“Hide a Mouse In A Crack . . .”
The paternity rumors have never gone completely away. I’ve compiled hundreds of newspaper and other claims over the years.
But, as to Herndon’s point about the dangers of covering things up, this story is a perfect example of why trying to stamp out “misinformation” is a bad idea.
First of all, there’s nothing new about people having all sorts of weird beliefs. It is most definitely part of the human condition. Some are much more prone to it than others, but a significant minority of these people will always be with us.
Second of all, when people feel like something is being kept from them, they fill in the blanks themselves. And, as you might imagine, it doesn’t go very well.
All of this was no doubt complicated by the fact that between the World Wars, there was an effort to smooth over tensions between the North and South. These attempts at reconciliation sometimes took odd forms—like the burning desire some southerners had to believe that Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were half-brothers! Or, in the alternative, that John C. Calhoun was Lincoln’s father! There was really no difference between them, y’know?
If it is difficult to believe that Dall and Herndon could be so credulous, one needs only to look in the file of the Lincoln Financial Foundation marked “Thomas Lincoln: Claims About Abraham Lincoln’s Paternity.” There is an informal index in the back that tracks the “Paternal Aspirants.” The pages read: “Mulatto, Samuel (Joe) Davis, John C. Calhoun, Watt Hardin, Ben Hardin, Henry Clay, ____ Martin, Thomas Marshall.”
You will notice that all the men named were Southerners. When Herndon had said that failing to tell the truth about Lincoln was “a crime,” he pointed out that “We exist in the midst of two civilizations--one in the South and one in the North--. The one will try & make Lincoln a perfect being--a supernatural man, and the other will say he is a devil; and so he will travel down all time misapprehended--not understood and pray whose fault will it be? Lincoln’s friends. The middle man is needed.” He was again right -- while these ridiculous allegations seemed to be quickly dismissed in the North, they stayed very much alive in the South, where they served their purposes.
The file contains letters from people who wrote into the Foundation inquiring about this issue. You can not but pity Lewis A. Warren as you read his patient response to one correspondent about the allegations that John C. Calhoun was Lincoln’s father. “I regret very much that most of the statements made in your brief review would be very seriously questioned by objective historians.”
The enclosed book review of a biography of Calhoun praised it as “most readable,” but lamented “It is unfortunate that should be historically inaccurate in so an important particular as the much mooted character Nancy Hanks . . . [the author] was either unfamiliar with the ramifications of the numerous Hanks family, or inexcusably careless . . . Her mention that Nancy Hanks, the enamorata of Calhoun, bore the same name as the mother of President Lincoln [instead of being the same person] . . . put her in the category of those who for years have attempted to dispose of old rumors in this way. The truth is . . . Joseph Hanks . . . had a daughter Lucy who appears to have had an illegitimate daughter by a soldier named Marshall, and who named the child Nancy.”
After identifying this daughter as “the Nancy Hanks who had an affair with Calhoun,” he continued, “The existing record of Abraham Lincoln’s birth is one, according to A. S. Salley, late Historian of South Carolina, that was interpolated between two other names. If Salley was right, experts could easily determine if the entry is spurious . . . The date eventually fixed by the Rev. Jesse Head to bring all of Nancy Hanks’ children within a period of alleged wedlock, naturally would have been arranged when Nancy Hanks and Calhoun separated, for political reasons.”
Naturally.
This took place in 1950. Warren replied with a Lincoln Lore article from 1941, which discussed the fact that a judge of the Superior Court of North Carolina had published a book alleging Lincoln’s father was John C. Calhoun. It closed with “If the admirers of John C. Calhoun or any one of his many rivals for the paternity of Abraham Lincoln can prove that during the month of May 1808 the paternal aspirant in question was in Elizabethtown, Kentucky and visited Thomas Lincoln’s cabin home . . . then there would be some basis for the sordid stories circulated in the political campaigns of 1861.”
He knew these stories had originated long ago, but that didn’t stop new ones from arising. In 1935, one man excitedly revealed to Warren that Lincoln was Jefferson Davis’s half-brother. “I have read all that I could get of Abraham Lincoln with great interest,” he wrote. But Herndon’s fear about those interested in Lincoln come true.
“Long ago I was struck with the way practically all biographers handled the subject of Thomas Lincoln. They always stepped over it leaving the impression that they did not know much to say or avoided saying anything that seemed unsatisfactory.”
As a result, he had filled in the missing information with the most fantastic possible story.
“In the capitol here is a life size statue of Jefferson Davis. Once this was told to me I have stood before and all around and I can see that there is far more resemblance than I suspected.”
Of course, “Spiritually they were not alike,” he acknowledged, “which is accounted for by environment and mothers.”
In 1937, one man wrote in because his friend, “a trained historian,” was having trouble refuting the argument that Davis and Lincoln were half-brothers. He enclosed an unexplained document titled “Jeff Davis, Half Brother of Abe Lincoln.” It explained that a man in Nashville bought “a very decent looking Octoroon girl in New Orleans . . . and made her his housekeeper and concubine. She gave him a very likely looking girl for his kindness to her . . . and at his death he gave Nancy and her mother all of his property . . . Now in that day and time all free negroes who owned property had to have a guardian or master and the slave had a right to choose their guardian. Hanks’ octoroon concubine chose a named named Marshall.” They moved to Kentucky, where “Marshall had a son,” and Sam Davis was a neighbor.
The document then devolved into a racist rant that (should have) cast significant doubt as to the author’s good faith in making these allegations against the Great Emancipator. It then resumed its description of Lincoln’s ancestry by explaining how “Nancy met the advances of the Kentucky bucks half way and lured them to the shores of the sin with the light of her wanton eyes . . .”
After Nancy became pregnant, “her octoroon mother became angry and all five of these boys were arrested” and brought to trial to determine who fathered the child. The Davises settled the case, and Thomas Lincoln soon appeared on the scene. When he “caught a glimpse of the young and pregnant looking Nancy Hanks,” he was inexplicably anxious to marry her.
The correspondent noted that he had “pointed out . . . some of the preposterous statements,” but his historian friend desired more information because he did not know what to make of the document’s allegations that “these are facts brought about and proved before he became the candidate for President in 1860 on the abolition ticket” and that “The records were in existence in Christian County in 1861.” It seems he feared there had indeed been records of Nancy’s trial testimony that Samuel Davis was the father of Abraham Lincoln. As Dall once said, “God help us!”
Conclusion
As recently as 1972, a correspondent revealed that that “My grandfather . . . was County Judge of Breckinridge County, and he said many times--The lawyers from Elizabethtown, had no doubt but that young Ben Hardin was Lincoln’s daddy.”
The Enlow narrative was replaced by the Ben Hardin narrative among some political elites in the 1870s, like Jeremiah Black and his son Chauncey F. Black, who ghostwrote Lamon’s book. For a while, I think if Herndon played around with that one. Not really sure why—probably more exciting. Hardin was a very prominent Kentuckian related to the Helms, and the Todds were also related to the Hardin family. Lincoln was close friends with Mary’s cousin, John J. Hardin.
You remember the visit of the Helms and Col. Dick Wintersmith to President-elect Lincoln? Well, Wintersmith allegedly pushed the story that when Lincoln met his wife’s brother-in-law, Ben Hardin Helm, he instantly realized that his own father was Ben Hardin. I assume by noticing a resemblance between him and Ben Hardin’s nephew? The story was passed on by Chauncy F. Black, who may historians have noted was politically hostile to Lincoln and not particularly personally favorable to him, either. But it seems like Wintersmith, and other Elizabethtown-area record clerks, including Haycraft and Helm relatives, were driving this, and the rumors permeated the community. We’re unlikely to ever know exactly why. Something tells me there was no “good” reason or grand plot. Just missing records and people liking to gossip.
The Enlows do still come up quite a bit in the newspapers. But perhaps the most interesting part of this that still has some relevance is that actor Tom Hanks is related to Nancy Hanks. So the family’s reputation has greatly improved since the 19th century, I’m happy to say.
This may be the end of the series…possibly a few more installments will be written after I review my notes on Dall’s papers.