Introduction
Between Lincoln’s nomination in May 1860 and election that November, a line from the Haycraft correspondence made it into the national papers. A letter Haycraft wrote to Lincoln in August summarizes the controversy:
Your letter…was received by this days mail, and I hasten to reply not only to acquit you but to clear myself of any knowledge of the statement of some correspondent in the N. Y. Herald saying that you had been invited to visit Ky., but that you suspected it was a trap to inveigle you into Ky in order to do violence to you…[In one of my letters to you,] …I made a passing suggestion that it might be pleasant for you now in the turn of life to visit the scenes of your nativity. To which in your letter marked Private dated June 4th you use this playful language “You suggest that a visit to the place of my nativity would be pleasant to me— Indeed it would— But would it be safe? Would not the people Lynch me! The place on Knob Creek marked by Mr Read I remember very well, but I was not born there As my parents have told me, I was born on Nolin very much nearer Hodgens-Mill than the Knob Creek place is— My earliest recollection however is of the Knob-Creek place”
The remark about the Lynching no man of sense would have understood it in any other way than a little playfulness & pleasantry on your part— I at least so understood it, and was about to reply to it in the same humor, that a visit here would subject you to a good many assaults— But they would be for office under you, as it was regarded as a foregone conclusion that you would be the next Prest. unless the split in the Democratic party let in Bell The mark Private on your letter I supposed simply meant that it was not for publication, had it been marked confidential, no body would have seen it. But as it was I showed it to Mr. W B Read who was attending our court & one or two other acquaintances & spoke of it to others who like myself had a curiosity about your birthplace…
I do not suppose that you intend to visit Ky But if you do I would like to see you personally and would be surety that you would be pleasantly receivd— I wish it understood that this letter is private & not for publication, but if you desire a reply from me to the N Y Herald I will with pleasure prepare a statement…
Lincoln himself prepared a statement, and possibly forwarded one from Haycraft, to an associate who contacted the Herald. In October, it published Springfield Correspondence with this excerpt:
The two interesting points are the claim that Haycraft was friendly with Lincoln’s father, and the attempt to deny the obvious implication of the joke, one Haycraft and others indicated there was a real basis for. Many people in Kentucky liked Lincoln and had some connection to him, or at least were curious about him, and were offended by the idea that they would harm him. But many were very uneasy about the political future under Lincoln, and it wasn’t unreasonable to think at least a few Kentuckians wished him harm. But what’s obvious is that many people in Kentucky were gossiping about Lincoln, and that some seemed a little confused, and also on the garrulous/playful side. This did not mix well with national press coverage, which tended to distort the context, creating annoying controversies like this one. Once the war began, the addition of politically-motivated malice made it much worse.
The “Wall Paper”
Dall’s diary recalls discussing Lincoln’s paternity with Herndon when she visited, and seeing documents discussing it. “While these matters were under discussion--Mr. Herndon showed and gave to me--a curious paper--printed on wall paper.” This is what she later requested and received from Herndon. She described this paper as being dated October 13, 1863, in Louisiana, and gave the following account of it:
It proposed to be a true history of Lincoln’s birth and 1000 copies were sent to Washington-to be distributed to the press with a view to preventing Lincoln’s second election. According to this Lincoln was four year and six months old--when Thomas Lincoln got into a disgraceful row with Enlow at a country wedding--and bit off Enlow’s nose--in the church. Nancy had emigrated to Kentucky from Virginia with Bloomfield Enlow & others . . . She had always refused to have anything to do with Lincoln, but she was disgusted by the [?] in which she lived, that she told him--if he would go away with her quietly, that she would live with him. Before they could accomplish this, Tom was so cruel to Abe--that his mother . . . had to send him away. A Mrs McBriyde--living in Nashville Tenn--and living in 1862--swore to these facts. Finally the whole family crossed the Ohio--and went to Gentryville Indiana. Signed ‘One of Morgan’s Men.’
This is no figment of her imagination. I haven’t found the copy she left to the Massachusetts Historical Society, but you can find the text on old newspaper websites. On March 20, 1863, a letter to the editor of the Atlanta Intelligencer was reprinted in the Charleston Daily Courier. It was titled “The True Pedigree and Early History of Abraham Lincoln,” and quickly circulated throughout the Carolinas and neighboring states. If you compare the bolded text, there’s no doubt this is the piece she saw, though she mixed in details from Herndon’s papers.
Some time ago an article appeared in your paper, copied from one of your exchanges, purporting to give the pedigree and early history of Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States. As the article in question abounded in errors, which the writer of this article by personal acquaintance, with the subject, is enabled to correct; and as the subject itself is one of general interest, he feels it to be his duty to lay before the public a true statement of the facts. The man known as Abraham Lincoln . . . was born in the country of Hardin, now the county of Larue, . . . in . . . Kentucky, and about forty miles from where the writer of this article lives when at home. The mother was a single woman of very low social position, by the name of Hannah Hanks…According to the statement of Hannah Hanks, her illegitimate child was the son of Abraham Inlow, (who was still alive and in Kentucky in September in 1861.) I have, myself, heard her make this statement. Moreover, Inlow always claimed the child as his own. Here, then, is the testimony of the two witnesses most conversant with the facts, both establishing beyond cavil that Inlow is Lincoln’s father. I will here give you a few facts in regard to Inlow. He was originally from North Carolina, but emigrated to Kentucky when very young. He is quite tall, being about six feet three inches in height. He goes barefoot in the summer, and I have never seen him with a coat on but once. His pants are held up by one suspender only, worn over the left shoulder. His nose is disfigured by having a piece about the size of a dime bit out of it in a fight. When Little Abe was four years and six months old his mother intermarried with a man by the name of Lincoln, and the boy was afterwards called by his step father's name. One night old Lincoln coming home and finding Inlow at his house…he pitched into Inlow, and they had a regular ‘set to.’ Lincoln bit off a portion of Inlow’s nose, and the latter deprived Lincoln of one joint of his thumb. After this affair old Lincoln became extremely cruel to Abe, and his mother found it necessary to send him to live with a lady who lived in the neighborhood. There he remained until he was almost thirteen . . . By this time he was able to work on the farm, and old Lincoln relented towards him and permitted him to return and live with him. The lady who gave Abe a home at this time was Mrs. McBriyde, who afterwards moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and who was still living on the 15th February, 1862, at which time the writer of this article saw her and conversed with her. She can substantiate the statement here made. During Abe’s residence at Mrs. McBriyde’s he was sent to an ordinary old field school for three years . . . Neither old Lincoln nor his wife (Abe’s mother) could read . . . he was now put to hard work, and was even compelled to work on Sundays. This he could not stand, so he ran away from Lincoln and went as a hand on an Ohio flat boat. From this position he was promoted to the position of a deck hand on a steamboat. Afterwards he quit the river, went to Illinois, near Springfield, and became clerk of a saw mill. He soon afterwards studied law and commenced practicing . . . With his subsequent history the public are acquainted, and I do not propose to speak of it, my object being to supply information concerning that portion of his life which seemed to be least understood.
Fortunately, the author was there to help his readers “understand” its sigificance fully. He claimed that Lincoln’s mother was of mixed race ancestry, before concluding:
The other circumstance to which I have alluded, and which doubtless had a potent influence on the formation of Abe's character, was the cruel treatment which he received from his step-father. This had the effect of hardening a nature by no means soft, and rendering him a fit tool for carrying out the hellish purposes of the Abolition party. Let no man deceive himself with hopes based on any supposed feeling of humanity in Lincoln’s nature. The bastard son of Hannah Hanks--the victim of a stepfather's cruelty has a grudge against the human family. His early training makes it impossible for him to feel the ‘dint of pity’ and he will repay upon society, with interest, the cruelty which in early life he experienced.”
It was signed “One of John Morgan’s Original Squadron, Fair-Ground Hospital, Atlanta, Ga.”
The story is odd enough in its details and heavyhanded enough in its implications that it was probably intended to stir up negative emotional associations in those hostile to Lincoln. It’s hard to see people inclined to vote for Lincoln changing their mind on the basis of this “factual account.” But it had a surprisingly strong effect on those who ran into similar allegations from more respectable sources, even if they were close associates of Lincoln himself. These associates had met Lincoln in adulthood, when he had moved away from his father’s home, and did not know enough about his childhood to vet the claims. Given the social environment in which Lincoln spent his early years, and the fact that his family periodically relocated, and that the names of locations had changed, there was not much of a paper trail to check. It’s quite possible that obtaining a marriage license was not the norm; certainly birth certificates were not yet a thing in that region. This would have been strange to those who grew up in more developed areas, or in higher social classes. Lincoln’s parents were illiterate, and his biological mother, Nancy Hanks, had been dead so long that it’s unlikely Lincoln himself had all the details. When he spoke of his childhood, he focused more on the period after his father’s remarriage, which was more stable and well-documented.
Rumors
On April 1, the Cleveland Daily Leader observed that “The rebels are revamping the old story about the President being part negro. A writer for the Atlanta Intelligencer insists that the President of the United States is the illegitimate offspring of Hannah Hanks and Abraham Julia, of Hardin county, Kentucky…” I don’t know where the name “Julia” came from.
This is pure speculation, but Ben Hardin Helm and his wife, Emily, lived in the same general region of Lincoln’s birthplace. They also appear to have been in Kentucky in September 1861, when the author allegedly verified that Enlow was still living there, and in Nashville on February 15, 1862, right before the fall of Fort Donelson, when the author allegedly spoke to Mrs. McBriyde. They would have been accompanied by neighbors in the same regiment, some of whom were relatives, and Helm was still alive when this piece circulated. He died later that year in Georgia, and was buried in Atlanta. It would not surprise me if someone in this group was the source of these claims. John H. Morgan was a Confederate General, a native of Kentucky, who engaged in a series of guerilla raids in Kentucky after the Confederates were driven out following the capture of Fort Donelson.
By the time it reached the form in which Dall saw it, about six months later, it was being printed on wallpaper and attributed to a Louisiana newspaper. She is correct that the claims were emphasized during the 1864 election campain.
On September 14, 1864, as the re-election neared, The Times-Democrat of Lima, Ohio, published the following lovely remark: “In Lincoln's speech to a returned Ohio regiment on the 22d inst., he makes an egotistical allusion to ‘his father’s child!’ Wonder who Abe’s father was? Wonder who had the honor of inflicting Abe on the ‘Big White House?’ Does anybody know, and won’t somebody tell? Is Hannah Hanks yet living? Oh! if she had only died about sixty years ago!”
On December 8, 1864, just after Lincoln was re-elected, the Charleston Courier mentioned Lincoln County, Georgia, and clarified that it was “named after Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, of the revolution, a gentleman and a patriot, if not a great General, and not after the son of Hannah Hanks, who now bears the name of Abraham Lincoln.”
Days after Lincoln’s second inauguration, on March 8, 1865, the Edgefield Advertiser, a South Carolina paper, commented that “Abe Hanks (he is a bastard, and his mother's name was Hannah Hanks) began his second Presidential term…”
Political Warfare
It soon came to the attention of Lincoln’s friends. After the war, Leonard Swett wrote Herndon to tell him he’d been approached by a respectable associate with copies of two letters allegedly written by Lincoln.
He made no comment & did not state why he sent them to me, He only remarked that he had seen the originals in the hands of Robert Todd of St Louis, and knew them to be genuine . . . I never knew Mr Lincoln had a brother . . . The letters which I send sound like Lincoln[.] From the City from which they are sent, and from Mr Todd, if he is the man I think he is the construction put upon them may have been an unfavorable one to Mr Lincoln, as showing, in reference to his brother, a penurious disposition.”
The letter, which was genuine and from the late 1840s, was written by Lincoln to his stepbrother, John Johnston, whom he addressed simply as his “brother.” In it, Lincoln refused a request for another loan, and admonished Johnston, who died in the 1850s, to get some work. Swett was worried that people would not realize how poor Lincoln was at that time, and he was unsure if Lincoln’s response was justified, not knowing “the true character of the brother.” Swett declared, “If he was simply poor & struggling in an humbler sphere in life, the letter would be unpardonable by the man who received it[.] If the case was as strong as from the terms of the letter it may be supposed it may be justifiable. . .” Swett continued:
“There has been for a long time, among Mr Lincoln's Enemies, an effort to produce an impression that he was inhumane to his poor relatives I was in General Grants tent once at City Point when he read me, from Harrisburg, I think, a detailed Statement of the destitute condition of his brother's family there, I think it was his brother, The Statement was that applications had been made to Mr L. at Washington in their behalf which was inhumanly refused & Gen'l Grant was asked why he was fighting to uphold such a monster. The Gen'l said he showed it to me, not to enquire seriously for its probable truth but as a specimen of what he sometimes received I may get these details wrong but substantially I am correct. I assured Genl Grant, as I supposed, that he never had a brother.”
At one point, Dall noted that the “bulletin” printed on wall paper had the heading “Unconditional S. Grant.” Grant acquired that nickname, and a promotion from Lincoln, by demanding the unconditional surrender of Kentucky forces defending Fort Donelson, Tennessee, in February 1862. Before that, he had captured Paducah, Kentucky.
It seems likely that this article and others disparaging to Lincoln, including the one Swett saw, were reprinted together without context and sent to Grant in a taunting manner. Grant brought it to Swett’s attention, and he probably told Lamon about it. Meanwhile, it sounds like Grant had turned over a similar item to O.M. Hatch, a fellow Illinois native, who gave it to Lamon.
Though they were extremely trusted and close associates of Lincoln, neither Swett nor Lamon had lived in Springfield prior to the war, and both had grown up on the east coast. They seemed less familiar with the details of his early life than even his Springfield friends, who were aware that he had stepsiblings back home. Perhaps Swett did know about the stepbrother, but was unable to imagine that he was the person referred to—I have noticed that, despite his brilliance in some areas, he had weird blind spots. As a minor example, during Lincoln’s presidency, he expressed surprised that Tad could not speak clearly—having been based in Chicago, he appears to have had little familiarity with Lincoln’s domestic life. I have written about how he seemed to misread the family dynamics surrounding Mary Lincoln’s committment in 1875. On top of that, I’ve located the “detailed Statement of the destitute condition of his brother's family there,” which Grant read to Swett. It is completely ridiculous, and it sounds like Grant pointed that out to Swett. The article, published in a pro-Lincoln D.C. paper a few weeks before the 1864 election, is so inaccurate, improbable, and predictable in its allegations that it was almost certainly a parody of the opposition’s attacks. The point was likely to emphasize how cliched and heavy-handed the anti-Lincoln slander was, even in the North among Copperhead papers like the Harrisburg Patriot. The commentary above the article, which was printed in the National Republican, read as follows:
“We publish below an infamous tissue of lies, copied from the paper to which the article is credited, (to its eternal disgrace,) for the purpose of showing to our readers and the country to what . . . cowardly means the McClellan party are resorting to overthrow the Government and establish a slave oligarchy on this continent.”
More specifically, the “tissue of lies” seems to have been a parody of the now familiar presence of the Todd family in attacks on Lincoln.
The National Republican claimed the Patriot had published an interview with a woman who falsely claimed to be a sister-in-law of Mary Lincoln. This woman claimed that after the death of her husband John Todd, the Lincolns had not responded to her recent requests for aid and had left her family destitute, which was especially bad given that she had often given him dinner, “and, [she] added naively…many a pint of whiskey.” Here’s an excerpt:
“We were surprised to learn so late as yesterday, through one of the employees of this office, that Abraham Lincoln had a sister-in-law living in this city . . . About the time he was to be married . . . which marriage was superinduced by delicate circumstances . . . he . . . borrowed first three and afterwards five dollars, with which, she alleges he paid the parson for uniting in the bonds of a matrimony those two persons, who might have been united somewhat sooner . . .
While she was being interviwed, “Mr. James Lincoln, a brother of the President, a private in the Union army,” wandered in—what a coincidence! He was included mainly so they could make a joke about the low rank of Lincoln’s own “brother,” to further parody the stories alleging he treated his relatives poorly. It continued:
Mrs. Widow Todd describes Mr. Lincoln as a very false and unprincipled man, though possessing many attractions, and was a ‘gay deceiver’ in his youthful days. She thinks however, bad as he is, he is no more irreligious and vain than his wife, Miss Todd. She describes the Todd family as proud and haughty, but not well educated . . . They were born in South Carolina, but lived latterly in North Carolina . . . Julia is the name of the chivalric sister who dared Gen. Butler to search the thirty trunks . . . Widow Todd showed us a daguerreotype of . . . James Todd, who fell a sacrifice to this cruel war . . . Widow Todd thinks that Mr. Lincoln . . . has not religion enough about him to care much whether all persons are free or all slave. All he desires is to distinguish himself by some transcendent feats of policy, or, in other words, to make history for the mere gratification of his own ambition.
The National Republican then printed an affidavit denying most of the statements, signed by “Mary Ann Todd, widow of John Todd,” and explained that “Mrs. Lincoln never had a brother John,” her family had never lived in the Carolinas, and that “She has no deceased brother of any name who left a widow.” If this were so, the affidavit was clearly worthless, so the entire piece saga was probably the work of the National Republican, with no involvement of the Patriot.
Inexplicably, Swett took it at face value, and responded by making the factual point that Lincoln did not have a brother!
Lamon was less brilliant, but far more practical. As Dall recalled:
Lamon found and burned these papers, with the exception of one which he sent--to Mr. Herndon, asking him to [seek?] for proofs of its falsity--But when Herndon enquired so much confirmation came to light that nothing was done. I saw and handled the lawyers letters myself & also copies of Lincoln’s to them.”
I’m pretty sure that Herndon did not receive it from Lamon until after Lincoln’s death, and that Lamon didn’t get too worked about such things. Herndon was anothe story, and he panicked, because he had so many letters from Kentucky, some of them respectable, making similar claims, and wasn’t sure how to handle this. He understood political motivations were involved, but this just made him more concerned. On January 12, 1867, he wrote to an associate that he was going to Kentucky to sort out the matter of Lincoln’s family background, to investigate “thoroughly, well, to the bottom and below the bottom, if I can go below . . . the Chicago Times has got what I tell you and has said: ‘Beware how you Lincoln worshipers blow your man. We’ll sink him.’” The Times was run by Democrats, who would be happy to publish anything that could tarnish the Republican martyr. At another point he said “I think the editors and devils of the Chicago Times have the bad side of these facts and intend to flash them on mankind when we are dead and gone. That paper said about eight months since: ‘Beware, you Lincoln men! I’ll spoil your hero.’ You have now the philosophy of . . . my counter [mines] . . .” Dall saw the letters that concerned Herndon, and was even more persuaded by them, given her view of western morality.
Post-War
The story persisted even after the hottest flames of the war died down, now more popular in the border states than in the deep south. On September 17, 1867, The Louisville Daily Courier reported on the sudden death of “Dr. A. Enlow, a half brother of the late President Lincoln,” who “dropped dead at Munfordville, on Friday last.” A Missouri paper, in its 1872 review of Lamon’s book, based on Herndon’s notes, put it this way:
We are told, what might just as well have remained untold, that "there exists no evidence of the marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks (the parents of the president,) but that of mutual acknowledgment and cohabitation;" that while Thomas Lincoln's marriage [to Sally Johnston] is properly recorded and verified by the minister's license, no fragment of documentary proof can be discovered to establish the validity of the first. Furthermore, it is stated that Mr. Lincoln seldom or never alluded to his mother; seemed to have an instinctive dread of reviving her memory in any way, and allowed her grave to remain in the condition it now covered with weeds and briars, and consigned to utter and contemptuous neglect. Yet he tenderly loved his step-mother, paid her the highest respect, and was always ready to make her the theme of enthusiastic praise. In short, Mr. Lamon's narrative does much to confirm, and nothing to remove, the reports which havo been in circulation in Kentucky and else where for many years past. Judicious silence would have been highly appropriate in such a delicate matter as this.1
In 1896, Jesse Weik, Herndon’s collaborator, published a series of articles that ran in newspapers all over the country. Herndon had died several years before. In one, article Weik denied the allegations about Lincoln's origin. Describing his trip to Kentucky ten years prior, he explained:
“Each locality had its tradition, and many of them were equally curious and amusing. The rancor of sectional strife furnished an atmosphere in which some of them, feeding on their own inconsistencies, grew to the dignity of glorious falsehoods. It would no doubt surprise the reader to learn how many different and ridiculous stories regarding Mr. Lincoln’s origin and paternity were at one time and another current in Kentucky. Mr. Herndon . . . met and disposed of many . . . The one most persistently adhered to and the one with the least preposterous features about it was the Inloe or Enlow legend.
The Enlow one was the least preposterous!
I met it in Hardin and Larue counties, and later in a somewhat modified form it bobbed up again in another part of the state. Here are a few lines written in 1865 by a man who knew all the Lincolns and Hankses and Enloes in Hardin county and who was a lawyer and judge of the court here. I copy from the original MS:
‘After Abe’s birth a man by the name of Abraham Enloe living in this region claimed him as his son. Thomas Lincoln and Enloe had a regular set to fight about the matter, in which encounter Lincoln bit off the end of Enloe’s nose. Lincoln held the mother and child, but Enloe ever afterward claimed that he was the father of Abe, and the name the mother gave was evidence, Enloe would contend, of that fact. Finally Thomas Lincoln, to get clear of Enloe, removed to Indiana *** A few words more as to the Enloe family and I am done with this subject. As far back as I can recollect there lived in Hardin County three families of Enloes, all from North Carolina all said to be cousins. Isham Enloe married a widow and Larue had a family of some distinction. Governor Helm is a relative of Mrs Enloe’s descendants by her first husband, Larue. Abe Enloe, another cousin, a tall dignified looking man of fine personal appearance, very neat, silent and reserved, more of a book worm than anything else, married a Vernon--one of our best families--and was the father of a respectable family. Then comes our veritable Abe Enlow, who claims to be father of Lincoln. He was over 6 feet high and a fine specimen of manhood. I remember him, with part of his nose bit off, as one of the institutions of our country for over 30 years. Very silent, very unobtrusive, never drunk nor boisterous, he seemed not to suffer in reputation by the conduct of his sisters, who were more or less notorious. I never had much to say to him except when I sold him some in my uncle’s store.’
Emily Todd Helm
“Governor Helm is a relative of Mrs Enloe’s descendants by her first husband, Larue.” Again, I think the Helms were involved in the promotion of these stories. Perhaps their influence in the region just makes it appear that way, but I’ve never had a high opinion of Emily Todd Helm’s credibility. She was skilled at defending and promoting her interests, and her life wasn’t easy. Like the rest of the Todds, she probably believed everything she did to be justified and honorable. But she is not a reliable source, even on matters relating to her own family. Like Mary Lincoln, she primarily identified with her husband, and while Mary preserved that identity into her widowhood by seeking financial recognition, Emily preserved it by promoting narratives favorable to the Confederate cause. This is reflected in her portrayal of her wartime relationship with the Lincolns.
Emily probably did not know much about Lincoln’s actual origins, and the Helms may have sincerely believed some of these rumors, or at least not known for sure that they were false. Maybe there is some tiny grain of truth there—Nancy Hanks’ early background remains sketchy—but the stories reached some absurd proportions that they do not warrant any assumption of good faith. Some of the letters Herndon received, however, were not quite so bizarre, and many of Dall’s stranger comments make perfect sense in light of those letters. I’d say there was about as much evidence for the Enlow story as there was for the Ann Rutledge romance, and of similar quality. As you can probably guess from that remark, I don’t find the Rutledge story very convincing. I consider these two pieces by Lewis Gannett pretty persuasive.
A breakdown of the letters sent to Herndon would probably strike most readers as tedious, and they can’t really be used to prove or disprove anything, so I’ll leave it at that. But I will say that the most interesting aspect of them is the social connections between various sources.
Todd Family Involvement
Weik continued:
. . . In addition to the Enlow story I devoted my attention and some of my time to the George Brownfield legend and to another which sought to affix the paternity of Lincoln to one of the Hardins. I was even provided with a number of pictures of various members of the Brownfield and Young families, all of them tall, muscular men, with unusually long arms . . . I listened to a long and carefully worded argument written by a prominent citizen of Mount Sterling, who had been a judge of the court and editor of a newspaper, who was descended from the millwright Abe Enlow at Paris, Ky., and who sought to prove this source of his alleged kinship to Mr. Lincoln. If these stories had come through devious channels from unauthentic sources, from unknown and obscure persons or from Mr. Lincoln's political enemies, there would have been little need of heeding them, but unfortunately such was not always their origin. While investigating the representations of Rev. G. J. Monfort, a Presbyterian clergyman and editor of a religious newspaper in Cincinnati, who claimed to have taught Abraham Lincoln in his school . . . Mr. Herndon ran across another and different story of Lincoln's alleged illegitimacy. Following it up to its source he was amazed to learn that it originated with or it was traceable to a man of decided Union sympathies and professions--no less a person, in fact, than Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge, a Presbyterian divine prominent in the church and living in Lexington, Ky. This gentleman, returning in the summer of 1861 from a visit in Baltimore to his home, had stopped in Cincinnati and while there had repeated to several persons, one of them a newspaper man, a story asserting lincoln’s illegitimate birth . . .”
Robert J. Breckinridge was also a distant relative of Mary Lincoln, and his nephew, John C. Breckinridge was fairly close with her and with the Helms. The Todds were part of a large and politically prominent clan; they had many respectable relatives in various states, and most sympathized with the Confederacy. Based on some of the things mentioned above, it’s entirely possible that Emily or some of Mary’s other relatives validated the rumors just to be obnoxious, a theory which is further supported by with some of their general wartime conduct. The family was prone to belligerent outbursts and feuding even in peacetime, and all but one of Mary’s eight younger half-siblings sided with the Confederacy. (Her five full siblings and other Springfield relatives were more loyal, but some were more comfortable with the Democrats than the Republicans.)
Many of the rumors Herndon heard about emanated from Cincinnati, the wartime home of Mary’s half-sister Margaret and her husband Charles H. Kellogg, who engaged in what a historian has called “secret treason.” I mentioned earlier that Kellogg became suddenly friendly when Linoln was first elected, but a few months into Lincoln’s presidency, he “traveled with his brother-in-law General Helm, and aided his other Todd relatives from Louisiana at the Battle of Shiloh by helping out in the hospital for Louisiana regiments.” While Margaret was forced to leave the city due to the Kelloggs’ increasingly obvious Confederate sympathies, other relatives remained in the Cincinnati area. If they lent credence to these stories, whether in moments of anger or to amuse themselves, this may have been why so many people repeated them to Herndon, and why some people connected to Lincoln were so startled by them.
Conclusion
As stated above, the “wall paper” article that circulated in 1863 claimed that “Abraham Inlow” “was still alive and in Kentucky in September in 1861.” The story actually does trace all the way back September 4, 1861, to a letter from “Ora” to the New Orleans Picayune. Possibly relevant to the location of the publication, which was also the one on Dall’s “wall paper,” is this paragraph from the article on Charles H. Kellogg’s “secret treason.”
Little did Lincoln know that in the late winter of 1862 Kellogg had made a mysterious trip into the Confederacy on business, traveled with his brother-in-law General Helm, and aided his other Todd relatives from Louisiana at the Battle of Shiloh by helping out in the hospital for Louisiana regiments. Samuel B. Todd, serving in the 24th Louisiana (or "Crescent Regiment"), was among the twenty-three soldiers of that regiment killed in the battle.
“Ora” was writing from Bloomfield, Nelson County, Kentucky, on August 24, and asserted that “an esteemed lady friend” had told a story about “old Abe,” one that “is no doubt true as it comes from very high authority.”
According to the letter, “Mrs. Patsey Gates, soon after Lincoln's election, said to a friend: ‘Well, who'd a thought Abraham Enlow would ever get to be President?’” Pressed for more information, the “honest” woman had explained that as a boy, Enlow had stolen a saddle from a Jim Craycroft,2 gotten caught, and ran off to Illinois and took the name Lincoln. “I wish to to take this chance of reaching you, but if any of Old Abe’s friends get hold of it it will be sure to miscarry,” the correspondent concluded.
For anyone who still has doubts that the gossip was politically motivated, the letter began with the declaration that Nelson County had “redeemed itself at the last State election by sending Mr. Murphy, the Southern Rights candidate, to the Legislature, over the Union candidate, thus proving to the arch old traitor, Chas. A. Wickliffe, who was elected to the Abolition Congress last fall from this district, that he is now in a disgraceful minority. The true men of Kentucky are rising, and are determined to free themselves from the Lincoln oligarchy.”
St. Louis Republican, reprinted in The Cairo Bulletin, June 18, 1872.
This name was possibly inspired by Samuel Haycraft’s, and the location, “Bloomfield,” is a name that comes up in many of these stories, sometimes as the name of Lincoln’s “real” father.