Preponderance of the Evidence in a Civil Trial

[David Lockmiller]

Regarding the importance of Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in Abraham Lincoln’s life, two quite similar versions of the direct conversation that Herndon had with Lincoln on this topic have already been posted on this thread. I thought the addition of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s research and opinion on this topic, and her related insights, in the book “Team of Rivals” at pages 47-49, would be a fitting and important post to make at this time. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s words read as follows.

The traces of Nancy Lincoln in history are few and fragmentary. A childhood friend and neighbor of Lincoln’s, Nathaniel Grigsby, reported that Mrs. Lincoln, “was a woman Know(n) for the Extraordinary Strength of her mind among the family and all who knew her: she was superior to her husband in Every way. She was a brilliant woman.” Nancy’s first cousin Dennis Hanks, a childhood friend of Abraham’s, recalled that Mrs. Lincoln “read the good Bible to [Abe] – taught him to read and to spell – taught him sweetness & benevolence as well.” She was described as “beyond all doubt an intellectual woman”; said to possess “Remarkable” perception; to be “very smart” and “naturally Strong minded.”

In the early autumn of 1818, when Abraham was nine, Nancy Lincoln contracted what was known as “milk sickness” – a fatal ailment whose victims suffered dizziness, nausea, and an irregular heartbeat before slipping into a coma. The disease first struck Thomas and Elizabeth Sparrow, Nancy Lincoln’s aunt and uncle, who had joined the Lincolns in Indiana the previous winter. The Sparrows had parented Nancy since she was a child and served as grandparents to young Lincoln. The deadly illness took the lives of the Sparrows in rapid succession, and then, before a fortnight had passed, Lincoln’s mother became gravely ill. “I am going away from you, Abraham,” she reportedly told her young son shortly before she died, “and I shall not return.”

[I interject to quote from the televised statement made by Queen Elizabeth yesterday to her people regarding the coronavirus: “I hope in the years to come, everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge.” In her time, Nancy Hanks Lincoln should take pride in how she responded to her situation.]

In an era when men were fortunate to reach forty-five, and a staggering number of women died in childbirth, the death of a parent was commonplace.

The loss of Lincoln’s mother had a uniquely shattering impact on his family’s tenuous stability. In the months following her death, his father journeyed from Indiana to Kentucky to bring back a new wife, abandoning his two children to a place Lincoln later described as “a wild region,” where “the panther’s scream, filled the night with fear and bears preyed on the swine.” While Thomas was away, Lincoln’s twelve-year-old sister, Sarah, did the cooking and tried to care for both her brother and her mother’s cousin Dennis Hanks. Sarah Lincoln was much like her brother, a “quick minded woman” with a “good humored laugh” who could put anyone at ease. But the lonely months of living without adult supervision must have been difficult. When Sarah Bush Johnston, Lincoln’s new stepmother, returned with Thomas, she found the abandoned children living like animals, “wild – ragged and dirty.” Only after they were soaped, washed, and dressed did they seem to her “more human.”

Within a decade, Lincoln would suffer another shattering loss when his sister Sarah died giving birth. A relative recalled that when Lincoln was told of the death, he “sat down on a log and hid his face in his hands while the tears rolled down through this long bony fingers. Those present turned away in pity and left him to his grief.” He had lost the two women he had loved. “From then on,” a neighbor said, “he was alone in the world you might say.”

Years later, Lincoln wrote a letter of condolence to Fanny McCullough, a young girl who had lost her father in the Civil War. “It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it.“

Lincoln’s early intimacy with tragic loss reinforced a melancholy temperament. Yet his familiarity with pain and personal disappointment imbued him with a strength and understanding of human frailty. Moreover, Lincoln possessed a life-affirming humor and profound resilience that lightened his despair and fortified his will.