Your guess: "angels" or "ages?"

[RJNorton]

Thanks for posting that link to the article, Linda. After reading Adam Gopnik's article I decided to check the article I had linked to last summer and discovered the link is broken. But I found the article in the Internet Archive here. As Richard Wightman Fox writes, "Unless new evidence comes to light, we’ll never be sure what, if anything, Stanton said when Lincoln died."

Most sources I have seen of Tanner's recollections say "ages" not "angels." Adam Gopnik uses "angels" in his article, but the actual text of the article Tanner wrote for National Republic says "ages." I posted part of Tanner's article in post #28.

So there is confusion here. It would appear Gopnik made the same mistake the Kunhardts did, or maybe he used "Twenty days" as his source.

Quoting from the article whose link I just posted:

"The Abraham Lincoln Presidential library owns a signed copy of Tanner’s original six-page manuscript of “The Passing of Lincoln,” as well as a copy of the pamphlet edition published by the Government Printing Office in 1926 (after it had appeared in the Congressional Record). Both copies, and the Congressional Record, give “ages,” not “angels.” It is hard to believe the Kunhardts could have miscopied such a crucial word in Tanner’s original text. It seems more likely they were working from an unidentified newspaper clipping that had already transposed Tanner’s “ages” into “angels.”

Like everyone else, I do not know what Stanton said, but my personal opinion is "ages." As the article says, "Ages” certainly rests on dubious foundations, but at least John Hay and James Tanner, who both vouched for it eventually, had been present at Lincoln’s deathbed. As far as we know, no deathbed mourners or observers ever vouched for “angels.”

Therefore, based on the evidence available, I agree with Fox when he writes, "That makes the case for “ages,” weak as it may be, much stronger than the case for “angels.”

I am not sure why Fox does not mention that a third earwitness, Dr. Taft, also reported it as "ages."