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

According to his private secretaries and some close friends, President Lincoln had a deserved reputation for bending to women’s plaints and complaints.  William Lee Miller, in his study President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman (2008), reviews a notable case in which urgent pleas by the wife and daughter of a condemned man did not succeed in making the chief executive yield; the man concerned was a slave-dealer whose death by hanging went forward as planned.  Much more frequent was the type of case in which the president wrote out a pass for a lady to visit someone behind enemy lines or asked the War Department to remit part of a soldier’s sentence.  He did not like to dismiss a sincere need.

But there is a unique case in which the usually humble president wrote out his true feelings about one lady visitor.  And it is the only case in which we have record that Lincoln wrote the pejorative word “saucy.”  This short note to himself now belongs to the Library of Congress:

ExecutiveMansion
Washington. Aug. 23, 1862.

To-day, Mrs. Major Paul, of the Regular Army calls and urges the appointment of her husband as a Brig. Genl.  She is a saucy woman and I am afraid she will keep tormenting till I may have to do it.   (Collected Works, v. 5, pp. 390-391).

The prognosticator of his own actions was correct: Paul became a brigadier general as of September 5, 1862.

There are two wrinkles to, and perhaps a defense of, Lincoln’s mood in the case.  Just 12 days earlier, he had written to Major General Halleck to state that “Lieut. Col. Paul,” a graduate of West Point, wanted to be posted to active service.  Did the officer’s wife not know that her husband had already been promoted to a colonelcy?  Or was she still referring to him in Lincoln’s presence as a mere major, to underscore her complaint?

A recent act of selflessness by the (female) owner of an original document signed by Lincoln throws a glimmer of light upon this situation.  The complete Papers of Abraham Lincoln project, based here at the Presidential Library, now has a full-color scan of the document, thanks to the private owner.  For one does not jump from major to brigadier general without making the requisite stop at the corner marked ‘colonel.’  Lincoln, ever the diligent signer of military commissions, had already signed Paul’s promotion to lieutenant colonel in the 8^th U.S. Infantry – back on 2 July 1862.

How to explain Mrs. ‘Major’ Paul’s visit on 23 August with her complaint – her lament, prod, push, case, demand — that her husband be promoted?  He had been a lieutenant colonel for 7 weeks before the saucy wife visited the Executive Mansion and referred to her husband as a major.  Was the promotion lost in a file?  Was he refusing to accept it, and holding out for immediate elevation to brigadier general?  Had Edwin Stanton, who duly co-signed the promotion to colonel, held it up because of Paul’s service with the unproductive McClellan in eastern Virginia that season?  Or was this bureaucratic delay caused by two men, Lincoln and Stanton, and many others much less well-known, who were worked to distraction by the demands of war?

Cultural differences may have entered into this matter.  Was this Gabriel René Paul a Frenchman, or of French extraction?  Was his wife?  Did she treat a rube Anglo-Kentuckian like Lincoln with disdain?  Was her aggrieved tone simply less deferential than the president was accustomed to?

The timetable was this: Paul started the year 1862 as a major.  In early July 1862 Lincoln signed his commission promoting him to lieutenant colonel.  In early August Lincoln may have seen him personally and referred to him as Lieut. Col. in addressing Major General Halleck on his behalf.  In late August Mrs. Paul arrived to demand that her husband, ‘Major Paul,’ jump to brigadier general.  And in fact on 5 Sept. 1862 he was thus promoted.

Who was at fault for this minor contretemps?  Is Lincoln’s note-to-self the evidence that he had already forgotten about Paul’s first promotion?  Or was Mrs. Paul lying about his low rank?  Or was she unaware of her husband’s half-way promotion?  Had the soldier himself not even been informed of his promotion?

The handwriting on Lincoln’s “saucy” note is shaky.  He likely made it late in the day.  Earlier the same day, General Charles P. Stone approached Lincoln to ask why he had been arrested.  And this was all on the day after Lincoln had penned his justly famed public letter to Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, explaining and yet not explaining why he did or did not free the slaves – to save the Union.  Greeley was blunt in print about Lincoln’s motives; Mrs. Paul was blunt in person about her husband’s wishes.  Perhaps Lincoln actually wanted to call Greeley “saucy.”  Thus, a wholly separate timetable was superimposed within the Pauls’ complaints and promotions: that of Lincoln’s timetable for the nerve-testing policy for emancipation, from conception (mid-June 1862) to announcement to Cabinet (22 July) to fending off Greeley’s demands (22 August) to revealing the plan to the public (22 September).  All the while trying to get McClellan to pursue Robert E. Lee.

Blinded Brig. Gen. Paul asks another favor of Lincoln, 1865, and is accommodated again.

Brigadier General Paul did valorous service, as seen in the illustration here.  He was nearly blinded at Gettysburg.   Had he remained a major or lieutenant-colonel, perhaps he would have been standing elsewhere at Gettysburg.  The end of the war found him quietly stationed in Kentucky. Let us hope that he and his wife were satisfied.

Everyone loves a winner, which may account for the continuous battle over who owns the Lincoln story.  Three states — Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois — claim to have been crucial influences upon Abraham Lincoln during his formative years.  The Illinois General Assembly wisely adopted the slogan “Land of Lincoln” in 1955 and had it placed on license plates, ensuring its wide promotion.  To make certain that no other state would infringe on the claim, Congress passed a special act that same year giving Illinois the exclusive use to the phrase “Land of Lincoln.” 

Writers have also been territorial about the Sixteenth President.  John G. Nicolay, Lincoln’s private secretary, was incensed at Ida Tarbell in the 1890s when he discovered that she intended to write a popular biography of Abraham Lincoln.  Nicolay, having recently finished a 10-volume Lincoln biography with John Hay, protested to Tarbell that “you are invading my field.”  His real concern was that a competing Lincoln biography diminishes “the value of my property.”

Not the same old Lincoln story for a new book and movie, opening June 2012.

Perhaps only a handful of Lincoln books have made the kind of sales that give one pause.  Carl Sandburg, David Herbert Donald, and Doris Kearns Goodwin come immediately to mind.  The recent announcements that two feature-length films are now in production — Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, a loosely based adaptation of the Goodwin bestseller — recalls an earlier era when two other Lincoln films were in production at the same time.

 Starring Raymond Massey, Robert Sherwood’s play Abe Lincoln in Illinois was a Broadway hit in the fall of 1938.  New York critics and audiences applauded Massey’s dramatic interpretation of a young Abraham Lincoln.  Hollywood frequently took Broadway hits and quickly turned them into motion pictures.  RKO Pictures wasted no time in purchasing the film rights and began production.  Little did they know that screenwriter Howard Estabrook had written a screenplay in 1935 for Fox Film Corporation entitled Young Lincoln.  But production ceased when Fox merged with Twentieth Century to become Twentieth Century-Fox.  Screenwriter Lamar Trotti, who had finished production of a biopic on Alexander Graham Bell in November 1938, then began rewriting Estabrook’s script, which had taken on the new title Lawyer of the West.  Darryl Zanuck, the producer of the film, changed the name of the film to Young Mr. Lincoln.

The competing Lincoln films resulted in a lawsuit in which Robert Sherwood sued Twentieth Century-Fox.  Sherwood claimed that the Twentieth Century-Fox film was a blatant facsimile of Sherwood’s play, using the same plot elements, a similar title, and similar promotional campaign, and drawing upon the popularity of Lincoln created by Sherwood’s play.  Sherwood said that “there was little public interest in any portion of the life of Lincoln” until his play generated a widespread public awareness.  In many respects, Sherwood’s assertions were similar to those of John G. Nicolay: “you are invading my field” and diminishing “the value of my property.”

Twentieth Century-Fox countered with the obvious fact that Lincoln’s historical life was in the public domain.  All of the facts and events relating to Lincoln’s life would be similar in any biographical film.  Moreover, the claim that Lincoln was unknown to the larger public until Sherwood’s play appeared was easily dismissed with an abridged listing of films and major plays and books published on Lincoln from 1900 to 1939.  Among those dealing with Lincoln’s early life were Carl Sandburg’s 2-volume work The Prairie Years (1926), D. W. Griffith’s 1930 film Abraham Lincoln, and John Drinkwater’s 1919 hit play Abraham Lincoln.  The court sided with Twentieth Century-Fox, allowing the John Ford film that starred Henry Fonda to move toward release a year before Abe Lincoln in Illinois.  And Sherwood need not have worried, since both films were eagerly embraced by audiences.

As early as 1841, people began applying this stalwart phrase to Lincoln.  On New Year’s Day of that year, the Quincy, Illinois Whig described the 31-year-old from Springfield as “a self-made man, and one of the ablest” among all the lawyers and elected officials in the state. 

The Whig didn’t need to explain what “self-made” meant.  The paper presumed everyone knew the term.  Having entered common usage by the late 1820s, it had become a verbal staple, a handy way to praise resourceful men and the nation that had succored them.

Self-made public servants like Lincoln showed to the satisfaction of many that republican liberty really did rule in the U.S., at least in the North and West.  The chance to ascend in public responsibility and esteem wasn’t limited to the privileged few.  Aristocracy was following monarchy into the dustbin of history.

Disciplined climbers could now rise to distinction without benefit of family fortune or cronyism.  All they needed was well-engraved inner character.  The self-made man, wrote the prolific commercial author John Frost in his Self-Made Men of America (1848), was “one who has rendered himself accomplished, eminent, rich, or great by his own unaided efforts.”         

Lincoln took pride in having risen from a low rung on the social ladder, and said so repeatedly.  But he made no pretense of having accomplished that feat without help.  True, he’d done it with little material aid from his family, and like many young men of his era, he’d done it by self-consciously distancing himself from his father.  (Thomas Lincoln did pass along some vital social capital: the storytelling gift that proved integral to his son’s success.)

When 22, Lincoln strode into New Salem, Illinois, in 1831, “penniless” and “friendless,” as he later wrote.  Yet he soon attracted eager backing.  William Lee Miller, in his book Lincoln’s Virtues (pp. 24-25), gives a nice summary of all the “boosts and helps and open doors and befriendings” that launched Lincoln on his path to public renown. 

After a decade in Illinois, having just been crowned by the Quincy Whig as “one of the ablest” self-made men in the state, Lincoln gave an address in Springfield that spelled out the social underpinnings of self-making.  Speaking to the Washingtonian Society, a temperance group, on Washington’s Birthday 1842, he urged all citizens to join the Society by signing its pledge to abstain from spirits. 

Those struggling to escape the lure of liquor, said Lincoln, couldn’t be expected to make their way unassisted.  They needed the active support of a united community, including people like himself who’d never been tempted by drink.  Lincoln took no credit for his own sobriety, attributing it to luck rather than self-discipline.  “Such of us as have never fallen victims [sic] have been spared more from the absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have.” 

And he extended his point beyond the issue of alcohol.  Everyone, even the morally proficient, had learned self-control by taking their cues from “other people’s actions.”  Everybody absorbed community norms by letting the influence of respected models seep into them.  Self-making amounted to a social achievement, not just an individual one. 

True, Lincoln always held, as he told a small group of free black men whom he invited to the White House 20 years later, that “success does not as much depend on external help as on self-reliance.”  His own experience taught him that relentless resolve lay behind the push for personal advancement.   

But those starting out with limited means — whether freed slaves or penniless migrants — would likely need some “external help.”  Without self-discipline they would surely fail; yet without the moral example and material help of others, self-discipline would languish like seed on rocky ground.

When Lincoln departed from Springfield as president-elect in 1861, he uttered his famous farewell remarks.  Once again, as in the 1842 temperance speech, he underlined the social foundations of self-making.  Speaking from the rear platform of his train on the day before his 52^nd birthday, he thanked his Springfield neighbors for making him into the “old man” he’d become.

“To you, dear friends,” he said in one version of his remarks, “I owe all that I have, all that I am.”  “To this place and the kindness of these people,” he says in another version, “I owe every thing.”

A third version, which appeared in the east-coast press on February 12, 1861, has him saying “to this people I owe all that I am.”  That’s the phrasing put on this late-1860s pocket-sized card, which mistakenly gives the date of publication — his birthday — as the date of delivery.

 Of course, after his death Lincoln couldn’t offer any more correctives to the notion that he’d risen without help.  Americans preferred to cherish him post-mortem as the paragon of self-containment, the brooding genius with the generous heart and steely will.

Another famous self-made man, Frederick Douglass, left one of many testimonials to Lincoln’s unassisted mastery in constructing himself.  Writing a year after the president’s assassination, he praised Lincoln as so self-sufficient, so original, that he had reinvented even the process of self-creation.

“One great charm of his life,” wrote Douglass, “is that he was indebted to himself for himself.  He was the architect of his own fortune, a self-made man, a flat boat captain, a splitter of rails, a man of toil, one who travelled far but made the road on which he traveled — one who ascended high, but with hard hands and honest work built the ladder on which he climbed.  Flung upon the sea of life in the midnight storm, without oars or life preservers he bravely buffeted the billows — and with sinewy arms swam in safety, where other men despair and sink.”

Episode 3, Mr. Lincoln’s Quill Pen: We talk with Dr. James Cornelius about our Featured Artifact of the Month, Abraham Lincoln’s Quill Pen. We also ask Dr. Cornelius about Mary Lincoln’s Strawberry dress which will be on display May 6, 7, and 8. Dr. Cornelius also answers your questions submitted via facebook.

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Oddly, no photograph seems to exist of Mary Lincoln in her 5 March 1861 First Inaugural gown.  Were she and the household too busy, were the photographic studios too full of newly minted government workers as a new administration came to town?

Instead, we know that Mary Lincoln wore the strawberry dress in her first spring as First Lady, in 1861.  We know that someone in one of Mathew Brady’s two studios took her picture in it.  Two questions arise: Why this dress; and where did she pose?

The tradition of a ‘strawberry party’ had been around for at least a generation in Springfield, Illinois, by the time the Lincolns moved to Washington in February 1861.  Such parties were held in hundreds of towns throughout what is now the eastern portion of the United States, and so too were raspberry parties.  In central Illinois the season for fresh wild strawberries begins in May, while around Washington it might begin a little earlier.  Mary and Abraham once hosted such a party for Springfield families and friends, and they attended other such events.  A carriage ride into the country with a picnic lunch – the “young people” (teenagers) usually riding in a separate carriage – provided entertainment, exercise, and sociability.

So among the novel, “Western” ideas Mary Lincoln imported to the nation’s capital was to continue the parties even while war loomed.  This accorded with her husband’s wishes that, to name two, the Executive Mansion be freshened up and the Capitol dome be completed.  She took along her cousin Lizzie Grimsley to shop in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia in early May.

It seems most likely that she bought this beautiful black-silk dress, with machine-embroidered strawberry sprigs, in one of those cities.  A reporter for a Democratic paper followed her in New York one day to record her extravangances, but this dress was not mentioned.  And with her pretty young cousin along, she could well have stopped at Brady’s photographic studio, 10^th St. and Broadway, for what we believe was her first formal pose as First Lady.  Why this dress?  Perhaps it reminded her, and others around her, of their traditions in Illinois.  There is also an outside chance that it was made in Chicago before their journey, or made there and shipped to Washington for her.

Three copies of the cdv I have examined all read ‘Brady / New York,’ but Lloyd Ostendorf’s 1963 book of Lincoln family photographs presumes that Mary sat in Brady’s studio on Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington.  If Ostendorf is right, then Brady may have used the card to let New Yorkers know of his coup d’arte of being the first to capture the new First Lady on chemically treated glass.  Brady was known to advertise each studio in the other city this way.  But if Ostendorf is wrong, Mary actually sat in New York, where she more likely acquired the dress.

Mary’s other Lizzie, the dressmaker and confidante Elizabeth Keckly, can not be shown to have worked on the strawberry dress.  Though the two women met on 5 March, the day after Lincoln’s swearing in, we do not know exactly when and to what extent she began working for the new First Lady.  In her memoir Behind the Scenes (1868), she claimed to have made dozens of dresses for Mrs. Lincoln right from the start.  We can suppose that Lizzie Keckly at least helped Mary get into the dress and perhaps altered it slightly for her.

Mary gave the strawberry dress and a summer 1861 gown to her cousin Lizzie.  The latter is now in the Smithsonian, the former is in Springfield, both of them through Grimsley descendants – the only intact Mary Lincoln dresses in existence now.  Donna McCreary’s book Fashionable First Lady: The Victorian Wardrobe of Mary Lincoln (2007) is the best study of all of her gowns, but she is unable to specify its origins, either.  So in an unusual twist of the common historical pattern, today we know the provenance of the strawberry dress since 1861, but we do not know the point of origin of either the dress or the photo.

Mary’s original strawberry dress will be on display in the Presidential Museum from Friday May 6th through Sunday May 8th for Mother’s Day – its first showing in 26 years.

The February 1994 cover of Scientific American showed a publicity photograph of Marilyn Monroe, from the 1955 movie The Seven Year Itch, arm and arm with an 1863 image of Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Gardner.  The purpose of the cover was to show how digital photography could create photographic images for events that never happened.  Lacking a film negative as reference, digital images make it impossible to distinguish between a scene that reflects an actual event and one that digitally creates a mythical event.

Although Marilyn Monroe never met Abraham Lincoln as depicted on the cover of Scientific American, she did admire him and on at least four occasions was photographed with images of Lincoln or with the greatest popularizer of Lincoln, Carl Sandburg.  The number of biographies of her pales in comparison with those devoted to Abraham Lincoln, but a theme common in most is that she looked upon Lincoln as the father she never knew in childhood.  During a visit to Bryant Cottage in Bement, Illinois, in August 1955, Marilyn Monroe told a reporter, “I have honored and admired Mr. Lincoln since I first heard about him.  As a child, he represented sort of a father to me.  But then I guess he does for everyone in the U.S.”   Her appearance generated a crowd of 10,000 curious onlookers.  Bringing in tow her own photographer, Eve Arnold, Monroe had her visit documented at the house museum where legend, not historical documentation, claims that Lincoln and Douglas met to establish the schedule for debates in 1858.

Bust of Carl Sandburg by Joseph Konzal, ca. 1955. Previously owned by Marilyn Monroe. Part of the Taper Collection now owned by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

The earliest image of Monroe and Lincoln was taken in 1954 by the famed photographer Milton H. Greene.  It shows Monroe standing in a Cadillac convertible holding up a framed photograph of Abraham Lincoln.  The car was a gift from Jack Benny for Monroe’s appearance on his television show The Jack Benny Program.  Milton’s son, Joshua, created a limited edition of 500 copies of this famous photograph that were each stamped, numbered, and signed.  He presented one such copy in 2007 to the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

Len Steckler, a New York City photographer, took a series of three images of Marilyn Monroe and Carl Sandburg in his apartment in December 1961.  Steckler had studied photography with, among others, Edward Steichen, Carl Sandburg’s brother-in-law.  As a photographer, Steckler was called upon to capture images of many celebrities, and he soon formed a friendship with Sandburg.  Steckler also became acquainted with Marilyn Monroe.  These professional relationships led to the meeting between the 35-year-old Monroe and the 83-year-old Sandburg. 

The last meeting between Monroe and Sandburg took place in January 1962 in Hollywood.  Arnold Newman, the legendary New York photographer, was at the small gathering that included Monroe and Sandburg.  Seven images from that evening survive, including one that shows Sandburg teaching Monroe breathing exercises, although most people would conclude that they are dancing.  Monroe had trouble sleeping, and, according to Sandburg, breathing properly would help.

An interesting reference to Lincoln is found in the 1960 George Cukor film Let’s Make Love, starring Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand.  The basic plot has a playboy billionaire businessman, played by Montand, attending a rehearsal in Greenwich Village of the independent Let’s Make Love musical theater company.  The director/producer of the show mistakenly thinks Montand is an actor look-alike of the billionaire who wants a part in the show.  Montand pretends to be an actor to woo Marilyn Monroe, only to find it difficult at the end of the film to prove his true identity.  Worried that Montand is delusional, Monroe provides the following bit of advice:

“There used to be an actor, he played Abraham Lincoln for so many years.  He grew his own beard.  He went around in a shawl.  And you know what they used to say?

He looks like Lincoln, talks like Lincoln.  But he won’t be satisfied until he gets shot.”

It would be interesting to know if Monroe had a hand in adding this reference to the script.  Certainly she was one of Lincoln’s biggest fans.

It is unusual to unearth one completely new story about the Lincolns.  A recent donation to the Presidential Library and Museum has brought us two new stories that shed important light on the characters of Mary Lincoln and her son Robert, through their friendship with a young couple.

Daniel W. Tillinghast was born in Morrisville, N.Y., nephew of a senator from Rhode Island whom President Lincoln knew slightly as a general of militia in the Civil War.  While a boy, Tillinghast moved with his family to Chicago, around 1850.

Louise Boone, born 1844, was a daughter of Dr. Levi Boone, who took office as mayor of Chicago in 1855.  Her aunt’s husband was Jesse B. Thomas, Illinois’s first senator.  Lincoln wrote to Edwin Stanton on 1 Sept. 1862,  “I personally know Dr. Levi D. Boone, of Chicago …”   It seems that Louise briefly lived in Springfield as a young lady. 

Daniel and Louise met, and married in Chicago in September 1863.

After President Lincoln’s death, Mary, Robert, and Tad were living in July 1865 in a Hyde Park hotel, when scarlet fever broke out in the house.  The young Tillinghast couple lived there too.  Louise offered to take Tad, apparently as yet little affected by the disease, to her parents’ farm north of the city.  She kept him there for a couple of weeks, until the fevers had passed on the sultry South Side.

How could the widowed Mary Lincoln, at this stage with no real income, thank the young lady for perhaps saving her youngest boy’s life?  Mary gave the Tillinghasts the 14-karat-gold pen/pencil from the late president’s White House desk.  Her gift may have expressed the depth of the potential peril: more than 800 people, most of them children, had died of scarlet fever in Chicago during the 3 previous summers.

The Lincolns soon moved north 8 miles to the Clifton House hotel, on the southeast corner of Madison and Wabash.  The Tillinghasts evidently stayed in Hyde Park for a time, and a year later moved to Michigan Avenue, north of the Chicago river.  Anyway, on Friday Oct. 27, 1865, about 3 months after Tad’s rescue, Robert wrote this hitherto unknown letter to Daniel from his law-clerk office at the corner of Lake and LaSalle:

    
“You!  Chauncey Brown expects you & me to come to his house & play a game  of    Billiards this evening.  I propose to weigh anchor at 7 ½ P.M.  Shall I have the honor of seeing you?   
Yours, R.T.L.”

The envelope is addressed to D.W. Tillinghast Esq at 161 Kinzie St., his hides-and-leather business about 3 blocks from Robert’s office.

The two friends had clearly got past the summer’s threat to everyone’s health, and Robert, just 22 years old, had got over his father’s death 6 months earlier at least enough for some Friday night fun.  (Note the same-day delivery of mail in central Chicago.)  The letter, though, is on black-bordered mourning paper, per custom of the day within the year after the death of a parent.

Robert may also have been growing weary of living in a hotel with his mother and little brother, and he got his own place at year’s end.  What is more, Abraham Lincoln had also liked billiards, and his son with his well-positioned friends partook of the game in the last generation before it fell into ill repute amongst the better classes.  

This is all we know of direct contact between the families, since no more letters would have been necessary for near neighbors.  Daniel and Louise soon had 2 children.  Robert soon married, whereupon his mother took Tad, her last dependant, to Europe the next week, and stayed for over 2 years.

In the winter of 1874 Daniel Tillinghast was superintending the start of a big new operation for his business at the Union Stockyards, when he caught cold, which became pneumonia, and died.  A sizable obituary of him ran in the Chicago Tribune on April 20, 1874.  He was barely 30.

We know any of this, and nearly all of this, thanks to a resplendent piece of generosity by Peggy Davis, of Chatham, Mass., who this year donated both the gold pen / pencil and the letter.  Both artifacts go on display in mid-April in the Treasures Gallery.  Mrs. Davis, namely Margaret Tillinghast Porter Davis, is the great-granddaughter of Daniel and Louise.  Her own grandmother wrote a long letter in 1933 explaining the families’ connection, and that letter will also be on display – the proof is in the provenance, they say in the museum trade.

That epistolary proof in fact fills out a skeletal allusion in a published letter by Mary Lincoln from July 1865 that mentioned a “daughter of Dr. Boone” who took Tad “up to the country.”

For those keeping track, an ounce of gold in 1865 cost roughly $25.00.  It is now about $1,450.00.  But the value of the sentiment shown by all parties in that 1860s friendship, and in today’s double-storied donation, are inestimable.

A reversible pen and pencil made of 14-karat gold, and its original case, from the desk of President Lincoln.

Episode 2, Mr. Lincoln’s Bloody Gloves: We talk with Dr. James Cornelius about our featured artifact of the month: Mr. Lincoln’s Bloody Gloves. We also talk about events surrounding Mr. Lincoln’s assassination, the conspiracy surrounding the death of John Wilkes Booth, and historian Thomas Lowry.

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Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s battle to get the better of his state’s unionized public employees reminds us that a century and a half ago, on September 30, 1859, Abraham Lincoln appeared at the Wisconsin state fair in Milwaukee to deliver a well-wrought speech on the subject of “labor.”   

He collected $100 for a witty and sparkling meditation on the joys of all disciplined work.  Quipping that farmers should beware of politicians singling them out for praise –since farmers “are neither better nor worse than other people,” only “more numerous”– he gave them the higher compliment of taking their work seriously. 

As a young man, Lincoln had preferred books to his father’s farm implements.  But as a 50-year-old politician he spoke appreciatively, even wistfully, of a rural landscape where the mechanical arts progressed amidst natural rhythms.  He sounded like a Walt Whitman evoking a world of daily wonders.

“Every blade of grass is a study,” he mused, “and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure.  And not grass alone; but soils, seeds, and seasons — hedges, ditches, and fences, draining, droughts, and irrigation — plowing, hoeing, and harrowing — reaping, mowing, and threshing — saving crops, pests of crops, diseases of crops, and what will prevent or cure them — implements, utensils, and machines, their relative merits, and how to improve them — hogs, horses, and cattle — sheep, goats, and poultry — trees, shrubs, fruits, and flowers — the thousand things of which these are specimens — each a world of study within itself.”

The Milwaukee speech isn’t well known today.  But part of what Lincoln said in 1859 at the Wisconsin state fair — and repeated nearly word for word in his better-known Annual Message to Congress on December 3, 1861 — turned up recently on Democratic and progressive websites during Governor Walker’s showdown with his state’s public workers and Democratic legislators.

The Sheboygan County Democratic Party website quoted Lincoln as saying, “labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.  Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.  Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

Those are indeed Lincoln’s words, but they didn’t mean to him what they suggest to us.  We imagine he’s siding with working people in their perennial campaign to wrest higher wages or greater job control from their employers.  We think he’s giving his support (“higher consideration”) to “labor” in its negotiations or stand-offs with “capital.”

But Lincoln meant something different.  When he spoke of labor and capital he was rejecting the idea that in America any essential conflict existed between them.  Labor got “higher consideration” from him because labor took logical and historical precedence.  It was the replenishing source of economic value.  It lay at the root of all capital.

Lincoln’s own personal image of the quintessential laborer may well have been the man wielding his trusty ax, turning a swath of forest to productive use like this barefoot, Paul-Bunyan-style Lincoln created by Charles Turzak in the 1930s.

Charles Turzak’s woodcut, ca. 1933, gives Lincoln the look of the working man he never aspired to be.

In America, Lincoln thought, people willing to work hard could expect eventually to convert their labor into some small pool of capital.  He was sure no permanent wage-earning class existed in the U.S.  Labor kept renewing its vitality as individuals kept clearing land or inventing new machines — like the hoped-for “steam plow” that Lincoln examined at length in his Wisconsin speech. 

In a speech in New Haven, Connecticut, in March 1860, he did publicly endorse the right of working people to strike (referring to a shoe strike in Lynn, Mass.).  But to him that just meant that free laborers were not slaves.  Free workers could “strike” — stop toiling — whenever they wished.  If their employer didn’t respond adequately to their grievances, they could seek opportunity elsewhere.  Dissatisfied workers needed only the right to quit, something slaves would never get.

As David Donald points out in his biography Lincoln (p. 234), the rail-splitter somehow managed to miss “the growing disparity of wealth between the poor and the rich,” and “gave scant attention to the growing number of factory workers who had little prospect of upward social mobility.”

Had Lincoln lived into the late nineteenth century, would his views have evolved?  We’ll never know.  What we do know is that he always felt special affection for those who started on a low rung of the economic ladder and strove to climb higher.  If he’d ever come to sense that American laborers’ upward path was blocked by new industrial conditions, he might well have given “higher consideration” to what we now call “pro-labor” views.

Abraham and Mary Lincoln employed a number of hired servants over the almost two decades at their Springfield residence.  Among the many individuals who served them was a black house servant named Epsy Smith.  Her association with the Lincoln family undoubtedly accounts for this lengthy obituary that appeared in the
(Springfield) Illinois State Journal, on Tuesday, May 10, 1892, p. 1, col. 6:

                                        SHE WORKED FOR LINCOLN

                                        Death of a Negress Who Knew
                                        Much About Father Abraham.
                                        Aunt Epsy Smith Passes Away in a Rick-
                                        etty Tenement House in Chicago –
                                        Her Eventful History.

“It was in one of the dilapidated old frame tenement houses on Dearborn St. near Sixteenth, Chicago, where the rattle and roar of constantly passing trains never cease, and where such a thing as a garbage cart or street sweeper is unknown, that “Aunt” Epsy Smith died.  It was near 1 o’clock Sunday morning that she breathed her last.  She was of African descent and unknown, so to speak, in the great metropolis, but she had an eventful life — one of almost historic interest.

The 1835 indenture for Hepsey, a mulatto girl who worked for the Ninian W. Edwards family and, she explained, for the Lincoln family.

Away back in 1827 she was a protégé of Ninian Edwards, at the time governor of Illinois.  She was present at the wedding of Abraham and Mary Todd, and after the wedding was a servant in Lincoln’s home.  She nursed Robert T. Lincoln, the present minister to the court of St. James, when he was a baby.  Her death was caused by the grip, from which she had been suffering since last March.  Her exact age is not known, for she was born a slave and no record of birth was made.  But as near as could be told she was about 72 years old.

Epsy Arnsby Smith was her name in full and she was born on the plantation of Arnold Spear, near Shelbyville, Ky.  The Spears were old friends of Ninian Edwards and shortly after his election as governor Mrs. Spears visited the family and brought Epsy, who was at that time 7 or 8 years old, along as a waiting maid.  She was bright and active and the governor took a liking to her, and when Mrs. Spears was getting ready to return home, she gave the child to him.

When Epsy was a miss, Miss Mary Todd, Mrs. Edwards’ sister, came from Kentucky to live with the governor’s family.  About this time Abraham Lincoln became a frequent visitor at the governor’s mansion and he generally asked for Miss Todd.  It was Epsy’s duty to answer the call and in after years she used to tell her children and grandchildren how she used to usher “Massa Linkum” into the house when he was “a cortin’ Mistus Mary.”

She witnessed the wedding ceremony when Lincoln was married, and during the first few years of his married life she was his house servant.  Then she became engaged to Robert Smith, a colored man living in Vandalia.  Shortly before her wedding she came back to live with the family of Governor Edwards and was married at his house by the minister who performed the ceremony for Lincoln.  And the dress she wore on that occasion, a black brocaded silk, was a present from Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln.

Years rolled by: Lincoln was elected president; the war came and the slaves of the south were freed.  Among the first negroes to come north was “Aunt” Epsy’s father, and the proudest day of his life was when his daughter told him that she had worked for the man who had set him free.

 In 1861 her husband died and then she sold her little home and moved to Greenville, where she lived with her daughter Mrs. Julia Barbee, until last March, when she went to Chicago to live with another daughter, Mrs. Catherine Jackson, 1630 Dearborn street.  Mrs. Jakie Smith, also her daughter, went with her.  She had been there but a few days when she became ill with the grip.  Enfeebled by old age she lingered along until Sunday morning, when she was taken with a spasm and died.  As there was no physician in attendance at the time of her death the matter was reported to Lieutenant Gallagher of the armory, who notified the coroner.

After relating the story of her mother’s life Sunday night Mrs. Smith spoke of the anxiety the poor old “mammie” felt lest she should not be buried by the side of her dead husband in the old graveyard at Vandalia. “But we are too poor to send the body there,” she continued, “and I am afraid her dying request cannot be granted.  I know if Massa Robert Lincoln were here he would help us.  But then he is so far away we can’t let him know

 The funeral will be held today from the dingy tenement house where the old woman died.”

The question arises, Was Epsy Smith the same person as an indentured mulatto girl named Hepsey?  Indentures were contractual relationships in which minors were taught employable skills in return for having their basic needs provided.  Ninian Wirt Edwards, who would become Abraham Lincoln’s brother-in-law, signed an indenture of apprenticeship on October 29, 1835, for Hepsey, who was described as “a mulatto girl aged eleven years …having no parent or guardian.”  Edwards agreed to provide her “good holesome (sic) and sufficient meat drink washing lodging and apparel suitable and proper for such an apprentice and needful medical attention in care of sickness and will cause her to be instructed in the best way and most approved manner of domestic housewifery and will cause her to be taught to read and at the expiration of her term of service will give unto her a new bible and two new suits of clothes suitable and proper for summer and winter wear.”  This arrangement lasted until Hepsey’s 18^th birthday. 

Most leading families in Springfield used hired help.  Indentures from the period of the 1830s and 1840s showed that blacks and “mulattos” were the source of this hired help.  If Edwards was using a phonetic spelling for Hepsey, there is little difference between Hepsey and Epsy.  (The same is true with early Lincoln campaign biographies that confused Abram with Abraham.)  That Epsy was clearly part of the Edwards household and witnessed the Lincoln marriage suggests that Elizabeth sent Hepsey to work for her sister Mary after her service ended with the Edwards family.  In fact, Hepsey and Epsy were undoubtedly one and the same.