Part I introduces Forrest, a longtime Chicago journalist.
Chicago News Reminiscences
Below are interesting Lincoln-related excerpts from his 1890s newspaper column, in order of their publication.
A Description of Lincoln
On July 15, 1891, Forrest spoke of of the Hannibal Hamlin/A. K. McClure/John G. Nicolay controversy then raging in the papers. I won’t get into that here, but it had to do with whether or not Lincoln had wanted Hamlin to run again as his VP in the 1864 election. Political operative/newspaperman McClure and Nicolay, Lincoln’s former personal secretary, both claimed to know what Lincoln’s true desires had been, and gave different answers. McClure, in a rather nasty way, claimed that Lincoln never told Nicolay anything of importance. Forrest agreed with McClure, believing that Nicolay would never have known what Lincoln was really up to.
“The great mistake which Mr. Nicolay and those who support his side of the [controversy?] [make] arises from their want of appreciation of Mr. Lincoln’s unapproachable political astuteness. He did not go about, like an Irishman with his shillalah at Donny Brook Fair, hitting a head wherever he saw it, or, to use a more esthetic illustration, like Richard Coueur de Lion in the holy land, smashing the heads of the Saracens with his two-handed sword. On the other hand, his method was more after the fashion from Saladin, who could cut a gauze handkerchief, when thrown into the air, [with] knives.”
President-Elect Lincoln Dines in Chicago in 1860
On July 16, 1891, Forrest shared memories of the dinner with President-Elect Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin. They weren’t particularly good memories, he explained, colored as they were by the fact that nearly everyone present but himself had met a tragic end. Hamlin had been relatively lucky in only having what Forrest felt was a failed career: Lincoln had been shot, Mary Lincoln’s later years were dark, John Y. Scammon and the other powerful men eventually lost their fortunes in the economic turbulence of the era. “Mr. [Norman B.] Judd’s fortune was dissipated in mining ventures, in which his too confiding nature was taken advantage of even by those who should have stood for him were the rest of the world against him,” Forrest explained, before beginning his reminiscences.
Meeting Mary Lincoln for the first time in 1860, he wasn’t favorably impressed, finding her “filled with the idea of her own importance,” but he was not much more impressed by her husband.
Apparently heard not the remotest conception of the gigantic struggle with the country and himself were soon to be engaged in … It would have certainly been impossible for him to carry himself so jauntily and even noisily as he did and to act on that beautiful Sunday…almost as would a young man who had but just entered upon an apparently unfettered life … [Hamlin] seized on his shares of the joyous excitement of the little company as eagerly as his colder and more lymphatic temperament would permit…
Forrest couldn’t share the optimistic views of the other diners, he claimed, being too overwhelmed with the idea that “the whole thing would end in one of those compromises which are the bane of all republican and democratic politics. For this reason, no victory, however complete, was satisfactory, because it was accompanied by the fear that it was the presage of political treachery or disaster.” But Lincoln and his friends appeared to worry only about “the proper and satisfactory distribution of the offices. Doubtless it was in regard to the necessary quota of the spoils to be distributed in New England that Mr. Hamlin was sent for . . .”
Judd, Trumbull…and Mrs. Judd
On August 1, 1891, his column focused on a complaint he had received from a female relative of Norman B. Judd, most likely Judd’s widow, Ida. The woman had read the above-referenced July column, in which Forrest had written, “I understood at the time [early 1861] that Mr. Judd had much higher aspirations than the mission to Berlin . . . and in which, especially at that period, there was neither honor nor profit. It was hinted among his friends that he desired a cabinet position. And had he resided in another state, in view of his personal services to the president, he might have obtained it.”
His female reader’s reply asserted that Judd had indeed been offered a cabinet spot, but had not wanted to take it. (This seems unlikely, given how widely reported his efforts to secure a cabinet position were in 1860-1861. It was reported in early 1861 that Mrs. Judd had wanted to go to Europe and convinced her husband to decline the position, which seems to have been a weak cover story.)
Forrest’s response indicated that he wasn’t pleased by the challenge to his credibility. He recalled approaching Judd back in 1868 to tell him not to fight with IL Senator Lyman Trumbull for voting against the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Forrest remembered that a “near female relative” of Judd was there. She could not believe the news about Trumbull’s vote, insisting he was a “a good party man.” (This is another good example of how relatively normal it was for political wives to get in on the latest political gossip and share their opinions.) Forrest responded that this wasn’t a party question, and launched into some other arguments.
In classic Forrest style, caring about partisan loyalties was portrayed as a “woman problem,” even though he explained that Judd himself fell out permanently with Trumbull over it, as did many other republican politicians.
In this case the finer intuitions of the feminine mind were utterly incapable to enable the lady referee to grasp a great forensic and judicial question. It is not possible, therefore, that these feminine intuitions may not enable her to grasp those political subjects which she seems to think she understands more clearly and fully than she does[?]
While Trumbull could be justly credited with a “forensic” mind, the degree to which he was anomalous in his vote indicates this detachment wasn’t present in most men, either.
Spiritualism
On August 20, 1891, Forrest wrote about Lincoln’s involvement with spiritualism. As early as the 1870s, chroniclers were already attempting to erase any association with spiritualism record, and it was successful until pretty recently. The rise of searchable digital archives has made brushing the matter off impossible; there’s too much evidence to pin entirely on Mary Lincoln’s vagaries. But the archives also show that some involvement with spiritualism was not a big deal in D.C. during that era.
Practically everyone in those circles experimented with it, if only just out of curiosity or for entertainment. A smaller number of respectable people went through a period of being true believers. The speed of technological change had made it difficult to judge what was truly outlandish. In the last few decades, things like photography and telegraphic communication had gone from unknown to ubiquitous, and they seemed magical. Was it so far-fetched for the average person to wonder if spirits could communicate from the beyond by means of non-verbal signals? Add a mass casualty event like the Civil War and high child mortality levels to that, and it’s easy to see why people were tempted to believe. This was probably more likely to happen to those who weren’t traditionally religious and who found new technologies interesting, like the Lincolns and others in “worldly” circles.
“Some time since, in one of these papers, I gave some facts to show that Mr. Lincoln and his wife, especially the latter, were for a period during their occupancy of the white house brought strongly under the influence of spiritualism.
I noted a day or two since an extract from the New York Herald, published in the Evening News, strongly indorsing this statement of mine. In reality I had the facts of the subject from one of Mr. Lincoln’s most intimate friends—I think, next to the members of his own family, his closest personal friend. This gentleman's name is Ward H. Lamon—pronounced Lemon by himself and those who knew him personally.
I was in Washington in 1862 and 1863. During this period I frequently heard that Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln had regular seances at the white house and that the ‘medium’ of [three?], in spiritualistic parlance, was a lady who resided in Georgetown. I heard her name at the time but had forgotten it until the writer the New York Herald, Col. S. P. Case, has again brought it to my recollection.
The colonel says that the ‘medium’ was a Mrs. Laurie. And, if I mistake not, this as the name given me by Col. Ward Lamon. My anxiety lest the president should get too far under the control of this power—I had personal experience that it worked untold injury to persons with whom I had been intimate—led me to make inquires of Col. Lamon as to how far the president had gone in his investigations and their effect upon him. The colonel informed me that Mr. Lincoln, primarily though the influence of Mrs. Lincoln, had gone a long way in the surrender of himself to this mysterious influence. ‘But,’ he said to me, ‘Jim [the column was not written under Forrest’s real name], he has now shaken himself clear of the whole business. A few days since he told me that he felt compelled to do so, in order to preserve his personality intact. He said that he had come to such an extent under this mysterious power, whatever it may be, that he found himself brought to that condition of moral and mental subjection to the 'spirits,’ so-called, that if it were continued he would no longer be master of his own acts.’ As nearly as I can recollect these are the words of Col. Lamon to me. He added that Mr. Lincoln had fully made up his mind to have nothing more to do with the subject of spiritualism, so far as he personally was concerned.
As for the phenomena, he admitted that he could not account for them by or through any known purely physical and material laws, at the same time, he was most emphatic in the declaration that respect for his own personality and the freedom of his own individual will compelled him to entirely cut loose from all personal contact with the phenomena and their earthly agents. Col. Lamon himself is the last man whom one would suspect of any belief in mysteries of this character. And yet no one could be more earnest and emphatic than he was to me in his version of the departure of the president from those practical and logical methods which had been for years a distinct feature of his personality. At the same time, his satisfaction at the escape of Mr. Lincoln from contingency, which he evidently believed with the president threatened the latter with the most lamentable and appalling consequences, was most emphatically expressed in his every word and action.
Here is food for reflection. Mr. Lincoln, with his clear-cut, logical mind, with reasoning faculties incomparably superior to the ordinary run of men, acknowledged that he was carried away, despite his own voluntary powers of resistance, and compelled to move through shadowy border-lands between the night and the day after such a fashion as to battle the inquisitions of his own soul, and, most curiously, that this was done through the medium of a weak and, possibly, ignorant woman.
As usual, Forrest’s opinion of women’s judgment was not high, but it should be noted that in 1863, Lincoln’s best friend Joshua Speed wrote him a letter recommending he meet with noted spiritualist medium Nettie Colburn, who later wrote a book on the topic. Much to my surprise, I found several pieces of high-quality Lincoln research on a website devoted to preserving spiritualist literature. A .pdf discussing some of the evidence of the Lincolns’ spiritualism can be found here.
Forrest didn’t realize it, but he probably provided all the explanation needed for Lincoln’s brief fascination with spiritualism in this paragraph:
And, still more curiously, that she took the great man out of the practical question is, the anxieties, the toils, the terrible experiences of a fratricidal war such as the world had never seen, out of the wrack and ruin which threatened to overwhelm the country from under the pitiless burden which providence imposed upon him, and for the time being placed him under the influence of a feminine Prospero, under complete subjection to a weak woman’s human will.
I mean, who wouldn’t want a break from all that? That was almost certainly what Speed was thinking when he wrote the letter, which read, in part: “It will I am sure be some relief from the tedious round of office seekers to see two such agreeable ladies [Colburn was accompanied by her friend Anna Cosby]…They are both mediums & believe in the spirits—and are I am quite sure very choice spirits themselves.” Speed’s postscript underscores the playfulness: “Mrs. Cosby says she is not a medium though I am quite sure she is or should be.” The mediums were entertaining, attractive young women. They were fun to talk to, and Mary Lincoln didn’t mind if he talked to them. And they had the added bonus of being willing to shift the burden of responsibility for events to the spirit world.
Forrest never put all this together, and does not seem to have appreciated that even someone like Lincoln is far from perfectly rational.
How is it possible, one is led to inquire, that a man such as Mr. Lincoln was—a man who had reached not only the higher levels of moral attainment, but an altitude of thought from which he could survey, as it were, the whole of human life—could be brought to admit that there was some mysterious influence in this modern witchcraft that, despite his reasoning powers, could dominate his will. Imagine for a moment what this great man would have been had he allowed himself to be set adrift on this perilous sea of a new psychical experience which appears to be opening up to the modern world. Instead of continuing to be an energetic, practical dealer with the things of the world, he would have been reduced to the condition of a Caliban, whether we regard the wonder among Shakespeare characters as the primitive man abandoned to himself or the missing link between man and brute . . .
But Forrest’s next paragraph was much more interesting and insightful:
And what was it that preserved Mr. Lincoln from abandoning his personality too some ‘medium,’ or ‘witch,’ or ‘wizard,’ after the fashion which doubtless this Mrs. Laurie of Georgetown innocently or designedly proposed he should do? In my opinion it was his faith in the theory of service—and it is not a democratic theory either—due to a higher power.
He fully believed, even if in this little life of ours we are ‘such stuff as dreams are made on,’ that, in the service to which he was bound, he ought to maintain his dream rights and fulfill his dream duties. So when he found that spiritualism was leading him into excessive and agitating illusions and delusions, he was rescued by the fact that all through his life like a colored thread, exhibiting itself at the right moments, runs the thought that true freedom of man consists in that service which the reason teaches to be true and of which consequently the conscience and the heart approve.
It is only those to whom service is slavery and freedom the right to make slaves of others, and to ourselves when we submit to the slavery of our passions, who would have continued to tread that path in this modern wonderland…who would have gone on and refused to retrace their steps as Mr. Lincoln, happily for the country and the world, retraced his.
As Forrest would say, “Here is food for reflection.” Characteristically, he ended the piece by blaming the world’s political troubles on women:
It was a curious fact that at the very time Mr. Lincoln and his wife were [illegible] with this modern development of the occult things of life at the White House, Louis Napoleon and his wife were doing the same at the Elysee. It is said that for a time the priestess of this modern cult reigned supreme in the imperial family counsels. Possibly some of these Pythonesses may have inspired the Mexican invasion under the unfortunate Maximillian. Possibly the ‘On to Berlin’ cry was first heard in dulcet tones in the boudoir of the empress…and…changed shortly to the death-knell of the empire.”
Another Description of Lincoln
On September 26, 1891, Forrest wrote about seeing a play about Lincoln, where the actor looked just like him, but the voice was all wrong.
“Mr. Lincoln spoke from the head rather than the chest, and when he told one of his inimitable stories it became a pronounced falsetto.”
Did Mary Keep Judd Out of the Cabinet?
Interestingly, for all Forrest’s friendliness with and comments about Judd, and familiarity with Hermann Kreismann, he never said anything to confirm an encounter the latter allegedly had with Mary Lincoln.[1] Several prominent people later repeated a version of the story, citing Kreismann. From Ruth Painter Randall’s Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage, which indicates it was being discussed the same year Forrest was writing all of this.
According to a letter of Horace White, written January 26, 1891 (thirty years after the event), Norman B. Judd and Hermann Kreismann went to Springfield after Lincoln's election and made an appointment to see him. When Lincoln was late for the interview, Kreismann was sent to his home to find out what was wrong, and a servant ushered him into the room where Mrs. Lincoln was having hysterics. According to Kreismann's story, she was trying to persuade Lincoln to make a certain appointment in which case she was to receive a diamond brooch as a reward for using her influence.
I could buy that Kreismann saw her throwing a tantrum related to a political appointment, but not that he heard such an explicitly corrupt arrangement detailed by Mary and reluctantly consented to by her husband. A 1910 description of an interview with Kreismann, then in Berlin, tells a different tale.
Hermann Kreissman, 80 years old and quite feeble, finds his greatest pleasure in recalling incidents of his acquaintance with Abraham Lincoln. Kreismann, Long John Wentworth and Charlie Farwell who afterward became senator from Illinois, were the three lieutenants of Judd, the chairman of the Republican state committee. Kreismann, the treasurer of Cook County, was presumed to carry the German vote in his pocket and was the foremost German in politics in Illinois 50 years ago. He had gone to Boston when he was 16, upon leaving the Gymnasium in Germany after the death of his father, a minor government official. Kreismann taught languages in Boston. Then he went west, working at various occupations in Cincinnati and in Chicago. Through his qualities of character and a gift of leadership be went into politics and was early an office holder. Judd and he made the trip east with President Lincoln on his way to Washington. The train that was to take the presidential party was waiting at the station at Springfield when Judd told Kreismann to go as quickly as possible to Mr Lincoln’s house and tell him that if he did not hurry the train could not leave. In time Mr. Kriesmann found Mrs. Lincoln had thrown herself upon the floor and was crying and saying, “I will not go, I will not go I will not go. “Mr Lincoln was endeavoring to soothe her, and in a moment after Mr Kreismann’s arrival, Lincoln did so by agreeing to what had apparently been a subject of controversy. Mrs Lincoln then stopped crying, got up cheerfully, shook out her skins, gave a push or two to her hair and went to the station with Mr. Lincoln, and Mr. Kreismann afterward learned Mrs. Lincoln desired a relative of hers appointed naval officer at the port of New York. Lincoln had refused to promise until the crisis at the last moment before he left for Washington. Judd had expected to be in Mr Lincoln's cabinet. The place he desired was that of secretory of Interior. No definite promise had been made, but Judd felt confident that his services would entitle him to a place. He and Kreismann stopped at the old Willard hotel in Washington. The inauguration was over, three or four members of the cabinet had been announced and Mr Judd had heard nothing from the White House nor had he gone near the White House. He and Kreismann were together In Judd’s room one afternoon Some one knocked and Judd said, “Come In.” Mr. Lincoln came into the room After he had shaken hands, Kreismann started to leave. “Don’t go, Kreismann, for I want you to hear what I have to say.” Mr. Lincoln turned to Judd. “I could sleep better nights said he, if you were not in the cabinet. I wish I could take care of you outside the cabinet. You know what I mean.” And Mr Lincoln glanced significantly toward Judd. He was referring, as Judd knew, to a dislike that Mrs. Lincoln had for him. “Yea, I know, Mr. President,” said Mr. Judd, “and I have been thinking the matter over and talking it over with my wife. Mrs Judd would like to go to a European court if there is a good post for me as minister.” “Just the thing Judd,” responded Mr Lincoln. “I’ll send you to Berlin and Kreismann can go along with you as secretory of legation. Would that suit you Kreismann?” Kreismann said that it would, and that was how Judd and he came to Berlin. Mr. Kreismann was afterward appointed consul general and held the office for six or eight years.
(Wheatland (Oklahoma) Weekly Watchword, January 29, 1910)
Kreismann’s surviving letters contain a host of petty insults about various people, and Kreismann’s political prospects seem to have been closely linked to Judd’s. Throughout the war, Mary Lincoln was blamed for a host of contradictory political disappointments, even where much more realistic explanations were available. He undoubtedly had a lot of information about the operations of Lincoln’s inner circle, but I think these tales reflect emotionally satisfying narratives, revised over time, more than they do what actually happened.
My argument is not that Mary Lincoln was inexplicably persecuted and lied about—there’s just a lot of inexplicable nonsense in the record about virtually everyone prominent. The tense, chaotic political atmosphere bred constant rumors, contrived rationalizations, and widespread scapegoating. A sizable portion of men in high places, while generally capable, decent, and reasonable, were anything but consistently “forensic” in their judgement. Their correspondence shows that they exploded into bitterness, name-calling, and absurd rumor-mongering when their political requests were denied. Some only talked that way about other men—others were equal opportunity offenders.
Forrest relished verbal combat, but when it came to rehashing old political feuds, women weren’t among his enemies. His most interesting observations about Mary Lincoln resulted from his willingness to call out the real reasons for controversies that had been deliberately mystified or projected onto her.
In his response to the complaint of Judd’s “female relative,” Forrest wrote:
Subsequently the Hon. Jesse K. Dubois made a strong effort together into Lincoln’s second or, if I mistake not, his first cabinet. But here it is said that Mrs. Lincoln was the obstacle in his way. She desired no Illinois statesman and his lady in Washington to detract from her exclusive society position. More likely, however, it was the fact that the majority of Mr. Lincoln’s early friends in Illinois, especially in Sangamon county, were opposed to his renomination. Apparently they did not relish the idea that as long as he was president there were no other high offices left for them.
As noted above, Mary Lincoln was also blamed for keeping Judd out of the cabinet (and she herself once claimed Judd held her responsible). It is true she opposed his appointment, but so did a lot of Lincoln’s advisors, and it is improbable her opinion was decisive. While she was always friendly with Dubois, I think it is quite likely she opposed having other Illinoisans in the cabinet for the reason given by Forrest. If not specifically concerned about the renomination, she was always concerned about threats to Lincoln’s power posed by capable rivals. But some defaulted to the assumption that Mary was motivated by jealousy of other wives, as Forrest noted:
In the early days of [Lincoln’s presidency]…a Mrs. Edward Baker…and a Mrs. Don Piatt of Ohio managed to get themselves invited to the republican court. Both, especially Mrs. Baker…were beautiful women. After a short time, however, these ladies abruptly too their departure from the Washington court and never afterward were seen [there?]. This will account for [prominent editor and journalist] Donn Piatt’s subsequent attacks in the journals on the administration. The rumor was that Mrs. Lincoln became jealous of their good looks and of their monopoly of the admiration of the masculine portion of the court, a part of which at least Mrs. L——thought ought to have been bestowed on herself.
Julia Baker was Mary Lincoln’s attractive niece, and the abrupt disappearance does appear to have been related to masculine admiration, but not in the way Forrest suggested. Julia displayed hypersexual behavior at times, possibly related to mental illness, and was involved in a series of scandals. The record indicates some sort of extramarital incident occurred in Washington and she was asked to leave because of it. It is probable Forrest and others were confused at the sudden disappearance and came up with jealousy as the answer. I don’t know how the Piatts fit into the story.
Illinois Infighting and its Impact on Mary Lincoln
Forrest expanded on this theme years later in his August 30, 1895 column. Speaking of Mary’s unpopularity in Washington, he pointed out that much of it was fabricated to serve the prejudices of strangers and disgruntled friends of Lincoln—he says nothing about misunderstandings resulting from her tactless behavior, which are often described in other accounts as primarily responsible.[1] In fact, he specifically rejected this justification:
I shall probably be met here with the pessimistic statement that Mrs. Lincoln did some strange things . . . especially after the assassination .. . . Well, she may have done strange things; yet if she had done things a thousand times stranger than have been attributed to her she had reasons ‘as plenty as blackberries in autumn’ for doing them . . . [description of her “buoyant originality and independence of thought and manner”] . . . . take such a woman as this and transplant her from the dull and rigidly formal capital of a western sate, in which every household lived in an atmosphere of frigid formalism only relieved by the petty and often malignant gossip of the period, and place her under the limelight of a capital, the aristocracy of which condemned her without the formality of at trial, and it was to be expected that such a high-strung woman, with perceptions as keen as a Damascus blade, would resent the injustice done her. I have heard senators and congressmen from her own state with malice prepense declare to me at her receptions that the best people of Washington did not attend them. And the worst of it was that the people of the north were among the first to inflict the most [coarse?] injustice upon her, and this because of her southern birth . . . a charge [aiding the rebels] which had not even the semblance, the shadow, of a foundation.
His characterization is crystal clear: “Malice prepense” is “malice aforethought,” “the premeditated and deliberate commission of a criminal act with knowledge of its harmfulness or reckless indifference to its harmfulness and without justification or excuse.” He claimed that Lincoln often told him that everyone in Congress felt they should have been elected president instead, a jealousy Forrest pointedly said led them to project Lincoln’s “unconscious and uncommitted sins” on the his wife and spitefully refuse to provide for her after his death. He believed that this jealousy was especially prevalent among Illinoisans who were against Lincoln going for a second term, men who were given the cold shoulder by Mary when she became aware of it, fueling further bitterness.
To his credit, Forrest consistently saved most of his ire for those with the most knowledge, power, and responsibility. The low-level gossips, “social nonentities,” and John Watts of the world are one thing. Congressmen are quite another, especially considering this was the zenith of congressional power.
Congress appointed a commission to investigate the expenditures of the White House, to count the very plates and cups and saucers which she had left behind her . . . Worse than this, the same congress absolutely refused to provide an appropriation [for her support] … at the same time that it was distributing largesses at the suits of its own members to the widows of inferior officers. And this brings me to one of those eccentricities which this poor, persecuted woman was charged with perpetrating—that is the offering of her wardrobe at public auction.
In 1867, Forrest was writing for the Chicago Republican, and is therefore one of the best people to look to for an assessment of the old clothes scandal. I have quoted him on this in earlier posts:
Now, I have the best of reasons for believing and knowing that this act was simply—shall I call it a ruse de guerre?—to bring the congress to its senses, and to its sense it did bring that shameless body, which, during the life of the president, had appointed ‘a committee on the conduct of the war,’ which was no more nor less than a standing caucus not for the purpose of nominating a president but for the purpose of preventing the renomination of President Lincoln . . .
War-Era Drama
Here, Forrest’s political enmities become obvious, but his remarks are interesting:
Aside from this committee on the conduct of the war nearly every senator and member of congress and every cross-roads journalist in the country constituted himself a committee of one, also ostensibly ‘on the conduct of the war,’ but really because he was a disappointed office-seeker for himself or his friends. And this reminds me of an anecdote which I heard from one of Lincoln’s nearest and dearest friends and who also was a very dear friend of mine. A short time before the fall of Vicksburg, said this gentleman, great dissatisfaction was manifested at Gen. Grant’s tardiness in moving on the enemy’s works. There was a pretty general feeling in favor of relieving Gen. Grant . . . .Mr. Lincoln, however, had great faith in Gen. Grant, though he was being constantly beset and importuned by leading congressmen and editors to deprive that general of his command. This friend of mine and of the president being in the executive mansion one day at this period, Mr. Lincoln [told him that he was being pressured by Senator Ben Wade to remove Grant] . . . . [and] added ‘To show to what extent this sentiment against Grant prevails even Washburne, who has always claimed Grant as his by right of discovery, has deserted him . . . It was during this interview of the president with Washburne that Mr. Lincoln said to the Galena congressman when he complained that Grant was drinking too much whisky: ‘Well, Washburne, if you can only find out for me what brand of whisky Grant drinks I will send some of the same to other of the federal generals whom I have in my mind’s eye at this very moment.’
If what Forrest says is true, this is a useful illustration of the personal pettiness or selfishness that even some high-level politicians frequently fall prey to. However, there are other accounts in which Lincoln is said to have denied making the “whisky remark,” and it’s clear that members of the Illinois political elite were quick to believe any accusation made about a rival when in a resentful mood.
Knowledgeable Doesn’t Mean Trustworthy
These grudges have been been underrated as a source of inaccuracy in the record—-many of the most well-positioned sources about Lincoln have occasionally said ridiculous things because their emotions took over, or because of other personal issues. Dick Yates was almost certainly black-out drunk during his Senatorial meltdown over Mary Lincoln. Even the most credible sources are only human, with all the frailties that come with that.
In fact, Forrest closed one of his last columns with a useful illustration of the transparent nonsense offered by highly knowledgeable sources.
I was partially amused and partially disgusted recently on reading a series of letters by certain of President Lincoln’s neighbors and relatives in Springfield, evidently published with the laudable intention of giving an inside view of the character of the greatest of our presidents. They, however, fall so far short of the effect they were intended to produce as to be beneath contempt . . .
The impression sought to be conveyed by these letters is that Mr. Lincoln was one of those superlatively amiable, unpretentious and unambitious men whose angelic nature was such as to preclude him for being touched with the infirmities of our common humanity. They represent him as seeking nothing, as being utterly unambitious and as coldly and indifferent [illegible] for the goods which the gods had prepared for him and equally as ready to put them from him at the moment of their presentation to any ordinary companion . . .
And yet the truth is that Lincoln was a born politician; that he was from the first a manipulator of the caucus and of the convention; that he was one of the original baker’s dozen of politicians who engineered the removal of the capital of the state to Springfield after a series of log-rollings such as up to that time had not even been imagined; that he married a woman who was ambitious, who subsequently had a great if not controlling influence on his life, and who, Mr. William H. Herndon, who had no love for her, admits ‘had a rare insight into the motives which actuate men . . . .’ . . . .
I notice that one of the letters or interviews is written by Mrs. Doctor Wallace, a sister of Mrs. Lincoln . . . ‘And they say that Mrs. Lincoln was an ambitious woman, but she was not an ambitious woman at all . . . .’ . . . Now, this does not at all agree with the clearly and forcibly expressed opinions of some of the closest friends of President and Mrs. Lincoln . . . In another paper I will show that this great man was as ambitious of attaining the position to which he did attain—aye, even more ambitious—than his wife was that he should attain to it.”
The Frances Wallace interview was implausible on its face even in 1895, and, assuming her mind was intact, Wallace must have known this. As Mary’s sister, she did have inside information on the Lincolns, but chose to say what certain people wanted to hear. And a certain type of person always wants to hear that successful people are “superlatively amiable,” “unambitious,” and definitely not into spiritualism. But, as Forrest said, Lincoln’s greatness came from reaching “an altitude of thought from which he could survey…the whole of human life.”
Footnotes
[1] Forrest seems to have had little personal interaction with Mary Lincoln, but no one was better positioned than he was with regard to Lincoln-related gossip in elite circles. His statements are probably best characterized as an accurate representation of what was commonly repeated in that crowd, rather than eyewitness testimony.
[2] Forrest did not dispute the basic version of her behavior as found in the historical record, as his recollection of the Watt saga demonstrates. But that sort of thing was not a matter of “coming across wrong.” It was pretty straightforward, and the majority of people probably never heard about it until much later. It didn’t shape her reputation outside certain D.C. circles during the war, and in those circles, it was mostly shrugged off. (The exception was someone like David Davis, who seemed to lack perspective when dealing with gossip). What damaged her reputation during the war was accusations of southern sympathy and frivolity/snobbishness, and these narratives were maliciously promoted…not by political opponents, but by rival republican factions. People tend to be most vicious with those just outside their in-group. Actual opponents—the southerners in the Capitol in 1861—portrayed her as a simpleton and a rube. These two strands of criticism have coexisted ever since, often in the same article, despite being incompatible with each other.