THE LAMON BIOGRAPHY
WARD HILL LAMON was for many years a close friend of Lincoln.[33]
Their relations began in 1847 when Lamon settled at Danville and
continued until Lincoln's death. Both there and at Bloomington, Lamon
was Lincoln's local associate and so-called partner. When Lincoln
voted at the Presidential election of 1860, the men who accompanied
him to the polls were William H. Herndon, Ward Hill Lamon, and Col.
Elmer Ellsworth. When Lincoln was elected and his political friends
had slated Lamon for a foreign mission, Lincoln appointed him Marshal
of the District of Columbia that he might have him close at hand. He
was a member of the party which accompanied Lincoln to Washington, and
when through apparent danger of assassination the route was changed and
Lincoln slipped into Washington with a single companion, it was Lamon
whom he chose to accompany him. Lamon had charge of the arrangements of
Lincoln's trip to Gettysburg, and accompanied Lincoln and was in charge
when he visited the battlefield of Antietam. His book of personal
"Recollections," edited by his daughter and published in 1895, is full
of interest and contains much of permanent value. His _Life of Abraham
Lincoln_, published in 1872, is the most bitterly denounced of all the
biographies of Lincoln. It involved its author and publisher in heavy
financial loss, and the unsold portion of the edition is alleged to
have been bought up by friends of Lincoln and quietly destroyed. Lamon
intended to have followed this volume, whose subject-matter ended with
Lincoln's arrival in Washington in 1861, with a second volume covering
Lincoln's life as President, but neither a second volume nor a second
edition of the first was ever issued.
How Lamon, being a friend of Lincoln, could ever have written such a
book has been the subject of much conjecture. Herndon believed that
during the latter part of his life in Washington Lamon had become
embittered against Lincoln. Lamon's daughter in a magazine article on
the subject professed her father's abiding friendship for Lincoln,
but maintained that he was endeavoring to tell the true story of a
great life and to recover the real Lincoln from the realm of myth
(Dorothy Lamon Teillard: "Lincoln in Myth and in Fact," _World's Work_,
February, 1911, pp. 14040-44).
The basis of Lamon's book is the Herndon manuscripts, copies of which
Herndon sold to Lamon for $2,000 in 1870. That Herndon bitterly
regretted the necessity of this sale, there is clear evidence; but
he had come to a condition of great poverty; and there were other
reasons why it seemed unlikely that he himself would ever write a Life
of Lincoln. That Lamon himself wrote the book without assistance was
disputed from the beginning, and Herndon was accused of being its real
author. In letters to Horace White in 1890, Herndon told the truth, as
is now believed, concerning the authorship.
"You regret, as well as myself, that I sold my MSS. to Lamon. The
reason why I did so was that I was then, in 1870-72, a poor devil
and had to sell to live. From 1853 to 1865 I spent all my time and
money for the 'nigger,' or rather for Liberty and the Union--lost my
practice, went to farming, and went under in the crash of 1871-73,
and that, too, from no speculations, vices, etc. Today I have to work
for tomorrow's bread, and yet I am a happy and contented man. I own a
little farm of sixty-five acres and raise fruits for a living. Now you
have the reasons for my acts.
"In reference to Lamon's book, I can truthfully say that Chauncey F.
Black,[34] son of J. S. Black, wrote quite every word of it.... I
have for years been written to by various persons to know why Lamon
was so much prejudiced against Lincoln. The bitterness, if any, was
not in Lamon so much as in Black, though I am convinced that Lamon
was no solid, firm friend of Lincoln, especially during Lincoln's
administration, or the latter part of it."--NEWTON: _Lincoln and
Herndon_, pp. 307-8.
Herndon stoutly denied having written a single line of Lamon's book,
but he furnished the greater part of the material in the form of
documents, and gave further aid by letters and suggestions. Thirteen
years after it was published he wrote to Lamon, who was still hoping to
issue a new biography which would include the volume already issued and
a second volume, and said:
"I desire to see your new Life win. Your first Life is nearly
suppressed--is suppressed or will be by rings--bears, and like.
Lamon's first Life of Lincoln is the truest Life that was ever written
of a man, as I think. I do not agree to all it says, and yet it is
the most truthful Life of Lincoln written, or to be written probably,
except your second Life. . . . Why, Lamon, if you and I had not told
the exact truth about Lincoln, he would have been a myth in a hundred
years after 1865. We knew him--loved him--had ideas and had the
courage of our convictions. We told the world what Lincoln was and
were terribly abused for it."--(_World's Work_, February, 1911, p.
14044).
One of the chief things which Lamon set out to do was to refute
Holland's estimate of Lincoln's faith, particularly as it appeared in
Holland's account of the Bateman story. Lamon held that any impression
which people got that Lincoln possessed substantial Christian faith,
was due to the fact that Lincoln was a wily politician, who saw the
power and appreciated the prejudices of the churches and was determined
not to suffer from their hostility. He not only grew more cautious as
he grew older, but actually dissembled. His religious references were
made as vague and general as possible, and he permitted himself to be
misunderstood and misrepresented by ministers and others because of
"his morbid ambition, coupled with a mortal fear that his popularity
would suffer by an open avowal of his deistic convictions" (Lamon,
_Life of Lincoln_, p. 498).
His estimate of Lincoln is that "On the whole, he was an honest,
although a shrewd, and by no means unselfish politician." He attributes
Lincoln's melancholy definitely to his utter lack of faith.
"It is very probable that much of Mr. Lincoln's unhappiness, the
melancholy that 'dripped from him as he walked,' was due to his want
of religious faith. When the black fit was on him, he suffered as much
mental misery as Bunyan or Cowper in the deepest anguish of their
conflicts with the Evil One. But the unfortunate conviction fastened
upon him by his early associations, that there was no truth in the
Bible, made all consolation impossible, and penitence useless. To a
man of his temperament, predisposed as it was to depression of spirit,
there could be no chance of happiness if doomed to live without hope
and without God in the world. He might force himself to be merry
with his chosen comrades; he might 'banish sadness' in mirthful
conversation, or find relief in a jest; gratified ambition might
elevate his feelings, and give him ease for a time: but solid comfort
and permanent peace could come to him only 'through a correspondence
fixed with heaven.' The fatal misfortune of his life, looking at it
only as it affected him in this world, was the influence at New Salem
and at Springfield which enlisted him on the side of unbelief. He paid
the bitter penalty in a life of misery."--LAMON, _Life of Lincoln_, p.
504.
In support of this thesis, Lamon, aided and abetted by Herndon, sought
for testimonials from those who had known Lincoln, endeavoring to
prove that he had no religious faith. Herndon himself wrote a letter
which we shall quote later because of its bearing upon a particular
point which we have yet to discuss, and gave the names of Judge Logan,
John T. Stuart, Joshua F. Speed, and James H. Matheny as those who
would confirm his declaration that Lincoln was an infidel. Herndon's
own definition of the term infidel is susceptible of such varying
definitions in his different letters and published articles that it
is not always easy to tell just what he meant by it, but in some of
these he was specific and told, from his own alleged knowledge or his
memory of the testimony of others, what Lincoln believed and denied.
Judge Logan appears not to have contributed to the discussion, but
from several of the others and from some other men whose letters
Herndon already had, Lamon made up a considerable volume of testimony
concerning the unbelief of Lincoln. Some of these we quote, reserving
others for later consideration.
Hon. John T. Stuart was alleged to have said:
"I knew Mr. Lincoln when he first came here, and for years afterwards.
He was an avowed and open infidel, sometimes bordered on atheism. I
have often and often heard Lincoln and one W. D. Herndon, who was a
free-thinker, talk over this subject. Lincoln went further against
Christian beliefs and doctrines and principles than any man I ever
heard: he shocked me. I don't remember the exact line of his argument:
suppose it was against the inherent defects, so called, of the Bible,
and on grounds of reason. Lincoln always denied that Jesus was the
Christ of God,--denied that Jesus was the Son of God, as understood
and maintained by the Christian Church. The Rev. Dr. Smith, who wrote
a letter, tried to convert Lincoln from infidelity so late as 1858,
and couldn't do it."--LAMON, _Life of Lincoln_, p. 488.
It later developed that these quotations which appeared in Lamon's
book in the form of letters to Herndon were in some instances, if not
in all, Herndon's own reports of conversations with these friends of
Lincoln, and not, in any case, signed letters. Several of the putative
authors repudiated the statements attributed to them.
Dr. C. H. Ray was quoted as saying:
"I do not know how I can aid you. You [Herndon] knew Mr. Lincoln far
better than I did, though I knew him well; and you have served up
his leading characteristics in a way that I should despair of doing,
if I should try. I have only one thing to ask: that you do not give
Calvinistic theology a chance to claim him as one of its saints and
martyrs. He went to the Old-School Church; but, in spite of that
outward assent to the horrible dogmas of the sect, I have reason from
himself to know that his 'vital purity,' if that means belief in the
impossible, was of a negative sort."--LAMON, _Life of Lincoln_, pp.
489-90.
Hon. David Davis was quoted as saying:
"I do not know anything about Lincoln's religion, and do not think
anybody knew. The idea that Lincoln talked to a stranger about his
religion or religious views, or made such speeches, remarks, etc.,
about it as are published, is to me absurd. I knew the man so well:
he was the most reticent, secretive man I ever saw, or expect to see.
He had no faith, in the Christian sense of the term,--had faith in
laws, principles, causes, and effects--philosophically: you [Herndon]
know more about his religion than any man. You ought to know it, of
course."--LAMON, _Life of Lincoln_, p. 489.
Lamon also printed a letter from James H. Matheny, who had been
Lincoln's "best man" at his wedding, and a long-time and intimate
friend. It would be included in this chapter, as it is to be referred
to in the next, but it is reserved for a more important use in the
chapter on "Lincoln's Burnt Book."
Lamon's _Life of Lincoln_ lashed into greater fury the tempest that
already raged concerning Lincoln's religious faith. Nor was this the
only criticism upon it. It was the first of the Lives of Lincoln to
which the later term of "muckraking" might have been applied, and its
spirit of hostility is best accounted for by the fact that its real
author was not Lamon but Black, who not only entertained all the local
prejudice which one element in Springfield had against Lincoln, but
represented also a bitter political hostility, Black's father having
been a member of Buchanan's Cabinet. Indeed there is alleged to have
been a three-cornered and acrimonious dispute among the publishers,
Lamon, and Black concerning an omitted chapter on Buchanan's
administration which had something to do with one aspect of the book's
financial failure. Black and Lamon and the publishers all lost money
and the book was a financial disaster.
Notwithstanding its tone of astonishing bitterness against Lincoln, its
shocking bad taste and its perverted viewpoint, Lamon's biography is a
valuable source of information. Concerning it John Hay wrote to Lamon,
"Nothing heretofore printed can compare with it in interest, and from
the nature of the case all subsequent writers will have to come to you
for a large class of facts."
In 1895 Lamon's daughter Dorothy, subsequently Mrs. Teillard,
published a book of "Recollections" of Lincoln by her father, with
no objectionable matter, and with a considerable number of valuable
incidents. But this later book, while avoiding the occasions of
criticism which the first book evoked, added little to the character
study which the first volume, with all its manifold defects, had
contained.
Lamon was a very different man from Lincoln--so different that men who
knew them both wondered at Lincoln's fondness for him. And he knew
Lincoln intimately. But he was not capable of interpreting the best
that was in Lincoln.