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.