Biographies & Memoirs

CAST OF CHARACTERS

EDWARD DICKINSON BAKER (1811-61) A close friend, Baker served with Lincoln in the Illinois legislature. Lincoln named his second son, Edward, after Baker. Elected U.S. senator from Oregon, he raised the California Regiment at the outbreak of the Civil War.

EDWARD BATES (1793-1869) Missouri lawyer and conservative Whig politician who took his time in entering the Republican Party. Vied with Lincoln for the Republican nomination in 1860 and then served as attorney general during the Civil War.

MONTGOMERY BLAIR (1813-83) Member of a distinguished Democratic family who became a Republican over the slavery issue. Served as counsel for Dred Scott. Controversial postmaster general in Lincoln’s cabinet.

NOAH BROOKS (1830-1903) Correspondent for the Sacramento Daily Union who became a close friend of both Abraham and Mary Lincoln. He reported on life inside Lincoln’s White House, and was slated to become Lincoln’s secretary in his second term.

ORVILLE HICKMAN BROWNING (1806-81) Conservative Illinois Republican who supported Edward Bates at the Republican convention. After the death of Stephen Douglas in 1861, Browning was appointed to complete his term. His diary is a source of information on Lincoln.

AMBROSE EVERETT BURNSIDE (1824-1881) A likeable and self-effacing West Pointer, Burnside and Lincoln struggled to find the right strategy for the Army of the Potomac’s advance south and the curtailment of the Copperhead movement in the Midwest.

SIMON CAMERON (1799-1889) As a senator from Pennsylvania, he became a candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 1860. With some misgivings, Lincoln appointed him secretary of war in his cabinet.

PETER CARTWRIGHT (1785-1872) A Methodist circuit-riding evangelist who, as the Democratic candidate, ran against Lincoln in the 1846 congressional election.

SALMON P. CHASE (1808-73) Ohio senator and governor, and an anti-slavery leader in politics, Chase became a candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 1860. Chase served as secretary of the treasury in Lincoln’s cabinet. He tried to outflank Lincoln for the Republican nomination in 1864. Despite all their differences, Lincoln appointed Chase chief justice of the United States.

HENRY CLAY (1777–1852) Lincoln admired Clay, a fellow Kentuckian, who three times ran unsuccessfully for president. He advocated Clay’s “American System” of strong government support for economic growth. Lincoln called Clay his “beau ideal of a statesman.”

JAMES C. CONKLING (1816-99) Lincoln’s neighbor and fellow lawyer; when Lincoln decided he could not return to speak to a Union rally in Springfield in September 1863, he sent Conkling his speech to read at the meeting.

DAVID DAVIS (1815-86) Illinois lawyer and judge and a close friend of Lincoln when they traveled together across the Eighth Judicial Circuit in the 1850s. He served as Lincoln’s campaign manager at the Republican convention in Chicago in 1860.

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS (1813-61) Illinois Democratic rival, sponsored the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 whose language about the extension of slavery into the territories helped prompt Lincoln’s return to politics. Their debates in 1858 brought Lincoln national attention even though he lost to Douglas in a contest for the Senate. Douglas ran against Lincoln in the presidential contest of 1860.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS (1818-95) Editor and abolitionist, Douglass watched Lincoln from a distance starting in 1858, and then met him twice at the White House during the Civil War. A former slave, Douglass formed a distinctive relationship with Lincoln, culminating in Douglass’s presence at Lincoln’s second inauguration.

JOHN C. FRÉMONT (1813-90) The first Republican candidate for president, he lost to James Buchanan in 1856. Lincoln appointed him commander of the Department of the West in July 1861, but the president, Frémont, and Frémont’s wife, Jessie, soon differed over government policy, including slavery.

ULYSSES S. GRANT (1822-85) Having failed in several civilian jobs in the 1850s, Grant rose through the Union army to become general in chief by the end of the Civil War. As Lincoln went through general after general in the first years of the war, Grant gained the president’s admiration, which was returned in kind.

HORACE GREELEY (1811-72) Founding editor of the New York Tribune and powerful opinion maker, Greeley changed his opinion of Lincoln often. Lincoln’s reply to Greeley’s plea for him to move faster on emancipation marked the beginning of a series of public letters to present his views to a wider public.

PHINEAS DENSMORE GURLEY (1816-68) Lincoln appreciated the sermons of this learned minister of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. Lincoln met Gurley in the years he was rethinking the meaning of faith and God’s activity in history.

JOHN J. HARDIN (1810-47) A friend, lawyer, and Whig politician from Jacksonville, Illinois, Hardin opposed Lincoln on internal improvements in the Illinois legislature and defeated him for the Whig nomination for Congress in 1843.

JOHN HAY (1838-1905) Young John Hay, a graduate of Brown, served as one of Lincoln’s secretaries. With a literary flair, he and Lincoln read to each other. Hay’s diary is one of the most insightful guides to the inner history of the Lincoln administration.

WILLIAM H. HERNDON (1818-91) Lincoln’s surprise choice as law partner in 1844. Herndon, so unlike his senior partner in temperament and more radical in his political views, actively supported Lincoln’s rise in Illinois politics.

JOSEPH HOOKER (1814-1879) He earned the nickname “Fighting Joe” for his courage under fire in the Virginia Peninsula campaign in the spring of 1862. Lincoln appointed him commander of the army of the Potomac in January 1863, and watched, with both admiration and alarm, Hooker’s military leadership unfold at a critical time in the war.

NORMAN B. JUDD (1815-78) As an anti-Nebraska Democrat, he voted against Lincoln in the legislative vote for the Senate in 1855. Judd became a prominent Republican, chaired the state committee, and became a voice for Lincoln in northern Illinois and at the Republican convention in Chicago in 1860.

GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN (1826-85) Lincoln named McClellan, who received the nickname “Young Napoleon,” commander of the Army of the Potomac in July 1861, and then general in chief of the Union army. Excellent at organizing and preparing his men to fight, he nonetheless shrank from fighting, often exaggerating the strength of enemy forces.

JOHN G. NICOLAY (1832-1901) Lincoln’s loyal secretary, he admired the president in all ways. His notes about life in the White House would become source material for a biography of Lincoln he would write with John Hay.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD (1801-72) Lincoln’s chief opponent for the Republican nomination for president in 1860; Lincoln asked him to become secretary of state. Disliked and criticized by many, Seward would become Lincoln’s best friend in his cabinet.

WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN (1820-1891) After a struggling start at West Point, in business, and in the first years of the Civil War, Sherman rose to become a much-loved and criticized Union general who won victories at Atlanta and across the South in his controversial march to the sea.

JOSHUA F. SPEED (1814-82) A fellow Kentuckian, Speed became Lincoln’s only truly close friend. They met when Lincoln moved to Springfield in 1837 and remained friends even when Speed moved back to Kentucky in 1841.

EDWIN M. STANTON (1814-69) A renowned lawyer, Stanton first met Lincoln in the “Reaper Case” in Cincinnati in 1855. Lincoln invited Stanton, a Democrat, to become his second secretary of war in January 1862.

CHARLES SUMNER (1811-74) Antislavery Republican senator from Massachusetts. Early in the war he believed Lincoln moved too slowly in his aid for African-Americans. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he proved enormously helpful to Lincoln.

LEONARD SWETT (1825-89) A lawyer who met Lincoln in 1849 on the Eighth Judicial Circuit, he told Lincoln in 1854, “Use me in any way you may think you can.” Swett supported all of Lincoln’s subsequent political campaigns and traveled to the White House from Illinois because Lincoln so valued his counsel.

LYMAN TRUMBULL (1813-96) A lawyer and Illinois Democrat, he ran against Lincoln for the 1855 Illinois Senate seat. He supported the founding of the Republican Party in Illinois in 1856 and thereafter became a critical ally of Lincoln.

ELIHU B. WASHBURNE (1816-1887) An antislavery Republican congress man from northern Illinois, he supported Lincoln in his 1855 and 1858 Senate races. Washburne became Lincoln’s eyes and ears in Washington during the long secession winter before his inauguration in March 1861.

GIDEON WELLES (1802-78) As secretary of the navy in Lincoln’s cabinet, he became one of the president’s most sympathetic supporters. His diary is an invaluable source for understanding the Lincoln presidency.

The best-known sculpture of Abraham Lincoln is in the templed space of the Lincoln Memorial. Daniel C. French sculpted this working model in 1916. His final rendering of the huge statue was dedicated in 1922.

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