From Out of the Top Hat: A Blog from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum

     One of the pleasures of studying history is figuring out which things about the past we know for sure, and which we don’t.  If you study history for a living you get used to being less than certain about many important facts.  Take the famous comment attributed to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton as he stood weeping beside Abraham Lincoln’s deathbed on the rainy Saturday morning of April 15, 1865.  “Now he belongs to the ages,” Stanton is supposed to have said.  For the entire 20^th century virtually all Lincoln historians took for granted that the Secretary had indeed uttered the word “ages.”  No fact seemed more certain.  Lincoln’s personal secretaries John Nicolay and John Hay, in their 1890 biography of the man they had endearingly called “the tycoon,” had lent their authority to the phrase “now he belongs to the ages.”  And in 1865 none other than John Hay had stood beside Lincoln’s deathbed just as Stanton had done.  What could be more certain than words presumably spoken in the hearing of John Hay and the other friends and associates of Lincoln gathered around his deathbed?    

     But in the 21^st century several historians have mounted a challenge to “ages,” claiming that Stanton actually said “now he belongs to the angels.”  There were in fact rumors in the early 20^th century that Stanton perhaps had spoken the word “angels,” not “ages,” but no documentary evidence ever emerged to convert the rumors into historical fact.  Some recent “angels” advocates have pointed to a written work from 1965 as their authority for “angels”:  the book Twenty Days, an excellent collection of Lincoln assassination photographs published by Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt and Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr.  But as photo historians, not phrase historians, the Kunhardts didn’t pay close enough attention to their textual sources, or alert their readers to where they’d found their sources.

They asserted that James Tanner – a young Civil War amputee who had served as Secretary Stanton’s stenographer at Lincoln’s deathbed — had written a first-hand account of the event and had remembered that Stanton said “angels.”  They excerpted  Tanner’s short memoir in Twenty Days, but they didn’t identify its date of publication or archival location.  We can tell by reading even a few lines of their excerpt that they were quoting a well-known Tanner document entitled “The Passing of Lincoln.”  But the original text of “The Passing of Lincoln” actually says “ages,” not “angels.”  A few years before his death in 1927, Tanner published that recollection in several places, including the magazine National Republic (pictured here).  Every time he published his recollection, he used “ages.” 

     The Abraham Lincoln Presidential library owns a signed copy of Tanner’s original six-page manuscript of “The Passing of Lincoln,” as well as a copy of the pamphlet edition published by the Government Printing Office in 1926 (after it had appeared in the Congressional Record).  Both copies, and the Congressional Record, give “ages,” not “angels.”  It is hard to believe the Kunhardts could have miscopied such a crucial word in Tanner’s original text.  It seems more likely they were working from an unidentified newspaper clipping that had already transposed Tanner’s “ages” into “angels.”

     The lesson for historians is never to accept the word of a later source like the Kunhardts’ book when an earlier source is available to be checked.  Their assertion of “angels” ran up against a 75-year historians’ consensus on “ages.”  Historians writing after 1965 were duty-bound to find the Tanner text excerpted by the Kunhardts and to confirm that they had copied it correctly in Twenty Days. 

     But the same principle of verifying the textual foundation for historical claims applies to the “ages” usage too.  How sure can we be that Stanton ever intoned the words “Now he belongs to the ages” at Lincoln’s deathbed?  Is John Hay’s apparent recollection of those words, published in 1890, an adequate foundation for such a claim?  It would make Hay’s ”Now he belongs to the ages” much more credible if there was a single other deathbed observer who heard Stanton utter some version of that phrase, and said so at the time.  But it turns out there is no confirmation of those words from anyone else present at the deathbed.  No one heard Stanton emit any memorial phrase for Lincoln.

     A New York Herald reporter, pencil in hand, was present in the death chamber when Lincoln passed away, and the detailed dispatch he telegraphed to New York mentioned nothing about Stanton uttering any such phrase.  The first reference to Stanton’s “Now he belongs to the ages” came a full quarter-century later, in Nicolay and Hay’s 1890 biography.

     Unless new evidence comes to light, we’ll never be sure what, if anything, Stanton said when Lincoln died.  As Adam Gopnik shrewdly suggested in his 2009 book Angels and Ages, Secretary Stanton, his chest heaving with grief at half-past seven on April 15, 1865, could easily have muttered “ages,” or “angels,” or both.  And whatever he said could have been missed by the others as he choked on whatever words were struggling to come out of his mouth.

     Or maybe he said nothing then, and decided months or years later (he died in 1869) that in the mental fog and fatigue of April 15 he had thought some version of the “ages” phrase but failed to voice it.  Perhaps he realized that “Now he belongs to the ages” would still make a fitting benediction retroactively, since the martyred president was already sure to endure in the hearts of his fellow citizens.  Stanton could have reported his realization to John Hay, and Hay could have kept it in mind until the 1880s, when he and Nicolay were crafting their “tycoon’s” biography.

     “Ages” certainly rests on dubious foundations, but at least John Hay and James Tanner, who both vouched for it eventually, had been present at Lincoln’s deathbed.  As far as we know, no deathbed mourners or observers ever vouched for “angels.”  That makes the case for “ages,” weak as it may be, much stronger than the case for “angels.”  But there’s no reason for historians to pose as having attained certainty on what Stanton said.  It’s better to admit that “ages” rests on shaky ground, and trust that readers won’t jump to “angels,” which rests on no ground at all.  “Angels” is wafting in the ether.

     Of course in April 1865 northerners and southern blacks didn’t need Stanton to tell them that Lincoln belonged to the ages.  They already knew it.  And the religious majority among them– including Secretary of War Edwin Stanton– knew very well that Lincoln belonged to the angels too.

     It is commonplace today to plant a tree as a living memorial for an individual, event or cause.  Unlike a plaque or marker, a tree can provide shade and serve as a filter for pollutants that are created by modern lifestyles.  Like plaques and markers, trees can suffer from neglect.  When a group planted a tree in Waukegan to honor the community’s celebrity resident, Jack Benny, they never anticipated that the tree might die.  When it did, radio personality Fred Allen who carried on a friendly feud with Benny over the airwaves declared: “How can they expect the tree to grow in Waukegan when the sap is in Hollywood?”  How indeed.

     Surprisingly, a number of communities and individuals commemorated Lincoln’s death by planting trees in his honor.  The town of Marengo, Illinois within the weeks following Lincoln’s assassination planted elms, weeping willows, myrtle and evergreen trees in honor of the martyred president.  The Chicago Tribune encouraged a nationwide effort claiming: “Green would be to his memory over all the land in nature, as it will be in human hearts.”  No one, to my knowledge, has ever compiled a listing of extant Lincoln memorial trees that were planted in the immediate aftermath of his assassination. 

      According to Robert Todd Lincoln, the president’s only surviving son, Abraham Lincoln’s favorite tree was the hard maple.  Abraham Lincoln, however, planted an American elm in the front of his home at 8^th and Jackson in Springfield.  The tree was badly damaged by storms and eventually removed after being destroyed by a fierce wind storm on August 17, 1906.  Attempts to replace the Lincoln tree were unsuccessful.  In 1988, the National Park Service decided to plant an elm tree but instead of using the traditional American elm, replace it with a Japanese-Chinese hybrid that was disease resistant.  The one caveat to planting the tree was the desire to keep the tree looking similar to the Lincoln elm in the 1860 photograph of the Lincoln Home by Boston photographer A.J. Whipple.  This requires the National Park Service to periodically dig up the Japanese-Chinese hybrid and replace it with a smaller version until it too, outgrows its purpose. 

     Finally, one of the earliest promotional narratives for the Soldiers’ Home, what is now called President Lincoln’s Cottage, was a large copper beech tree next to the cottage.  Folklore about Lincoln sitting in its branches, penning thoughts about emancipation, and chasing his sons around the base of the tree helped to provide a human element and compelling Lincoln connection to the site.  When the tree died in 2002, cuttings were taken to propagate and eventually present as legacy trees.  Arborists, however, determined that the age of the tree post-dated Lincoln and therefore could not have been on the grounds at the time Lincoln stayed at the cottage. Clearly, the copper beach tree disembarked after Lincoln.

   William Henry Johnson was born around 1835, site unknown.  He began working for Abraham Lincoln, in Springfield, in early 1860.  Johnson was a black man, who because his name was Johnson has defied modern attempts to trace his origins.  He apparently did the work of an uneducated black man: took care of the Lincolns’ horse Old Bob, perhaps swept the law office or brushed Lincoln’s boots and coat, ran errands.  Unlike the Irish girls, Kentucky men, Portuguese immigrants, and one or two other blacks who had worked for the Lincolns, Johnson became personally close enough to them to ‘stick.’ When the Lincolns rode the train to Washington, D.C., in February 1861, Johnson rode with them, the only non-official person to make this move.  Conceivably there was an element of political statement in Lincoln’s having asked this young man to join him in his journey to the presidency, but, equally likely, Lincoln liked and trusted him.

   There is no portrait of Johnson, as there is of Mary Lincoln’s far better known employee and friend Elizabeth Keckly.  Indeed, the celebrity of Lizzie Keckly stems as much from her skill and her closeness to Mary Lincoln as from her half-dozen portraits, because we ‘know’ about people through their image, and seek more interior information about them to match the exterior sample.  Johnson does appear, fair to assume, in the August 8, 1860, campaign-parade photograph by William Shaw (150 years ago this summer) depicting a Republican parade before the Lincoln home.  Perhaps 250 people are seen at this marvelous political-social event, including a streetful of white people and two dozen black people gathered either in Lincoln’s yard or in the foreground.  Lincoln stands out in a white suit by his door.  For any who think that blacks did not support the crypto-racist, slavery-condoning, Kentucky-born lawyer that year, look at the dozens of blacks standing close by his house, Johnson among them, somewhere.

   The documents at the ALPLM attesting to Johnson’s presence in Washington, D.C., are two: on Mar. 11, 1862, Lincoln wrote him a check for $5.00; and soon Lincoln wrote this, among a small succession of job recommendations:

  “The bearer of this card, William Johnson (colored), came with me from Illinois, and is a worthy man, as I believe.  A. Lincoln    Oct. 24, 1862”

   Johnson, barred by lighter-skinned mulatto staffers from his intended employment at the Executive Mansion because of his dark skin, had to find work elsewhere.  Lincoln helped him get clerk and messenger jobs at the Treasury and Navy Depts. – traditional employers of blacks – and continued to welcome him to the private quarters to trim the president’s beard, brush his coat, tell him what people around town were saying.  While Lincoln prepared a now-famous speech, he wrote to the Treasury, to excuse Johnson from work, “William goes with me to Gettysburg.”  And so the valet stood in the room at the Wills House as the orator finished his remarks for the cemetery dedication the next day.  Both men contracted smallpox in Gettysburg — Lincoln the mild form known as varioloid, recovering after several days; Johnson the serious kind, dying in Washington in January 1864.

   Without family or money, Johnson faced a common grave, except that Lincoln paid for his burial at Arlington National Cemetery – Robert E. Lee’s former estate, presumably dotted with the graves of unfree blacks – and for a monument reading ‘William H. Johnson, Citizen.’  How a man treats another man in private may tell us far more than his public utterances about groups.

   Welcome to our blog presented by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum!  As if from out of Lincoln’s top hat, we will be sharing with you interesting stories and details of his life and times.  Stay tuned for new entries posted weekly.  We hope you enjoy and invite you to share your thoughts and comments with us!