Lincoln's Herndon

CHAPTER i

Son of the Indian Queen

I

GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND knew everybody. As the columnist Gath, he went everywhere, met everyone, saw everything, and told it all and more to his newspaper audience. He thrilled American readers with poignant tales of Civil War daring and heroism; he reported the dramatic, the unique, the personal. Human interest was Townsend’s business. It was inevitable after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln that Gath should make an expedition to Springfield, Illinois—a pilgrimage for profit. He, the first of a long generation, would tell his public all about the real Lincoln.

In the Illinois capital everybody said that there was one man he must see. Billy Herndon, they told Townsend, had been the late President’s law partner for twenty years and could tell more tales about Old Abe than any ten other men. Eagerly the reporter sought out the Herndon law office on the west side of Springfield’s public square. Stooping to avoid the freshly painted Herndon & Zane shingle that creaked over the entrance, he climbed the dusty stairway and hesitated before the half-open door. Gath was used to judging men. At a glance he took in the solitary figure reading there: muddy brogans propped against the table; yellow breeches, turned up twice at the bottom; chapped fingers stiffly caressing a meerschaum; tobacco-stained teeth; an unruly thatch of graying hair. Could this farmer, wind-hardened and grizzle-bearded, know anything about a President?

But when introductions were made, Gath’s first impression proved wrong. Townsend was startled to find a poet and a dreamer, a man of books and of memories. Half closing one eye for accuracy in conversation and pointing a bony forefinger at his interviewer, Herndon began: Friend! I’ll answer you. And off he started, reliving the years of his past—his childhood, his political career, his law practice, his partnership with Lincoln.¹

There was much that Herndon could tell. His memory was crowded to overflowing, like a rag bag. Here were the bright red patches of a victorious law suit, the blue scraps of philosophical discussions in the office, the flaming orange bits of a speech on the hustings. Here too were soiled edgings and rough wool tatters not so pleasant to remember. Endlessly, without apparent order he evoked memories of the past and laid them before his hearer. And when they were all spread out together, there was the pattern of a man, contradictory and confusing, as beautiful and as ugly as life itself.

Billy Herndon remembered so many things. There had been that glorious spring day in 1832 when he and the other Springfield lads had scrambled upon their horses for a ride down the Sangamon. Springfield was excited, for it had news that Captain Vincent Bogue’s splendid upper cabin steamer, TALISMAN was chugging its way up the river.² Down to meet it went every able-bodied man and youth of the community. It was a fabulous sight for the prairies of Illinois, a steamboat, with pounding boilers and a fuzzy cat’s tail of smoke. So narrow was the Sangamon near Springfield that men armed with long-handled axes had to cut back the overhanging branches from either side of the stream. But the boat puffed and wheezed its slow way forward under the skilled piloting of a six-foot giant variously called Abe, Abram, or Abraham Lincoln. It was Billy Herndon’s first sight of a future President.³

That night when the boat was safely secured in the river a few miles north of Springfield, the whole company adjourned to the village for refreshments. There were banquets and dances and speeches. Airily optimistic, Springfield’s 762 inhabitants saw for their city a future in terms of bustling docks and caravansaries and factories. In rhymed effusions small beer poets welcomed a great day coming. For more substantial inspiration men looked to the taverns of the village and congregated at the Indian Queen, where Billy Herndon helped his father pour the drinks.⁴

This frank, warm-hearted landlord,⁵ Archer Gray Herndon, was no mere bartender; he was a power in state politics. In every campaign he was called on to speak for the Democratic cause. A hostile observer might remark his uplifted hands, the veins in . . . [his] neck distended,—like a bull frog in the dog days, almost to bursting — . . . fingers extended like grappling irons, as if to seize upon and strangle some approaching foe,⁶ but his was rough eloquence to sway frontier folk. In a few years he would enter the state senate as one of Sangamon’s Long Nine—so-called because they averaged six feet in height—who logrolled the bill through to make Springfield capital of Illinois. Bluff, boisterous, and bibulous, Archer Herndon had made a name for himself in Illinois.

The saga of the Herndons was the story of young America, the tale of boundless optimism, of grim determination, of triumph over impossible odds. There had been Herndons in Virginia since 1674, proud, respected folk, who married into the families of colonial governors and held up their heads in the best of society.⁷ After the Revolution the family had drifted westward. Archer Herndon had been born in Culpeper County, Virginia, in 1795. When he was a lad of four his family had crossed into Kentucky and the youth grew up on the frontier. It was a hard life, full of risks and deprivations, but years afterward he recalled only the gaiety and color of pioneer society: We horse raced it—cock fought it. We played cards—game called all fours—ie seven up—We fox hunted it in the morning—fished—sang songs going to corn shucking — . . . .⁸ When the war of 1812 broke out, this high-spirited youth volunteered for a year’s service in the militia.

Upon his return to Green County, Kentucky, he married an attractive widow, Rebecca Day Johnson, a strong-minded woman, descendant of a strong-minded family. Her Virginia-born father detested slavery and voluntarily set all his Negroes free. Selling his lands, he carried his family over the Cumberlands and began a new life in the wilderness.⁹ Pioneering, it was said, was hell on mules and women, yet Rebecca, like her husband, remembered only its pleasures: singing Bonny Doon or songs against the Yankees; visiting and sociables; night gatherings where the girls picked seeds out of the cotton and spun it into rough thread.¹⁰ She was a little superior to the common run, well enough educated to serve as a schoolmarm and priding herself on her descent from a prominent family.

II

On a bleak October day in 1818 a lonesome nine-year-old boy in an Indiana clearing watched his father lower the coffin of Nancy Hanks Lincoln into the grave. On the third day of December a twenty-first star was added to the American flag for the new frontier state called Illinois. Ten days later there was rejoicing in the family of well-to-do Robert S. Todd of Lexington, Kentucky, at the birth of a beautiful girl child, christened Mary. And on Christmas Day, in backwoodsy Green County, eighty miles away, Archer Herndon’s first son was born.¹¹ Fate had her wits about her to concatenate these stray links into a curious chain.

Archer named his eldest child William Henry Herndon—which inevitably became Billy. In later years Billy Herndon liked to think affectionately of Kentucky as his Child home, but he had little chance to acquire a Kentucky accent. In 1820 Archer Herndon sold his property, packed his belongings, and father, mother and two-year-old child, accompanied by Rebecca Herndon’s parents, set out to seek greener pastures. Illinois was the great country of the future, and Archer Herndon headed for Madison County, along the Mississippi. Here surely he could make a home. Those were hard years for poor folk, and the Herndons were too proud to beg for help. With one ox to draw a plow that he fashioned from the fork of a tree, Archer Herndon scratched the top of the soil and planted corn. They stayed in southern Illinois just long enough for one crop to be made and for a second child to be born, the lame, irascible Elliott. Then, restless as ever, Archer learned of the Sangamon country in central Illinois, a land of rich bottoms and black soil. And off again they went.¹²

They lived a few years on the Sangamon, at what is known as German Prairie. It was rough country, thinly settled, and there was still lurking danger from the Indians. Once when Billy was five years old his father had to carry corn to the gristmill. By late afternoon he had not returned, and Mrs. Herndon, left alone with two small children, began to worry. Toward dusk a band of redskins approached the Herndon cabin.

Where is your man? demanded the foremost, doubtless hoping for firewater.

In the woodland, Rebecca lied gallantly.

Go after him, ordered the Indian.

When she turned toward the cabin to get her baby, the Indian feared a trick. In an instant he drew out her comb, lifted her long hair, and made a quick warning gesture with his scalping knife. Billy screamed when he saw the flicker of the steel. Shoving him through some loose boards in the rear of the cabin, his mother whispered that he was to run into the forest. Then she hid her baby under her shawl and left in pretended search for her husband. Clutching her two children, Rebecca hurried to her nearest neighbors—a mile and a half away—where she could spend the night in safety. The incident made a deep impression on Billy Herndon. I saw the savage lift my mother’s long hair and threaten to scalp her, he recalled with a shudder, even after four decades. I was but five years old, yet I shall never forget that.¹³

A few years in the Sangamon bottom were quite enough, and in 1823 Archer Herndon made a small board cart, into which he threw the chickens, the little pigs, and the young children, and moved to Springfield—and a most unlikely place it was when Archer and Rebecca Herndon chose the village for their home. The marks of bears’ claws were deep in the trees right round us, Billy Herndon remembered; he himself killed over a hundred snakes within three quarters of a mile of his father’s house.¹⁴ In 1825 Archer opened the Indian Queen, the first tavern-hotel of any pretension in Springfield, and he did a good business. For a time he operated a general store, selling—among a wide assortment of other objects—sugar, pasteboard, muslin, butter, coffee, and calico to his neighbors.¹⁵ He lost money at merchandising, but by judicious loans and heavy land speculations Archer soon was able to retire to his farm, where he raised fine cattle, listing his occupation for the inquisitive census taker as None. Before his death his property was conservatively appraised at $60,000.¹⁶

Meanwhile Billy Herndon was growing up. He was a child of the frontier, a man’s man. He had the earthy flavor of the prairies; he knew the talk of racing and cockfights and horses and women; he liked ribald anecdotes and practical jokes. His was a horselaugh, not a titter. He was the cock of the walk among the youths of the town, not alone because of his father’s prosperous financial condition. Billy had daring. During the winter Springfield gallants liked to take their belles sleighing. To annoy them, the younger boys would catch on behind and steal rides, but of them all only Billy Herndon could hang on for a whole trip.¹⁷

But there was more to this youth than the boy on the streets or hanger-on at the tavern. When Grandfather Day recounted tales of his hardships during the American Revolution, little Billy "used to fire up & . . . [his] eyes run over with tears at the recitle [sic] of American wrongs."¹⁸ Proud of his oldest son’s fondness for books, Archer Herndon sent him to the village school, where each parent paid for the schooling of his own children, and Billy studied Reading—writing—arithmetic—geography—grammar—and some of the higher branches. Later, still helping his father in the store during the evenings, he attended a privately owned high school for two or three years.¹⁹

III

Though Archer Herndon had had no formal education, he and Rebecca were ambitious for their children. There were two other boys,²⁰ but Billy was the favorite. Nothing was too good for him. When Springfield’s schools were outgrown, his parents decided to send him to Jacksonville, where since 1829 a group of devout Yale graduates had been building Illinois College, a New Haven in the West.

In the fall of 1836 Herndon entered the preparatory department of the college. A classmate, whose recollections may have been confused after the passing of many years, recalled that Billy arrived in Jacksonville unexpectedly. With his love for practical jokes, he had accepted compensation from both political parties to carry ballots to an outlying precinct in Sangamon County and then had doused one set in a creek, leaving those opposed to his political persuasion without an opportunity to vote. Billy found it advisable to leave Springfield without waiting to pack his trunk.²¹

For the modem college student, with three or four hours of class a day, Illinois College would seem more like a penitentiary than an educational institution. The faculty of five men agreed that the sixty-four students should never have a chance to find out whether idle hands really were the devil’s workshop. The college ordinances have a grim tone.

Morning prayers [read the rules adopted in 1837] shall be attended half an hour after the ringing of the second bell for breakfast, and evening prayers at 6 in the summer and at 5 in the winter Term. Study hours shall commence immediately after morning prayers and continue until 12 o’clock in the forenoon, and at 2 in the afternoon, and continue until evening prayers, and, in the evening, during the winter Term, at 7 and continue till 9.

It was hardly surprising that one of Herndon’s schoolmates, after detailing his day’s routine in a letter home, lamented: . . . my whole time is taken up.²²

Most of the upperclassmen at Illinois College were serious-minded young men, many destined for the ministry. So ambitious were they that on one occasion the student body petitioned that the hour of morning prayers be changed from 5 o’clock to 1/2 past 4 . . . so as that, after two hours labor subsequent to breakfast, they might have an 1/2 hour to themselves between labor & study hours. The petition was denied because their teachers did not wish to get up so early.²³ The faculty, however, was heavily overworked. In one semester the Prof. of Math. and Nat. Philosophy was supposed to impart instruction in algebra, plane and spherical trigonometry, mensuration, navigation, surveying, pneumatics, electricity, magnetism, optics, and astronomy. But apparently not even so exacting a round of classwork could keep boys from being boys, for there were college laws to prohibit visiting in other students’ rooms, to threaten the users of intoxicating liquor, and to forbid shooting firecrackers in the dormitory.

Since admittance to the freshman class required passing examinations in geography, arithmetic, Latin, and Greek, Herndon enrolled in the high school department, where Reuben Gaylord, A.B., Yale, presided over classes in Arithmetic and the Languages, preparatory for admission to the Freshman class. Billy could never read either Latin or Greek; he had more important things to do. A lively youth of eighteen, he made friends quickly and engaged in practical pranks which kept him constantly in trouble with the authorities.²⁴

Still, he learned much. There was the inspiring personal contact with great teachers, Edward Beecher, Julian M. Sturtevant, and Jonathan B. Turner, in whose judgment and integrity he had unlimited confidence.²⁵ He caught a fleeting glimpse of vast ranges of knowledge to be explored, and from the college library, where he was permitted to borrow either one large volume or two small books each week, he acquired an insatiable appetite for reading. The professors’ liberal religious views, assailed by the fundamentalists as unorthodox, proved especially attractive to a young mind disgusted with the ranting of camp-meeting orators. In a desultory way Billy began reading philosophy, studying by himself, a little reluctant to ask his teachers for help lest they think his questions silly.²⁶ As he looked back on his year of college many decades later, Herndon remembered the whole time there as a perpetual romance.

At Illinois College Herndon became involved in the agitation over Negro slavery. Billy had been born in the slave state Kentucky. His grandfather Herndon had owned slaves. Rebecca Herndon’s father had freed his Negroes because he hated the peculiar institution. One of the motives driving the Herndon family in their exodus from Kentucky had been Archer Herndon’s vow: My labor shall never be degraded by competition with slave labor.²⁷ But all this had been rather remote. At Illinois College slavery was a live issue. Jacksonville was a border town, where Southern currents of immigration from Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee mixed with the Northern tides from New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Many from the South looked back with nostalgia to the plantation-slavery system of their origin, while some Northerners—though only a minority—were convinced that slavery was a moral cancer.

All the prominent members of the Illinois College faculty were originally from New England, and all became converts to abolitionism. At first they had felt that education and the slow processes of time would eradicate the peculiar institution, while demands for immediate abolition might aggravate Southern antagonism. In 1836–37, however, most were persuaded that direct action was necessary, not only to eliminate slavery in the South but to prevent its malignant growth into the free North. Stubborn, self-righteous Elijah P. Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister from Maine, had voiced antislavery views in his St. Louis newspaper. Repeatedly threatened by mob violence, Lovejoy crossed the river to Alton, Illinois, where he began publishing the Observer, at first largely eschewing discussion of abolition but eventually damning slaveholders to a Calvinistic hell. Alton residents, mostly from the South and looking to Southern cities for their markets, were alarmed. Angry at what they considered a breach of the editor’s pledge not to ride his antislavery hobbyhorse, the citizens took the law in their hands, again and again threw his printing presses into the river, and finally killed Lovejoy and some of his followers.

The news of Lovejoy’s death on November 7, 1837, traveled quickly. Abolitionists canonized him as a martyr to the holy cause, and the Alton catastrophe did more to increase their numbers and inflame their feelings, than their warfare upon slavery itself.²⁸ Jacksonville, with its turbulent mixture of Yankee and Southern settlers, was particularly upset. President Edward Beecher of Illinois College had been in Alton the week of Lovejoy’s death and had vigorously and uncompromisingly championed his right to publish abolitionist views in the face of universal opposition. Others among the Illinois College faculty were also in full sympathy with Lovejoy. When the news of the editor’s death reached Jacksonville, an indignation meeting was held on the campus at which faculty and students were loud and unrestrained in their denunciation of the crime.²⁹

Many years later the story was told of Herndon’s part in this mass meeting. Since the people of Jacksonville who attended were mostly Southern, the memorial exercises seemed likely to end in a row. At this critical moment the young student, Herndon, made his way towards the front and took the platform. The student body caught the excitement, and seeing Herndon speaking privately with President Beecher, on the platform, they raised the college yell, and shouts for ‘Herndon,’ ‘Herndon’—‘The son of a Democrat. Let us hear what this son of a gun can say!’ Beecher . . . in his perplexity told young Herndon to speak if he chose. And, the tale continues, Herndon did speak, winning the attention of an adverse audience even while denouncing the Lovejoy murder, and at the end of his extemporaneous address he was picked up by his college mates and borne off the campus on the shoulders of his fellow-students in a blaze of glory.³⁰

As a sequel to this affair, it was said, Archer Herndon, hearing of his son’s antislavery pronouncements and fearing that he would become a damned abolitionist pup, promptly withdrew William from the college and forced him to come home. Back in Springfield, Billy’s soul was still permeated with the rank poison of abolitionism, and Archer in raging fury literally disinherited him. From that day Herndon had to leave home bereft of all ties there save his mother, who had sympathized with him. The favorite son had become an outcast.³¹

This story has grown with age. The account of Herndon’s participation in the Lovejoy protest meeting was first published by Henry Bascom Rankin, a notoriously inaccurate writer. Not a witness to the events he described, Rankin apparently based his narrative on memories of conversations with Herndon, but his Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln did not appear until 1916—seventy-nine years after Lovejoy’s death. At least three other authors have used the story,³² but so far as can be ascertained, the Rankin reminiscences were their only source.

Careful searching of strictly contemporary records leads one to question whether Herndon was even at Jacksonville in November 1837; the Illinois College faculty minutes for September 14 of that year carry the ominous resolution: That Herndon be informed he cannot study here next term [which was to begin in November] unless he study so as to pass a satisfactory examination in Arithmetic. The difficulty was that in November the preparatory department was to be discontinued, and Herndon was unable to meet the college entrance requirements. There is no record that Billy passed his examination or that he was admitted to the college at the start of the new term. Certainly his name does not appear in the 1837–38 catalogue. The indications are strong that his college career ended not with a bang but a whimper.

Even if one could accept Herndon’s later positive statement that Lovejoy’s death occurred while he was attending college,³³ it is hard to credit the dramatic story of his antislavery oration and of the resulting removal from school by an irate parent. No contemporary report identifies Herndon with the Lovejoy commemoration in Jacksonville. During his lifetime none of Herndon’s friends or schoolmates ever mentioned Billy’s presence on such an occasion, nor did Herndon himself ever refer in writing to his supposed antislavery speech.³⁴

Herndon did not attend the college more than one year—that is all that can be proved. At this date one can only speculate about causes. Perhaps Archer Herndon, hard hit by the depression, could not afford the expensive luxury of supporting a son in college. It is possible that the father, who had publicly sworn eternal hostility to abolitionists,³⁵ did hastily yank his favorite son from the hotbed of antislavery—or perhaps Billy, having flunked out of school, was safely in Springfield before Lovejoy was murdered.

Back at home Billy faced that trying emotional strain which occurs when father and son both think strongly and differently on fundamentals. Archer Herndon was a Democrat and a Southerner. For those who hoped to emancipate the slaves or to enfranchise the free Negroes, he had unbounded contempt. Never a strict party man in the sense of obeying the Springfield regency, he remained throughout his life identified with the True Jacksonian Democracy and characteristically lumped together all those he disliked as Abolition federal silk stocking ruffle shirt Whigs.³⁶

Equally self-willed, his oldest son had acquired a new set of values in Jacksonville. If Billy Herndon was converted to the cause of abolition, the results did not become apparent for many years, for it was not until 1856 that he was prominently identified as an antislavery man; yet as soon as he returned to Springfield he showed his independence of mind by joining the Whig party so detested by his father. Naturally there was friction in the family, and Billy left home to sleep in the room above Joshua Fry Speed’s store. It seems that the stories of Herndon’s exacerbated relations with his parents have been exaggerated. There may have been a temporary misunderstanding when the son returned from college, but it was certainly not of long duration. In the years to come father and son endorsed each other’s bonds, Billy served his father as attorney, and before Archer Herndon died he turned over to his eldest son a large farm. As Billy put it: There is no earthly reason why I should hate my father, brother or friend, because we cannot agree in opinion of measures or principles, and there is no reason why either should feel embittered towards me.³⁷

IV

Young Herndon did have a few bad years after his return to Springfield. Finally he got a job as clerk in Joshua Fry Speed’s store and slept in the big room upstairs with Speed, Charles R. Hurst, a fellow clerk, and Abraham Lincoln, who had come to Springfield to practice law.³⁸ Speed paid his clerk seven hundred dollars a year—which was considered good pay then³⁹—and Billy supplemented his income by making small loans, sometimes at a usurious rate of interest.⁴⁰ But times were very hard, and as late as 1842 Herndon confessed gloomily that poverty is staring us all in the face.⁴¹

Working hours were long, but when there were no customers Billy could wander back to the cracker barrel and listen to Lincoln and Speed and the other young blades of Springfield—James H. Matheny, Noah Rickard, Evan Butler, Milton Hay, and Newton Francis—argue and tell tales. The boys formed a society for the encouragement of debate and literary efforts in Springfield, and many a night they gathered around the potbellied stove to hear Speed’s latest effusion about his Kentucky belle or to roar at Lincoln’s ribald stories.⁴²

Herndon was not the man to sit his life out on a cracker barrel. Besides, he was in love. Unlike the aristocratic Edwardses, Todds, and Stuarts, the Maxcys made no pretense to lofty birth or exaggerated elegance. They were good middle-class people, respectable, honest, industrious. James Maxcy, father of the clan, was born in Virginia, but since 1834 he had lived in Springfield. He had been elected first marshal of the town, and so well did he perform his duties that he was reelected to some city office each year for twenty-six successive terms.⁴³ The youngest Maxcy daughter was Billy Herndon’s junior by four years, a shy, retiring girl, as quietly beautiful as a daisy. Herndon fell in love, proposed marriage, and was accepted. They were wed on March 26, 1840.⁴⁴

Mary Maxcy Herndon remains a shadowy figure. Her memory still lives among older residents of Springfield, faint as the perfume of lavender, the pale fragrance of a life bounded by home, husband, and children. It was a deep love that united these two; for Herndon his married life was an eternal stream of happiness.⁴⁵ Mary Herndon did much for her husband. She read books for him and gave wifely advice; most of all she was a tactful, soothing influence on his ebullient personality. Their first child was born in 1841, a son whom they named Nathaniel. From that time the family increased rapidly, until there were six children in the Herndon home on the corner of First and Jefferson streets.⁴⁶

It was a happy home, for Herndon was devoted to his family. Never was he too busy to answer questions and help solve childish difficulties. Every Sunday he would hire a carriage and take the children out on the country roads to teach them botany, geology, and ornithology. Nothing escaped his eye; his nephew asserted he never saw a botany book that knew more about plants than did Herndon.⁴⁷ Picking a wild flower, he would show its parts to the children and marvel at its perfection. Remember, he would admonish, a great Power made all this. A great teaser, Billy was always playing practical jokes on his children. When he came home from town, he would ask his daughter: Who was that dirty-faced little boy I saw kissing you through the fence? And as the child made indignant denials, he would catch her up in his arms and roar with laughter. A kind parent was Herndon, yet not an overindulgent one. The children had to know their place. He loved to have Mollie and Lizzie and Annie romping in his flower garden—but if they picked a rose, remembers his daughter, believe me he’d know it. And when Nat interrupted his father’s speech at a Republican rally by shouting Hurrah for the Democrats! the razor strap was put into use that night.⁴⁸

¹ Gath, in New York Tribune, February 15, 1867. For details as to Herndon’s personal appearance I have been greatly assisted by Herndon’s nephew, Mr. James S. Miles, Sr., of Petersburg, Illinois.

² Harry E. Pratt, Lincoln Pilots the Talisman, Abraham Lincoln Quar., II, 319–329.

³ William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Company, [1889]), I, 87. Hereafter cited as Herndon’s Lincoln; all subsequent references, unless otherwise expressly indicated, are to the original three-volume edition. Herndon’s memory of this occasion was by no means so precise as his statement would indicate. See below, p. 349.

⁴ The Herndon tavern-hotel was also known as the Herndon House. Harvey Lee Ross, The Early Pioneers . . . of Illinois, 123.

⁵ Illinois State Journal, January 4, 1867.

⁶ Sangamo Journal, June 19, 1840.

⁷ For information on the Herndon ancestry I am deeply indebted to Dr. John Goodwin Herndon of Haverford College. Dr. Herndon’s The Herndon Family of Virginia: Volume I. The First Three Generations is an authoritative work. See also John W. Herndon, A Genealogy of the Herndon Family, Virginia Mag. of Hist. and Biog., IX, 318–322 (continued in succeeding issues); Myrtle M. Lewis, Herndon and Allied Families, Americana, XXXI, 639–648; and John Goodwin Herndon, Six Herndon Immigrants to Colonial America, William and Mary College Quar. Hist. Mag., XXIII (2 ser.), 331–335.

⁸ Interview of W. H. Herndon with A. G. Herndon, undated [but 1865], Herndon-Weik Coll. A portion of the Herndon-Weik Collection has been published in The Hidden Lincoln: From the Letters and Papers of William H. Herndon, edited by Emanuel Hertz. The original manuscript collection, now in the Library of Congress, is cited exclusively in the following pages.

⁹ Caroline H. Dall, Pioneering, Atlantic Mo., XIX, 404.

¹⁰ Interview of W. H. Herndon with Rebecca Herndon, September 28, 1866, Herndon-Weik Coll.

¹¹ Date given in Rebecca Herndon’s Bible, now owned by Mrs. Earl Bice, Springfield, who generously permitted me to copy these records.

¹² Illinois State Register, January 4, 1867; interview of W. H. Herndon with Rebecca Herndon, September 28, 1866, Herndon-Weik Coll.; J. C. Power, History of the Early Settlers of Sangamon County, Illinois, 372–373.

¹³ Dall, Pioneering, Atlantic Mo., XIX, 405–406; History of Sangamon County, Illinois (1881), 455–456 [pages misnumbered 355 and 356].

¹⁴ Dall, Pioneering, Atlantic Mo., XIX, 406.

¹⁵ Account of Mrs. Salome Enos with A. G. Herndon, receipted January 12, 1835, P. P. Enos MSS.; Sangamo Journal, October 5, 1833.

¹⁶ Illinois census returns, 1850 and 1860 (MS., National Archives).

¹⁷ Zimri Enos, Description of Springfield, Ill. State Hist. Soc., Trans., 1909, 206.

¹⁸ Interview of W. H. Herndon with Rebecca Herndon, September 28, 1866, Herndon-Weik Coll.

¹⁹ Undated MS. fragment in the writing of Weik, probably an interview with Herndon, ibid.; Herndon’s Biography, undated, ibid.

²⁰ Elliott Bohannon Herndon, born August 1, 1820, and Archer Gray Herndon, Jr., born November 29, 1825. A fourth son, Nathaniel, died in childhood. Rebecca Herndon’s Bible, in possession of Mrs. Earl Bice, Springfield.

²¹ Ross, Early Pioneers, 123–124.

²² Laws of Illinois College in Jacksonville . . . (1837), 12; Samuel Willard to Mrs. Julius A. Willard, December 10, 1836, Willard MSS.

²³ Records of the Proceedings of the Faculty, Illinois College, 1833 [to 1842] (MS., Illinois College Library), entry for January 12, 1833.

²⁴ Ross, Early Pioneers, 123–124; Records of the Proceedings of the Faculty, Illinois College, 1833 [to 1842], entry for July 20, 1837.

²⁵ Herndon to J. M. Sturtevant, March 29, 1864, MS., Illinois College Library.

²⁶ Herndon to Theodore Parker, February 1857, Herndon-Parker MSS. Most of the letters in the Herndon-Parker MSS. have been printed in the pioneer study of Dr. Joseph Fort Newton, Lincoln and Herndon. The original manuscripts, now in the University of Iowa Library, are cited in the present work.

²⁷ Herndon to Parker, February 16, 1856, Herndon-Parker MSS. In later years Herndon wrote of his father being a pro-slavery man. Herndon to James H. Wilson, August 28, 1889, copy, Herndon-Weik Coll. This meant that in the 1850’s Archer Herndon supported the Democratic party, which William H. Herndon had come to think of as the slavery party. From this confusion has grown the mistaken belief that Archer took an active part on the proslavery side in the contest of 1822–23, when there were plans to make slavery legal in Illinois (Newton, Lincoln and Herndon, 3). There are no contemporary records to indicate that Archer really favored slavery, though like most of his contemporaries he scorned and despised abolitionists.

²⁸ Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1809–1858, I, 226.

²⁹ Herndon’s Lincoln, I, 187.

³⁰ Rankin, Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 115–116.

³¹ Frank J. Heinl, Congregationalism in Jacksonville and Early Illinois, Ill. State Hist. Soc., Jour., XXVII, 451–452; Herndon’s Lincoln, I, 188; interview of Weik with Hardin Masters, March 7, 1925, Herndon-Weik Coll.; Rankin, Personal Recollections, 117.

³² Heinl, in Ill. State Hist. Soc., Jour., XXVII, 451–452; Rammelkamp, Illinois College: A Centennial History, 1829–1929, 110–111; introduction to Paul M. Angle’s ed. of Herndon’s Lincoln, xiv.

³³ Herndon’s Lincoln, I, 187.

³⁴ Herndon himself said simply that his father believed the college was too strongly permeated with the virus of Abolitionism, and forced his withdrawal. Ibid., I, 187. See also undated interview of Weik with Herndon, Memorandum Book II, Weik MSS.

³⁵ Sangamo Journal, June 12, 1840.

³⁶ Isaac Cook to Jacob Thompson, April 30, 1858, Records of Interior Department, National Archives; Illinois State Register, June 19, 1840.

³⁷ W. H. Herndon, Letters on Temperance, 23.

³⁸ Herndon to John E. Remsburg, September 10, 1887. I have been allowed to copy this important Herndon manuscript through the courtesy of its owner, Mr. Alfred W. Stern of Chicago.

³⁹ Herndon’s Lincoln, I, 188.

⁴⁰ James P. Langford v. W. H. Herndon, July 1841 term, Christian Co. Cir. Court. The legal documents are in the Herndon-Weik Coll.

⁴¹ Herndon to Massachusetts Historical Society, March 29, 1842, MS., Mass. Hist. Soc.

⁴² Herndon’s Lincoln, I, 188–189.

⁴³ Power, History of the Early Settlers, 484–485.

⁴⁴ Records of Marriages, Sangamon Co., 1835–1849, 105.

⁴⁵ Herndon to Weik, November 29, 1890, Herndon-Weik Coll.

⁴⁶ Herndon’s children by his first marriage were: Nathaniel J., born in 1841; Annie M., 1843; Beverly P., 1845; Lizzie R., 1849; Le[i]gh W., 1852; and Mary, 1856. W. H. Herndon’s family Bible, owned by Mrs. Earl Bice, Springfield.

⁴⁷ Statement of Mr. James S. Miles, Sr., to me, November 15, 1944.

⁴⁸ W. E. Barton, The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln, 365; Mrs. Mollie Herndon Ralston’s statement to me, August 16, 1944.

CHAPTER ii

A Laborious, Studious Young Man

I

SPRINGFIELD was a place to spur a man’s ambition. Here gathered the greatest men the Sucker State could offer—governors, legislators, lawyers, judges. A man got ideas. Herndon was not the kind to spend his life behind a counter doling out plowshares and vinegar. Besides, with a wife and a growing family he had to push & hustle along.¹

The lawyer ruled the roost in Illinois. There were land titles and charters and statutes to be drafted—and contested—the frontier was litigious. It was natural that Herndon should turn to the law as a profession, for he could study Blackstone and Chitty while he clerked in the store or at nights. There was no need for a college degree, since passing the bar examination meant generally an informal conversation with one of the older advocates in the community.

About 1841 Herndon determined to become an attorney. He looked for assistance to his former roommate in Speed’s store, Abraham Lincoln, who had become one of the most prominent of Springfield’s numerous lawyers. From pioneer beginnings in Kentucky and Indiana he had developed into a New Salem pilot-storekeeper-postmaster-surveyor-politician. All alone he had read law and in 1837 had moved to Springfield to become John Todd Stuart’s partner. After a few years the association was dissolved, and Lincoln joined with Stephen T. Logan to found what rapidly became the most active legal firm in the Illinois capital.

He was a likeable fellow, this Lincoln, full of dry wit and sidesplitting anecdote, yet patient, kindly, and understanding. When he first saw Lincoln piloting the Talisman Herndon had liked the man. They had come closer together in later years when Lincoln and Archer Herndon had campaigned for the legislature at the same time. But most of all Herndon had learned to know and love the gaunt six-footer during those years they had roomed together above Speed’s store. To Billy, Lincoln was a friend whose advice was well worth taking. Lincoln, genuinely attached to the younger man, suggested that he read law in the Logan & Lincoln office. The senior partner, Stephen T. Logan, was dour and Scotch, he was not lovable, but this little dried and shrivelled up man, cold—ungenerous—snappy—irritable, fighting like a game fowl,² knew his profession. Lincoln, on the other hand, was genial, easygoing, and tolerant, popular with juries. From these two masters Herndon could learn much.

For about three years³ Herndon read law at night or in odd moments, studied case after case, and listened attentively to court sessions. Since he had a wife to support, he had to act vigorously & energetically. Every time Mary Herndon had to buy thirteen yards of domestic or a pair of children’s shoes it might lead to a financial crisis in the family.⁴ Billy was, he recollected later, studious—too much so for . . . [his] own health—studied from 12 to 14 hours a day.⁵ Soon he had a working knowledge of legal procedure and could draw up the necessary papers for cases Logan and Lincoln were handling.⁶

Finally, on November 27, 1844, Herndon was given a certificate of good moral character by the Sangamon County Circuit Court, and on December 9 was admitted to the bar.⁷ It was about this time that Lincoln, his coattails flapping behind him, came dashing up the office stairs. Billy, he asked breathlessly, do you want to enter into partnership with me in the law business? Herndon was flustered but he managed to stammer: Mr. Lincoln this is something unexpected by me—it is an undeserved honor; and yet I say I will gladly & thankfully accept the kind and generous offer. Lincoln by-passed the speechmaking by remarking easily: Billy, I can trust you, if you can trust me, and, sensing the younger man’s almost hysterical gratitude, said nothing more until the partnership papers were drawn up.⁸

In later years considerable confusion arose over the exact date when the Lincoln & Herndon partnership began. It has been a widely accepted tradition that the Logan-Lincoln association was dissolved on September 20, 1843, and that the Lincoln & Herndon firm was formed on that same day, but there appears to be no factual basis for this story. To be sure, in his later years Herndon declared the partnership dated from 1843, but it is easy to understand how an error could be made by an aging man whose memory was at times very shaky. The most reliable evidence points toward a later year for the formation of the partnership. The Logan & Lincoln business card continued to appear in Springfield newspapers until early in 1845, while it was not until much later—1847—that the professional announcements listed Lincoln & Herndon. Certainly Logan and Lincoln were acting regularly as partners in suits commenced during 1844.⁹ In his earlier correspondence Herndon always referred to the firm of Lincoln & Herndon as having been formed in 1844, and this is confirmed by Lincoln’s statement that Herndon had been his partner from the autumn of 1844.¹⁰ Though Herndon was not admitted to the bar until December of that year, the partnership was very likely begun a few weeks before his license was granted.¹¹

II

For years Lincoln specialists have speculated why Lincoln chose Herndon for his new partner. Association with Logan had done much for Abraham Lincoln. He had learned much of both law and practice; he had an established reputation; he was a competent and a popular advocate. If partnership with Logan proved unsatisfactory—whether because of financial difficulties, because of latent political rivalries between the two, or because Logan wanted to take his son as a partner—surely Lincoln could have had his pick of Illinois lawyers for his new associate. Why did he not choose someone older and better known—John Todd Stuart, for example, or Orville H. Browning? Why pick young and inexperienced Herndon?

Many solutions have been hazarded: Lincoln took Herndon for a partner at Joshua F. Speed’s urging; because Lincoln was outraged at the way Archer Herndon was treating his oldest son; because Lincoln owed a political debt to Archer Herndon; because Billy Herndon came from such an influential family; because Herndon was poor and needed help; because Herndon could furnish money needed for the firm.¹² To read motives into a man’s mind after the passing of a century is a doubtful business. Perhaps Herndon’s answer is the best one. When asked what the motives were that actuated Lincoln in taking me into partnership, he replied frankly: I don’t know and no one else does.¹³

It is probably incorrect to think that Lincoln picked his partner out of pity for his straitened circumstances. Ambitious politically and hampered by debts incurred during his New Salem period, Lincoln was in no position to play the philanthropist. As a matter of fact, Herndon was doubtless right in recalling: I, according to the best of my recollection, was at that time, in 1844, the monied man of the firm.¹⁴ Nor is it likely that Lincoln would have selected a partner merely because friends urged it or because he liked Herndon’s father. Lincoln knew himself, he knew his previous partners, and he knew Herndon. He had observed this young man for years, first as an acquaintance, then as a roommate, and as a law student. Herndon was a promising young man. With his intimate knowledge of his partner’s character Lincoln could write in July 1848: You have been a laborious, studious young man. You are far better informed on almost all subjects than I have been. You cannot fail in any laudable object, unless you allow your mind to be improperly directed.¹⁵

Lincoln’s previous partners, John Todd Stuart and Stephen T. Logan, had both been older than he and better equipped with legal and worldly wisdom. He had learned much from them, but he had always been the junior partner of the firm, having the tedious duty of keeping files and records. Now he was starting out for himself and took Herndon in, supposing that Billy had system & would keep things in order even though he might not make much of a lawyer.¹⁶ Another advantage of having the young man in the office was that Herndon, unlike both Stuart and Logan, did not have political ambitions. Lincoln had learned that a law office could not be run when all the members wanted to be Congressmen.¹⁷

Still, politics must have been a factor in making Lincoln’s decision. His trouble was that he was married. The Whig party in central Illinois was split into two distinct factions. On the one hand were the eminently respectable Stuarts, Todds, and Edwardses, few in number but rich in family traditions of political leadership. But the numerical strength of the Whig party came from the shrewd, wild boys about town.¹⁸ This younger generation of Whigs, self made men—men who had power, scorned the older leadership and wanted a hand in shaping party policy.¹⁹ Lincoln intended to work through the Whig party. He had to have the support of both factions. For many years his hardscrabble beginnings had identified him with the young Whig element, but in 1842 Lincoln had married the elegant Mary Todd, and it was whispered that he too had become the representative of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.²⁰ Though Lincoln went out of his way to assure friends that marriage into the exclusive Todd-Edwards clan had not changed him, insurgents in Springfield began to desert him in favor of Edward D. Baker, whom they supported in the congressional race of 1844.

Billy Herndon had dabbled in every campaign since he was old enough to vote. Early he had affiliated himself with the Whig party and had frequently spoken for Lincoln. Without political ambition for himself, he carried much weight with the young Whigs, who knew that he was sincere and that he stood with them against conservative leadership.²¹ It was partly shrewd politics, therefore, that Lincoln exhibited in selecting a new partner. He was giving assurance to the young men that he had not deserted them.

III

Whatever the reasons for its formation, the partnership was a success. From its first appearance in 1847 until long after Lincoln’s election to the presidency, Springfield newspapers carried the professional card:²²

Abraham Lincoln.                                                            Wm. H. Herndon.

LINCOLN & HERNDON, Counsellors and Attorneys at law, will practice in the courts of law and Chancery in this State.

For an office Lincoln and Herndon rented a room in the new Tinsley Building on the south side of Springfield’s public square. It was a wretchedly bare spot in the first year of the partnership. The furniture, somewhat dilapidated, consisted of one small desk and a table, a sofa or lounge with a raised head at one end, and a half-dozen plain wooden chairs. The floor was never scrubbed. . . . Over the desk . . . was the office bookcase holding a set of Blackstone, Kent’s Commentaries, Chitty’s Pleadings, and a few other books.²³ Though Lincoln was indifferent to his physical surroundings, Herndon soon took the lead in securing adequate office equipment, buying desks, a table, and books at a cost of $168.65, half of which was charged to his partner.²⁴ When Lincoln returned from Congress in 1849, the office was moved to the northwest corner of the public square, where it remained until Lincoln left Springfield.

At the outset it was not an equal partnership. Older by nine years in time and a generation in discretion, Lincoln naturally handled most of the cases, wrote the important papers, and pleaded the suits in court. Herndon, still the student and the learner, performed routine jobs; he answered inquiries as to Lincoln’s whereabouts or " ‘toated books’ & ‘hunted up authorities’ " for the senior partner’s use.²⁵ It has become a tradition that Lincoln and Herndon so trusted each other that they never kept accounts but divided fees equally as they went along. As a matter of fact, there were books kept—after a fashion—and this was part of Herndon’s work. During the first years of the association Billy kept careful track of the money he spent for office furnishings and even listed such items as postage from the time you went to Alton to the present & cash loaned wife $1.37 in a detailed statement of his account with Lincoln. For the law practice itself a daybook was kept, listing the cases the partners argued and the fees charged.²⁶ As the men grew into their partnership, they came to depend less and less on even such loose accounting methods.

Business began slowly for the new firm. Not until March 1845 was their first case in the Sangamon County Circuit Court heard,²⁷ and the partners’ initial suit in neighboring Menard County was called for the May term of the same year.²⁸ Lincoln’s name soon drew clients, and before long the partners had as much business as they could well manage. During the first twelve months of the partnership the firm had only fourteen cases in the circuit court at Springfield; the following year more than twice as many were handled. As early as November 1845 Lincoln and Herndon were running legal affairs for firms as far distant as Peoria, while the following spring Herndon attended to five Lincoln & Herndon cases before the Christian County Circuit Court.²⁹

The Lincoln & Herndon daybook for 1847 lists over one hundred cases handled before Lincoln left for Washington in October. In three instances a fee of fifty dollars was charged, and one appearance before the Illinois Supreme Court brought one hundred dollars. But these were exceptions. Pleading ordinary suits before the justice of the peace brought five dollars, while ten to twenty-five dollars was the usual fee for work in the circuit courts.³⁰ Lincoln’s services were frequently solicited to aid other lawyers during these first few years, and in addition he handled many cases by himself. Herndon, still a novice, had few cases alone and rarely appeared with anyone but his partner. But he was learning, and soon he thought himself a better lawyer and speaker than Lincoln. And, added a contemporary: In some views he was.³¹

IV

Just as the firm was getting established, Lincoln was elected to the House of Representatives. Herndon had vocally championed his partner’s nomination by the Whigs and in May 1846 had served as secretary of the district convention which selected the candidate.³² The Democratic nominee, the venerable Methodist circuit-rider, Peter Cartwright, was defeated, and Lincoln became the sole Whig representative from Illinois. When the Lincolns left Springfield in October 1847 for a stay in Kentucky before going to Washington, Herndon took over as the active member of the legal firm and as Lincoln’s political ears in the Illinois capital.

It was no small order for a young man. Many of the clients who had depended on the experience of the older partner now turned to other lawyers for advice. Some writers have asserted that Herndon was able to maintain only a nominal practice while Lincoln was in Congress and have noted that during his partner’s absence Herndon had only two cases in