These works represent the first stage of the attempt to make books out of the life of Abraham Lincoln. The outline of the life itself is meager in all of them, and they are well padded with campaign speeches; and the last of them, with full and interesting details of the funeral services of Lincoln, the death of Booth, and other matter lifted from the newspapers of the period.
The second epoch began with the publication of the Life of Abraham Lincoln by John G. Holland in 1865. It was by all odds the best of the books that undertook within a few years after his death to tell the story of the life of Lincoln, with some estimate of his place in history. It is also the book which began the controversy concerning Lincoln's religion.
The third period was introduced by the biography of Abraham Lincoln by Ward Hill Lamon, which was issued in 1872. It was based upon manuscripts that had been collected by William H. Herndon, who was supposed to have had a considerable share in the work of its preparation. Herndon emphatically denied writing any part of it, and said in a letter to Mr. Horace White that it was written for Lamon by Chauncey F. Black, son of J. S. Black, a member of Buchanan's cabinet and a political enemy of Lincoln (Newton: Lincoln and Herndon, p. 307). This valuable but unwisely written book, containing many things offensive to good taste, occasioned much controversy for its stark realism and what seemed to many of Lincoln's friends misrepresentations. Some of the intimate friends of Lincoln are alleged to have bought a considerable part of the edition and destroyed the books, but copies are in the principal libraries and in the best private collections.
Unterrified by the reception which had been accorded Lamon's work, William H. Herndon, for twenty years Lincoln's law partner, assisted by Jesse W. Weik, published in 1889 a Life of Lincoln, in three volumes.[1] The storm of denunciation that beat upon Herndon's head was fierce and long. The greater part of the edition disappeared. Libraries that contain it keep it under lock and key, and the prices bid for it at occasional book auctions contrast strikingly with those for which it went begging immediately after it was issued. Four years later, assisted by Mr. Horace White, Mr. Herndon reissued the book in two volumes, with those passages elided which had given greatest offense.
These two biographies mark the rise and high-water mark of the demand for "the real Lincoln"; and nobody can deny that they were quite sufficiently realistic.
The next stage in the Lincoln biography was the ten-volume Life of Lincoln by his former secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay. It was issued in 1890, and called itself "a history." It is a history rather than a biography; the biographical material in it was condensed into a single volume by Mr. Nicolay in 1904. This work is monumental, and may be said to attempt the giving of materials for the complete Lincoln rather than to be in itself an effort within the proper limits of biography.
The two-volume biography by John T. Morse, Jr., issued in 1893, was the first constructive piece of work in this field after the Nicolay and Hay material had become available; and it remains in some respects the best short Life of Abraham Lincoln; though the author's New England viewpoint militates against his correct appraisal of many features of the life of Lincoln.
The next period may be said to be the period of the magazine Lincoln, and to be represented at its best by the work of Ida M. Tarbell, which first appeared in McClure's Magazine, beginning in 1895, and was subsequently issued in book form in several editions beginning in 1900. This was a pictorial biography, with much new illustrative and documentary material, and is of permanent value.