An "out-of-character" moment for Lincoln?

[Liz Rosenthal]

I'm not sure what I think about the story of the abused wife, although I recall Richard N. Current writing in The Lincoln Nobody Knows that he was a little disturbed by the "officiousness" of Lincoln's alleged conduct.

However, I'm very skeptical of the dog/raccoon story. I first read it in Herndon's Lincoln, and Michael Burlingame relies on it to contend that Lincoln killed his father's dog as some sort of retribution.

Lincoln was of his time, but that only went so far. Let's not forget that, as a youth, he wrote an essay against animal abuse. He was also known, as a boy, for admonishing his companions not to hurt turtles and arguing that the ant's life is as precious to itself as is a person's life to the person. Also, there are loads of stories about Lincoln's love for animals, both wild and domesticated, and his acts of kindness toward them.

Now it's possible that the claimed incident with the raccoon and the dog occurred before Lincoln had his let's-be-kind-to-animals epiphany. But, if that's so, then I still can't imagine him telling a story on himself (because Herndon remembered this as a story told by Lincoln) in which he participated in two cruel acts - killing a raccoon for nothing and then causing the death of a dog by dressing it up in the raccoon's skin so that it was attractive to predators - when Lincoln, at least as an older boy and man, had very strong feelings against cruelty. If I were him, I'd be ashamed to tell a story in any kind of jovial way that made light of my own cruelty when the cruelty is something I now abhor.