Springfield Tour

[RJNorton]

Excellent post, Rob. Many thanks for looking into this and clarifying things.

Here's what Benjamin P. Thomas wrote about Rankin in Portrait for Posterity:

"Henry B. Rankin had been an office-boy in the Lincoln-Herndon office and was author of Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln and Intimate Character Sketches of Abraham Lincoln. Strongly romantic in point of view and hostile to Herndon, he was instrumental in spreading the idea that Herndon was a drunkard and drug addict. Dec. 6, 1916, he wrote to Lord Charnwood: "I would not consent to tell all the story for history, about his shadowy decadence and incapacity for serious historical work while preparing with and for others the manuscripts for the 'Lives of Lincoln' with which his name was associated. His brain all through those lamentable years had been inflamed by alcoholic stimulants and his imagination distorted and made unreliable by his habitual use of opium." In a letter to F. W. Ruckstuhl, editor of Art World, Rankin referred to Herndon's "later and sad years that were so clouded with alcohol and morphine." Actually, Herndon had given up drinking in his later years and there is no reason to believe he ever took drugs."