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Reviews
Abraham Lincoln: Reviews of New and Recent Books
By Robert McColley
| Herndon's Lincoln. By William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik; ed. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis. (Galesburg: Knox College Lincoln Studies Center; Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Pp. xxxviii, 482. Illus., notes, index. Cloth, $35.)
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Strictly speaking, this is a reprint, but no ordinary reprint. Since the last printing of Paul M. Angle's edition of Herndon's Lincoln, Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis have produced their 800 page edition of Herndon's unique collection of documents, Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln (Illinois, 1998), and the Lincoln Legals project has been completed. There has also been a considerable outpouring of books and articles, variable in quality, but often informed by important reinterpretations and new information. |
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Originally published in 1889, and reissued in an expanded version in 1892, Herndon and Weik's was not the first authoritative biography of Lincoln to appear on the world's bookshelves, and was thin with respect to the important presidential years. But no biographer knew Lincoln so well from his early years in Springfield until he left for Washington in February, 1861, and none solicited testimony from so many of Lincoln's relatives, neighbors, and colleagues. |
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A thorough introduction explains how Herndon collected and used his materials, and how young Jesse W. Weik (1857–1930) prepared a narrative manuscript for publication. The original text from 1889 and the new material from 1892 are faithfully reproduced, including the original annotations. The editors supply a list of all the errors they have corrected in the text, and have added forty-two pages of notes. These notes tell us when more recent scholarship has corrected Herndon's occasional errors of fact or judgment. They are gathered inconveniently at the end of the book, as is so often the practice these days. All serious students of Lincoln should read Herndon-Weik, and this is the best way to read it, especially if one is conscientious enough to read all the notes. |
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