undoubtedly it was the inadequate system of education in the schools of Springfield, Illinois, rather than the deficiency of the student, that was responsible for the necessity of a preparatory course at Exeter Academy. Mrs. Randall exhibits an excerpt from a letter that Amos Tuck of Exeter, New Hampshire, sent on August 24, 1860, to the President’s Illinois friend, Judge David Davis, that should remove any suspicion of Robert’s mental ability as a youth. Tuck wrote, Robert “‘stands at the top of the ladder as a scholar, and is a singularly discreet, well behaved, brilliant and promising young man’ ” (p. 70). Why Robert Lincoln failed to enter the army while at Harvard University has always been a pointed question. His desire to enlist when the war first broke is accepted generally. One would infer that parental objection was responsible for the lateness of his entry into the service. Mrs. Randall seems to be in agreement with those who feel Mrs. Lincoln’s neurotic condition and fear for a complete mental collapse in case of Robert‘s enlistment were the primary factors which retarded him. However, a letter which Robert wrote to Winfield M. Thompson throws new light on the situation. Referring to his father, Robert observed : “After my graduation from Harvard, I said to him that as he did not wish me to go into the army (his reason having been that something might happen to me that would cause him more official embarrassment than could be offset by any possible value of my military service) I was going back to Cambridge and enlist in Law School. His letter after- ward to General Grant was the result of my renewed appeal to him.” (Robert T. Lincoln to Winfield M. Thompson, March 2, 1915, copy in Lincoln National Life Foundation files.) While the reviewer was living at Hodgenville, Kentucky, the birthplace of Lincoln, he often heard the story repeated that claimed Robert Lincoln was intoxicated upon the occasion of his visit there on May 31 in 1909. The occasion of his presence was the dedication of a bronze statue of his father located on the courthouse square. Mrs. Randall makes it Book Reviews 197 quite clear that Robert had been in very poor health at the time, and his collapse during the dedicatory service was due to “the combination of emotion and heat exhaustion. it was thought he narrowly escaped a paralytic stroke” (p. 335). One would expect to find some reference by the author to the widely publicized Lincoln manuscripts that Robert is said to have destroyed at his home in Manchester, Vermont. It is likely that many of Robert’s own personal papers and probably some of the personal letters which his father wrote to his mother may have been burned. Mrs. Randall is in agreement with others who can speak with some authority that the famous presidential papers are now intact at the Library of Congress and were carefully preserved by Robert. The new picture of Robert drawn by Mrs. Randall makes one feel that he “has behaved himself as the son of Abraham Lincoln might be expected to do,” as one of the President’$ friends expressed himself (Amos Tuck to David Davis, copy in Lincoln National Life Foundation files). Any student of Abraham Lincoln who contemplates a monograph of the Presi- dent touching upon his home life will find Lincoln’s Sons a worthy supplement to Mrs. Randall’s former work on Mary Lincoln. Biography of a Marriage. Lincoln National Life Foundation Louis A. Warren A History of the Freedmen’s Bureau. By George R. Bentley. (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania, 1955, pp. x, 298. Appendix, bibliography, and index. $5.00.) The basic problem that permeated the Reconstruction Era-how to absorb the Negro into the American body poli- tic-is today more pertinent than at any time since 1877 when a North, weary of radicalism and sympathetic to the plight of the white southerner, agreed to drop the whole unpleasant mess in exchange for acquiescence in the election of Hayes. Since then, the Negro has made monumental gains in all parts of the nation, many of them through his own efforts, and many through federal government inter- vention on his behalf. But the Supreme Court rulings on school segregation rekindled deep prejudices and created situations that are alarming thinking people everywhere. George R. Bentley’s calm, straightforward account of the Freedman’s Bureau is especially welcome, therefore, as it illuminates the working of an organization that was of central importance in the initial period of adjustment after .

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