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Reviews
| With Lincoln in the White House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay, 1860–1865. Ed. Michael Burlingame. Paper, $22.95.An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay's Interviews and Essays. ed. Michael Burlingame (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996. Pp. xix, 168. Notes, index. Paper, $19.95.)Lincoln's Journalist: John Hay's Anonymous Writings for the Press, 1860–1864. ed. Michael Burlingame. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998. Pp. xxviii, 394. Notes, index. Paper, $24.95.)At Lincoln's Side: John Hay's Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings. ed. Michael Burlingame (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. Pp. xxvii, 294. Notes, index. $22.95.)
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All four of these books are recently issued paperbacks; the dates given above indicate when the original, hardcover editions appeared. They deserve to be reviewed together because John G. Nicolay (1832–1901) and John Hay (1838–1905) were close friends for most of their lives: as youngsters in Pittsfield and Springfield, as private secretaries to Abraham Lincoln during most of his presidency, and as co-authors of the most detailed biography of Lincoln published in the nineteenth century. Nicolay, brought as a toddler from Germany to the United States, and Indiana-born, Illinois-raised Hay were different in temperament, but alike in having keen intelligence, a taste for literature, a talent for political journalism, and unflagging devotion to Abraham Lincoln. |
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Arguably, the most interesting, and certainly the longest of these books is Lincoln's Journalist. John Hay wrote an immense number of articles and editorials for various newspapers from 1860 to 1864, most of them concentrated in 1861 and 1862, and all anonymous or pseudonymous. A graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, he began by writing for The Providence Journal, then for papers closer to home: The Missouri Democrat, The Missouri Republican, and The Illinois Daily State Journal (Springfield). Later he wrote for the Washington National Republican and the New York World. All these writings reported on current events in an elegant and picturesque literary style. They are suffused with the Administration's - really Abraham Lincoln's - goals and ideals. They differ from Lincoln's wartime writings only in the intensity of their partisanship, and their willingness to criticize, sometimes violently, the administration's critics and enemies. But even at his most partisan, Hay can teach us much about the personalities and issues of these desperate years. |
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At Lincoln's Side is something of a catchall. It forms a fine trilogy when combined with the "anonymous writings for the press" described above, and Inside Lincoln's White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, eds. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger (SIU, 1997, now also available in a paperback edition). The letters in this catchall range from brief administrative notes written for the President, to serious and illuminating correspondence to friends, with a characteristic mixture of gossip, naughty stories, and complaints. Intermingled with the letters is a document of considerable importance, Hay's Memorandum dated September 30, 1863, describing Lincoln's meeting with a delegation from the troubled border state, Missouri, and neighboring Kansas (pp. 57–64). One assumes this has long been a primary source for this famous interview; it is especially vivid in Hay's telling. |
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A number of essays and sketches make up the second part of At Lincoln's Side. These include Hay's admirable obituary for Tad Lincoln (1871), sketches which also served as obituaries for the fallen heroes Elmer E. Ellsworth and Edward D. Baker (1861), and an essay, "Life in the White House in the Time of Lincoln" (1890). The book is rounded off with two articles by Michael Burlingame, "The Authorship of the Bixby Letter," and "Mary Todd Lincoln's Unethical Conduct as First Lady." Compared to many ongoing debates regarding the causes and conduct of the Civil War, the disputes over who wrote the letter to Mrs. Bixby and the larcenies alleged against Mary Lincoln are minor, but fascinating nonetheless. Here Burlingame favors presenting a mass of evidence so fairly so that he leaves us unsure as to whether John Hay wrote the letter over Lincoln's name, wrote it following Lincoln's instructions, or did not contribute to it at all. His evidence about Mrs. Lincoln's indiscretions is so weighty as to seem conclusive. |
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John G. Nicolay was older than his friend John Hay was and wrote in a somewhat less florid style, but their attitude toward President Lincoln and the issues of the Civil War seem perfectly identical. Also like Hay, Nicolay was intelligent and observant. In the larger of the two books considered here, With Lincoln in the White House, we read of an important event on the first page of documents. Nicolay wrote to his fiancée, Therena Bates on June 7, 1860, "Mr. Lincoln has engaged me to act as his private secretary during the campaign, and pays me at the rate of $75.00 per month for the service. Of course that will keep me here until the next November election." When Lincoln won that election, he needed a secretary even more, and Nicolay followed him to the White House. |
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From Washington Nicolay continued to write Therena Bates, and shared with her abundantly, though discreetly, political, military, and personal news. The result is that we have another close-up history of Lincoln's presidency. It is especially useful on those occasions when Hay was away. Besides the letters, there are a few important journal entries, memoranda, and three anonymous editorials from the Washington Morning Chronicle. The editorial of November 12, 1862, "Democratic War Pledges," boldly informed the northern Democrats how they should support the administration and its measures, especially the prospective Emancipation proclamation, generally understood to be a major factor for Democratic gains in the recent elections. The editorial of December 23, 1862 gives a surprisingly full and candid narrative of the so-called cabinet crisis, omitting only the explicit fact that Secretary Salmon P. Chase had instigated the whole fiasco. Washington was a small city then. It is likely that readers would fill in those blanks. Finally, the editorial of January 2, 1863 finds Nicolay writing somewhat in the florid style of his friend Hay in praise of the Emancipation Proclamation: "This temple of our idolatry is cast down -this Baal of our wickedness is destroyed. Instead of growing to double or quadruple its present proportions, slavery is this day practically annihilated." |
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An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay's Interviews and Essays consists of material spoken or written many years after the events being described. Like William H. Herndon, Nicolay thought he should interview people who knew Lincoln, and were willing and able to reminisce about him. He conducted many of his interviews in Washington, beginning in 1874, and Springfield, beginning in 1875. Because the Springfield interviews mostly contain information about Lincoln's life in Illinois, the editor offers them first. The Washington interviews follow, and a smaller, miscellaneous group of interviews concludes the oral history. The book's final section consists of two undated and previously unpublished essays by Nicolay, "Lincoln in the Campaign of 1860," and "Some Incidents in Lincoln's Journey from Springfield to Washington." Among the many nuggets discovered in this mine, I especially enjoyed Milton Hay's description of the style and nature of legal practice in the 1830s and 1840s. The recollections of William Butler (1797–1876) make it clear that this versatile and prosperous citizen played a larger role in the making of Abraham Lincoln than most biographies recognize, though perhaps not quite as important as Butler believed. |
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All the John Hay and John G. Nicolay volumes edited by Michael Burlingame benefit from his astute skill in selection and even more from his lively introductions and notes - many of which contain additional documents of considerable interest. Anyone interested in Abraham Lincoln, should be sure to read these books thoroughly, notes included. |
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