In Pt. 1, which was written a while ago, I explained the purpose of this series is as follows:
There are a few “witnesses” I’ve come across in the historical record that I feel comfortable outing as liars. Some of them may have believed their own stories, and most were simple attention-seekers, not acting out of malice. It is not surprising that so many people tried to insert themselves into the Lincoln legend, though it is a tiny bit surprising how easily some of them did so. But the media likes a good story. Nothing new about that. I intend this series to be a Hall of Shame without much shaming–where someone was particularly egregious, I will call them out. It was usually pretty boring deceit.
When they come to mind, I’ll write them up to warn others. I’m sure some have been questioned already. If anyone thinks I’m wrong, let me know–I definitely don’t want to wrongly accuse someone, especially when they are not around to defend themselves. But I feel pretty confident about the ones I bother to expose.
In Pt. 1, I argued that alleged nurse Helen Brainard Cole had actually come across the papers of real nurse Maria Hall, who actually worked briefly with the Lincoln family, and more or less adopted the story as her own (adding her own twists). Cole was elderly at the time, and her faculties may have been failing.
In Pt. 2, I’d like to highlight a source that I can’t accuse of lying, because it never purported to be telling the truth. Some historians, rather understandably, took it for a historical report, and thus the record needs correcting.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many newspapers liked to reprint old articles, like in a “this day in history” segment. Some were more elaborate, such as the Chicago Tribune’s “When Chicago Was Young,” column. Written by Herma Clark in the 1930s, it took the form of letters between two friends, young women, in Victorian-era Chicago. These young women were fictional creations of Clark, and their letters were constructed from old newspaper clippings. (See Timony B. Spears, Chicago Dreaming: Midwesterners and the City, 1871-1919 (University of Chicago Press, 2005), 124.
In other words, it was a work of historical fiction. I’ve included a clipping from the column so that you can see the author was not one of the letter writers, which only makes sense if they were her characters.
This is from the Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1933. That week’s fictional letter was dated July 18, 1882, just after Mary Lincoln’s death. After a few introductory remarks, “Martha” turned to that topic:
Weren't you sorry to hear of the passing of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln? Her death seems to have been unexpected, though she has never been well since her husband’s death. She died at the home of her brother-in-law, Ninian Edwards of Springfield, in the house where she had been married. I believe the immediate cause of her death was apoplexy [stroke or cerebral hemorrhage]. I'm glad she died in Springfield, rather than in Europe or even in Chicago. The Springfield people understood and sympathized with her as only old neighbors can. She belonged to them. I have always beard she was a great mimic and a delightful companion when she talked with friends. She knew French, and German and could discuss philosophy and literature intelligently. Moreover, she was a lady. I remember so well the evening we met the Lincolns at the home of William H. Brown on Michigan avenue, shortly after the election of 1860 . . .
All of this information was easily obtained from obituaries and other newspaper clippings, and is rather rotely recited. The rest of the letter checked all the newspaper clipping boxes, before its unnaturally abrupt ending. A family member, “Will,” is introduced, who conveniently happens to have related clippings. Instead of using them, “Martha” invents a long speech from Sumner that is dramatic but not remotely historically accurate.* He said as little as possible during this Senate debate.** But it served its purpose, which was satisfying readers’ appetites for a quick tour through local history. And it conformed neatly to the accepted image of Mary Lincoln of the 1930s, with all the books that had since been published, if not very close to how she would have been written about in 1882.
What severe shocks poor Mrs. Lincoln had in her life! Three of her four children died before her, and her husband's assassination must have been a perfect horror to her. But the most dreadful thing, I think, must have been the suspicion under which she suffered during the civil war, for you remember how often she was accused of spying, of being a betrayer of Federal secrets to the enemy. I should have thought that would have broken her heart. She was, I suppose, extravagant. They say he was so deeply in debt when she left the White House that she would have had nothing to live on if her creditors bad pressed her. But, somehow, she managed to get out of debt and to build up her fortunes that she had at her death, says Will, who is interested in reading all about President and Mrs. Lincoln, a comfortable amount to leave her son, Robert T. Lincoln. She must have been proud to see him secretary of war. The pension of $3,000, granted her by congress in 1870, has been a great help to her, of course. Will was reading tonight a clip he had kept of the proceedings of the senate when Charles Sumner pushed that bill through, granting to Mary Todd Lincoln, as the widow of the martyred President, this none too large income. Sumner, addressing the petty little senators who had for so long blocked this grant (I am not quoting him exactly, but this was the sense of it) said, "Surely the honorable members of the senate must be weary of casting mud on the garments of Mrs. Lincoln; those same garments on which, one terrible night a few years ago, gushed out the head of Abraham Lincoln. She sat beside him in the theater, and she received that pitiful deluge on her hands and skirts, because she was the chosen companion of his heart. He had all her love, and Lincoln loved Mary Lincoln as only his mighty heart could love.” Then, said Will, the senate did vote, though not unanimously, a pension of $3,000 to poor Mrs. Lincoln. I must close. With love. MARTHA.
On September 17, 1939, one of “Martha’s” letters, dated 1891, gossiped about the recent death of Robert Lincoln’s son, and how he’d broken down in tears to friends. This has been quoted in the historical record, but is similarly just fabricated from relevant newspaper clippings. Finally, in Mary Lincoln’s Insanity Case, Jason Emerson quotes one of these letters, published November 23, 1930, and purporting to be from 1875, about Mary’s commitment to an institution. He offers this letter as “summ[ing] up the public knowledge and feeling in the city about the former first lady” and providing contemporary evidence that the whole country agreed she had been insane since the assassination, and also approved of Robert Lincoln’s actions. (Both these views are explicitly expressed in the letter—which, of course, is not real). They more accurately summarize the dominant opinion in 1930 among those interested in the Lincolns, but those sentiments were taken directly from newspaper clippings around the time of the trial.*** A future post will try to examine the general public’s reaction.
To summarize, any letters posted under “When Chicago Was Young” are fabricated, though based on real events, and should not be considered primary sources of information.
* The dramatic Sumner quote seems to be taken from the work of Dr. William E. Barton. I am not sure where he got the quote—it seems his work was intended to be factual. It was later repeated by other historians.
** Barton may have looked into Sumner’s correspondence, and may have gotten the basis for this from a letter he wrote to Lydia Marie Child in the middle of the pension battle. Passionate abolitionist Child, who loved Sumner, was no fan of the Lincolns at first (she wrote of her desire to hang them side-by-side), and while she came around somewhat to the President, she never liked Mary Lincoln. She’d obviously written to complain of his pension efforts and revive war gossip. Sumner, who never said very much about his friendship with Mary Lincoln, but fought like hell to obtain the pension, replied with this simple statement:
I knew Mrs. Lincoln well during the presidency of her husband, and am sure that the stories of disloyalty are without foundation. She was his companion, and sat by his side in his afternoon drives and at his assassination. She is needy and unpopular. I was the friend of the President, and therefore I exert myself for her. I wish you could see this case as I do.
*** These newspapers were getting much of their information from Leonard Swett, who pushed a certain narrative. This does not make the reports biased or incorrect by default, but it is worth noting.