THE HERNDON LECTURES, LETTERS, AND BIOGRAPHY
THE name of William H. Herndon finds frequent mention in these pages,
as it must in any study of Abraham Lincoln. With all his faults as
a biographer, his astigmatism, his anti-religious prejudice, his
intolerance, his bad taste, he is an invaluable source of information
concerning his partner and friend, Abraham Lincoln.
The publication of the Lamon biography and the Reed lecture brought him
into a conflict from which no power on earth could probably have kept
him out, and in it he did and said many things which for his own sake
and Lincoln's he might better not have said.
But Herndon was no liar. Biased as he was, and himself a free-thinker
or perhaps worse, he told the truth in such fashion as to throw it out
of perspective, and sometimes told what he believed to be the truth in
a passion which compels us to discount some of his testimony. But he
did not lie nor intentionally misrepresent.
For twenty years Lincoln and Herndon were law partners, and their
partnership was never formally dissolved. Lincoln liked Herndon, but
there was no loss of love between Herndon and Mrs. Lincoln. She, if
tradition about Springfield is to be believed, disliked him personally
for his habits, and possibly also for his politics, for he was an
Abolitionist before Lincoln, and a very ardent one at that. Had she
known what Herndon was to say about her in later years she might have
been more gracious to her husband's junior partner, who had learned
some habits at the bar of his father's tavern which he might better not
have learned.
Herndon in his later life looked not a little like Lincoln, and
showed no disposition by any change of beard or other device to lessen
the resemblance; but in other particulars the two men were most
unlike. Herndon was five feet nine, Lincoln more than six feet three.
Herndon was impetuous, Lincoln extremely deliberate and cautious to
a fault. Herndon was a good judge of human nature and excelled in
cross-examination, while he failed in the careful preparation of his
cases; Lincoln was a very poor judge of human nature, but reduced his
cases to simple principles, and carefully worked up his evidence with
deliberate care. Herndon was a great reader; Lincoln seldom read a book
through. Herndon spent his money for books and had a valuable library;
Lincoln seldom wasted a dollar on a book. Herndon was outspoken;
Lincoln was secretive. Herndon wanted all the world to know what he
thought about everything; Lincoln kept his ear to the ground and chose
his own time for the utterance of his convictions.
We shall never have another as good description of Abraham Lincoln's
appearance and manner as that which comes from the pen of Herndon, nor
shall we ever obtain better pen pictures of many of the incidents in
his career. But Herndon was too good a witness to be a good judge, and
he lived too near the stump to behold the tree.
Herndon had already attempted to catechize Dr. Smith,[38] Mr. Lincoln's
pastor, concerning his relations with Lincoln, and Smith had replied
that he was willing to tell what he knew about Lincoln's faith, but
did not choose to make Mr. Herndon his vehicle of communication to the
public. This did not tend to increase Herndon's love for the clergy:
and when Dr. Holland printed Dr. Reed's lecture, with its letters in
which several of the men whom Lamon, on Herndon's authority, had quoted
in support of Lamon's declaration, Herndon quickly replied and Holland
refused to print his article.
Herndon spilled much ink through a New York newspaper whose editor
later was sent to prison for the circulation of obscene literature,
and wrote a number of letters, in each of which he tended to become a
little more pronounced.
He scorned the idea that Lincoln had taken strangers into his
confidence concerning his faith. He said in a letter to J. E. Remsburg,
under date of September 10, 1887, "He was the most secretive, reticent,
shut-mouthed man that ever existed."
The Reed lecture infuriated him. He denounced Dr. Reed publicly as a
liar, and said many things which a more prudent man would not have
said. On November 9, 1882, he issued a broadside, entitled "A Card and
a Correction," beginning:
"I wish to say a few short words to the public and private ear. About
the year 1870 I wrote a letter to Mr. F. E. Abbott, then of Ohio,
touching Mr. Lincoln's religion.[39] In that letter I stated that Mr.
Lincoln was an infidel, sometimes bordering on atheism, and I now
repeat the same. In the year 1873, the Right Rev. James A. Reed, pastor
and liar of this city, gave a lecture on Mr. Lincoln's religion, in
which he tried to answer me,--" and more to the same purport.
While Herndon and Lamon were men of quite different, mind and ability,
the two men used essentially the same body of material for the making
of their books about Lincoln, Herndon having sold copies of all his
Lincoln manuscripts to Lamon.
* * * * *
Herndon delivered at least three lectures on Lincoln. The first, and
most popular and valuable, was on the "Life and Character of Lincoln."
It was first delivered to a Springfield audience in 1866, was repeated
many times, and it forms the substance of the twentieth chapter of his
book, as it appeared in the first edition, and the eleventh chapter
in the second. It contains the incomparable description of Lincoln's
personal appearance which must stand to all time as the best and final
pen-picture of the man.
The second was entitled "Abraham Lincoln; Miss Ann Rutledge; New Salem;
the Poem." It was delivered in the old Sangamon County court house in
Springfield in November, 1866, and was based on notes which Herndon
had recently made on a visit to New Salem, Sunday and Monday, October
14-15, 1866. It contains the material out of which all subsequent
romantic works about Lincoln and Ann Rutledge have been woven. It was
heard by a small audience, greeted with manifest disapproval, and came
near to being hopelessly lost; but is preserved in a limited edition
published by H. E. Barker, Springfield. This edition is quoted in part
in the foregoing pages, with special reference to Herndon's personal
touch with New Salem.
The third was on "The Religion of Abraham Lincoln," and was called out
by the Holland biography and the Bateman interview. Of this and the
first, Mr. Barker says in his preface to the Ann Rutledge lecture, that
they "were allowed to perish for lack of permanence in printed form.
Their subject-matter, however, was embodied in the extended Life of
Lincoln published in 1872 by Ward H. Lamon, and in the still later Life
of Lincoln written and published by Mr. Herndon in 1889."
This material is quoted practically _in extenso_ in the pages of this
volume, no important statement having been omitted.
Herndon's regret increased that he had sold to Lamon the copies of his
papers. He was in a position where he was getting most of the blame
for what Lamon had written, and he was not wholly in sympathy with
Lamon's and especially with Black's point of view. Lamon's proposed
new edition, with the new volume that was to have covered the years
of Lincoln's Presidency, did not materialize. There was probably no
publisher who dared undertake it. At length Herndon got to work on
his own biography of Lincoln, and was fortunate in associating with
himself Mr. Jesse W. Weik, who helped him to complete it. The work was
published in 1889 by Belford, Clarke, & Company, of Chicago, and made
its appearance in three volumes. Soon after its publication the firm
failed. The books were hawked about for a song, the greater part of
the edition was unsold, and the balance of the edition is alleged to
have been bought up by Lincoln's friends and destroyed. The author of
this book paid $35.00 for his set, and could sell it at a profit.
It is a great pity that Herndon had not learned his lesson from the
fate of Lamon's book. If he had omitted some of the objectionable
matter, he would have made for himself a great name. Even as it was, he
did a great piece of work: but he gained neither money nor commendation.
In 1892, Appletons brought out a new edition in two volumes, with some
matter omitted, and some new matter by Horace White, and that edition
met with favor. But Herndon did not live to see it. He died, poor and
battle-scarred, denounced as the maligner of the man he loved.
In his younger days, Herndon drank, and it is alleged that in his
later life he used morphine. It is said that he wanted an appointment
to a Government Land Office, but that Lincoln, knowing his weakness,
did not appoint him, and that this had some share in his feeling,
which he still thought to be one of reverence for Lincoln, but which
was unconsciously tinged with resentment. To this it is answered that
Lincoln did offer Herndon an appointment which Herndon declined: but
it was not a very attractive appointment, and there is good reason
to believe that Herndon was disappointed, and that he knew Lincoln's
reason.
The name which Herndon applied to Lincoln he accepted for himself,
that of infidel. Yet it is fair to ask whether this was a just term
as applied to Herndon himself. In his lecture on Ann Rutledge, he had
occasion to defend himself in advance for views which he knew would be
heard with suspicion, and which, indeed, like almost everything he said
and did, had the unfortunate quality of increasing his unpopularity, he
said:
"You know my Religion, my Philosophy: That the highest thought and
acts of the human soul and its religious sphere are to think, love,
obey, and worship God, by thinking freely, by loving, teaching, doing
good to, and elevating mankind. My first duty is to God, then to
mankind, and then to the individual man or woman."--_Lecture on Ann
Rutledge_, pp. 9-10.
One cannot help regretting that the man who had thus defined his own
religion should ever have been led to think himself or any other man
whom he supposed to be like-minded an infidel.