ForFor thethe PeoplePeople A Ne w s l e t t e r of th e Ab r a h a m Li n c o l n As s o c i a t i o n Volume 2, Number 2 Summer, 2000 Springfield, Illinois Ten “True Lies” About Abraham Lincoln Part 1 by Allen C. Guelzo * that he had to be nudged and urged Lincoln’s Hanks relatives were a pretty toward abolishing slavery. His best crude lot: “lascivious, lecherous, not to n 1860, Abraham Lincoln told solution for dealing with the slaves be trusted,” and whispers about Chicago journalist John Locke was, up until the last two years of his Nancy’s origins may have filtered IScripps: “Why, Scripps, it is a great life, to deport them to Central Amer- down to Lincoln’s ears as rumors that piece of folly to attempt to make any- ica or Africa. Yet it is also true that he he himself was illegitimate. Whatever thing out of my early life. It can all be genuinely hated slavery from his earli- the reality, Lincoln took the whispers condensed into a single sentence . est years. In the end, he put weapons very seriously. In 1852, Lincoln told ‘The short and simple annals of the in the hands of freed black men, and his law partner, William Herndon, that poor.’ That’s my life, and that’s all you put the blue uniform of the United “his mother was a bastard,” the natural or anyone else can make of it.” That, States on their backs, and demanded daughter of a high-class Virginia of course, was not true. No American that they be given the same civil rights planter. What was worse, Herndon life has ever been less capable of being that any white citizen enjoyed. believed that “Mr. Lincoln was telescoped into a single sentence; no It is in balancing each of these informed of some facts that took place American life has ever been so far qualities that we learn to penetrate in Kentucky about the time he was born removed from merely being “short and something of the mystery of Abraham (was told in his youth), that ate into simple.” Lincoln, and who really was our great- his nature, and as it were crushed him, Still, Lincoln was not exactly est president. So, let us consider a and yet clung to him, like his shadow, telling a lie when he told Scripps that series of “true lies” about Abraham like a fiery shirt around his noble spir- his life was a chapter out of the simple Lincoln and see if understanding him it.” Even if these were only rumors, lives of the poor. His life up to age is really as great a “piece of folly” as it they weighed heavily on Lincoln. He twenty-one was, to the surprise of seemed to him. never glorified his poor farmer ori- many who knew him in the 1850s, LINCOLN WAS ILLEGITIMATE gins; if anything, they embarrassed rooted in the harsh rural poverty of Abraham Lincoln was the son of him, and the suggestion that his birth Kentucky (where he was born in Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks or his mother’s were morally tainted 1809) and southern Indiana (where he Lincoln, born on a farm near intensified what Herndon called “his grew up). And even at the height of Hodgenville, Kentucky. No birth cer- organic melancholy.” his prosperity as a railroad lawyer in tificate for Abraham Lincoln exists, LINCOLN HAD RELIGION the 1850s, he could be “short and sim- and the only proof that he was born on Lincoln was certainly born in a ple” in other ways. According to his the day that is celebrated as Lincoln’s religious home. Although his father, friends, he could be socially aloof, “ret- birthday—February 12—is his own Thomas, was an elder in the Separate icent,” “shutmouthed,” and likely to testimony in several letters and two Baptist Church, a rigidly exclusive be telling funny stories one moment short biographical sketches that he Baptist denomination, Lincoln pulled and plunging into manic depression wrote for political campaign use in shy of any religious commitments. the next. 1859 and 1860. There is, neverthe- This did not mean that Lincoln was Clustering around Lincoln are not less, no real doubt that he was legiti- unfamiliar with Christianity. He was so much truths or lies, as are a galaxy mate—that his parents were quite gifted with an almost photographic of “true lies”—exaggerations, paradox- legally married at the time of his memory, and he could mount tree es, and myths that almost always turn birth—because the record of the stumps and replay the sermons of out to have something of a truth in Lincoln-Hanks marriage in 1806 has preachers he had heard almost on them. It is true that he started poor, survived. What may be true, though, demand, or recite an obscure verse of but it is also true that he was a social is that Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who the Bible that he had read. But he climber. It is true that he was the died when her son was nine years old, never joined a church. In fact, when Great Emancipator, but it is also true may have been illegitimate herself. continued on next page 2 For the People continued from previous page In 1850, Lincoln’s second son, he finally came of age and left his Edward Baker Lincoln, died of tuber- father’s farm to become a clerk in a culosis. The death of the child drove In Memoriam store at New Salem, he became notori- Mary Todd Lincoln to join the First ous for sniping at Christianity. When Presbyterian Church in Springfield. he moved again in 1837 to Springfield Although Lincoln did not join the lmer Gertz, world-renowned to begin work as a lawyer, his church with Mary, he began to show a Chicago civil rights attorney Springfield friends described him as a noticeable softening of attitude. He Eand recipient of the Abraham “skeptic” or an “infidel.” Mary Todd, began instead to speak of himself as a Lincoln Association’s Lincoln the whom he married in 1842, was also seeker, but a seeker who was not sure Lawyer Award, died on April 27 after known as a religious agnostic, and that he would be acceptable to God complications from open-heart there is no evidence that either of them after all. “Probably it is my lot to go surgery in January. He distinguished belonged to a church for the first eight on in a twilight, feeling and reasoning himself in a number of landmark cases, years of their marriage. continued on page 6 including winning the release of Nathan Leopold from prison, over- turning Jack Ruby’s first trial convic- Was Abraham Lincoln tion for the killing of Lee Harvey Forced Into Glory ? Oswald because of pretrial publicity, and successfully defending the publica- erone Bennett, Jr., shocked the Many of the scholarly explorations on tion of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer American public with his Lincoln, race, and emancipation against the censorship statutes in Lfamous February, 1968 article resulting from Bennett’s provocative Chicago. Perhaps his most notable in Ebony, “Was Abe Lincoln a White article are found in the Association’s accomplishment was chairing the Supremacist?” Claiming that Lincoln recent collection of essays available committee that wrote the civil rights was not the Great Emancipator and from Fordham University Press, “For section of the 1970 Illinois that he represented the interests of his A Vast Future Also”: Essays from the Constitution. Gertz was ninety-three. white constituents rather than Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Linda Culver, vice president of enslaved blacks, Bennett concluded Association. Illinois National Bank, Springfield that Lincoln was the embodiment of Now, thirty-two years later, business and civic leader, and member the racist tradition in America. Bennett revisits these same themes at of the Abraham Lincoln Association’s Herbert Mitgang of the New York greater length in his recently released board of directors, died suddenly on Times and Mark Krug in the Chicago book, Forced Into Glory: Abraham May 18. Culver, a native of Sun-Times responded to Bennett’s Lincoln’s White Dream (Johnson Springfield, rose quickly in the bank- accusations immediately in the press Publishers, 2000). Columnist Jack E. ing industry from controller to senior with rebuttals. Scholars such as White writing in Time agreed with vice president and executive vice presi- George M. Fredrickson and Don Bennett that a “conspiracy of silence,” dent before being named president of Fehrenbacher also wrote seminal arti- prevented the book from being widely First of America Bank (FOA), smash- cles exploring the limitations of reviewed and openly debated. ing the glass ceiling confronting Lincoln’s views on racial equality. continued on next page female executives. When FOA was purchased by National City Bank, Culver was named regional president. The Abraham Lincoln She left National City Bank last year to Association to Sponsor the help reestablish the locally owned Illinois National Bank. Every Lincoln Colloquium Springfield civic, cultural, and business organization board actively sought he Abraham Lincoln Associa- include the Lincoln Studies Center at Culver because she was energetic, tion Board of Directors voted Knox College and the Lincoln industrious, and caring. Her love of Tto provide $1,000 toward the Museum at Fort Wayne. The speakers Springfield was legendary. Her brief cost of the 15th Annual Lincoln for “Now He Belongs to the Ages: tenure on the Abraham Lincoln Colloquium that will take place on Lincoln in the New Millennium,” Association board of directors pro- September 23 from 10:00 A.M.