Mary was a leaker

[L Verge]

Keeping history attuned to modern times, The Washington Post is carrying this little tidbit concerning leaks from the Lincoln White House...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retr...-his-wife/

[RJNorton]

Ed Steers does a good job of debunking the story about Lincoln appearing before the committee in his Lincoln Legends: Myths, Hoaxes, and Confabulations Associated with Our Greatest President.

[Thomas Kearney]

Thanks for sharing!

[Steve]

(08-02-2017 09:22 AM)L Verge Wrote:  Keeping history attuned to modern times, The Washington Post is carrying this little tidbit concerning leaks from the Lincoln White House...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retr...-his-wife/

"it’s unclear if he was, ahem, more than a social guide"?

[Gene C]

I saw that comment also, the statement is not original to the writer of this article.
Just repeating gossip, which for some reporters, past and present, substitutes for news.

Shoot first, ask questions later.

[kerry]

A recent article (also drawing parallels to Trump admin leaks) suggested Wykoff gave her money in exchange for the message (I don't think it gave a source). I think that, assuming she had a role in the leak, it was more likely done out of an effort to impress/discuss it with someone she thought was a trustworthy friend. If she could be bribed that easily, yikes. The reports at the time were that she let him read it and then took it back, not realizing he'd copied it while sitting in another room, as his whole job was to be a 'spy' for the newspaper.

[DannyW]

(08-02-2017 09:22 AM)L Verge Wrote:  Keeping history attuned to modern times, The Washington Post is carrying this little tidbit concerning leaks from the Lincoln White House...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retr...-his-wife/

Thanks for the article Laurie! At the end of the article were more interesting articles!
Also, didn't Mary Todd have kin that fought for the Confederacy?

[Donna McCreary]

(10-10-2017 10:48 PM)DannyW Wrote:  

(08-02-2017 09:22 AM)L Verge Wrote:  Keeping history attuned to modern times, The Washington Post is carrying this little tidbit concerning leaks from the Lincoln White House...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retr...-his-wife/

Thanks for the article Laurie! At the end of the article were more interesting articles!
Also, didn't Mary Todd have kin that fought for the Confederacy?

Mary had kin who fought for the Confederacy, and she had kin who fought for the Union. Her family, like so many families, was truly divided.

[David Lockmiller]

This thread aroused in me an object to determine the validity of a story regarding Lincoln and the loyalty to the Union by Mary Lincoln that I was fond of reading in Emanuel Hertz’s book “Lincoln Talks.” Of course, I could not find it to read tonight. But nevertheless, I thought that there might be many persons here interested in the discussion on this specific topic and related topics by Eastern Carolina University Professor of History Gerald Prokopowicz (especially Civil War history, in his book “Did Lincoln Own Slaves?: And Other Frequently Asked Questions about Abraham Lincoln” at pages 118-119.)

Did Lincoln appear before a Congressional committee to defend his wife’s loyalty to the Union?

No, but there’s a story out there that he did.

It has the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, which regularly met in secret to oversee Lincoln’s actions, questioning his wife’s patriotism. After all, the committee thinks, Mary Todd Lincoln of the slave state of Kentucky has a brother and three half-brothers serving in Southern armies. In 1863, she allowed her half-sister Emilie Todd Helm to stay at the White House after Emilie’s husband, Brigadier General Benjamin Hardin Helm, was killed at Chickamauga—fighting for the South. But before the committee can even begin calling witnesses to start the inquisition, the president arrives unexpectedly, stands before them with hat in hand, declares his unequivocal faith in Mary’s loyalty, and leaves.

In the story, this dramatic testimony puts the kibosh on any further Congressional speculation about Mrs. Lincoln. In real life, it never happened. No president before Gerald Ford ever appeared formally in front of a Congressional committee. The constitutional separation of powers generally makes it unthinkable that a president would deign to testify before Congress. Only under the extraordinary circumstance of President Ford’s pardon of former president Richard Nixon did a sitting president agree to such a procedure.

What gives this Lincoln legend particular interest is that historians have had the opportunity to see it grow before their eyes, like geologists studying the birth of a volcanic island. It may have begun as a confused version of Lincoln’s meetings with Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee in 1862 over suspicions that Mary Lincoln was involved in leaking the president’s 1861 Annual Message to Congress to the New York Herald; these meetings were misreported in the New York Tribune as though Lincoln had formally testified before the committee. Whatever the source, the story of Lincoln suddenly showing up before the Committee on the Conduct of the War first appeared in a newspaper article published around 1905, then as a pamphlet in 1916, as part of a book in 1931, and in Carl Sandburg’s famous 1939 biography (The War Years, vol. 2, page 200, published in 1939). Many people read it there, but it still lay beneath the surface of public consciousness. Finally, in 1973, it erupted. During the Watergate hearings, Senator Lowell Weicker read Sandburg’s account aloud in an effort to persuade Richard Nixon to appear before Congress voluntarily and explain himself. Now everyone “knew” that Lincoln had gone hat in hand to stand in front of Congress when the good of the country required it. Although Lincoln experts immediately pointed out that there was no evidence to support the story, the cat was out of the bag, and the legend continues to circulate today.

Since the last decade of the twentieth century, the Internet has made it possible for conscientious writers to check the validity of Lincoln stories like this one before incorporating them into speeches, books, or other publications. It has also made it possible for sloppy or malicious writers to create and spread new Lincoln legends much faster than ever before. In December 2003, for example, a magazine columnist who thought anti-war members of Congress should be “exiled, arrested, or hanged” attributed those words (wrongly) to Abraham Lincoln. The new quote immediately began circulating below the scholarly radar, appearing on Web sites some 18,000 times over the next three years, until it finally burst into the view of the mainstream when a Representative from Alaska read it on the floor of Congress. Retractions and corrections followed, but the damage was done, and the quote has become part of the ever-increasing stock of things that Lincoln didn’t really say.

[RJNorton]

David, you wrote an excellent summary of a story that has proved to be apocryphal. Kudos!

Regarding her loyalty, Mary Lincoln withstood a lot of strange rumors - I once read that at least one newspaper wrote that Confederate agents came by ladder to her bedroom window at night where she passed military secrets to them!

[Susan Higginbotham]

The story of Lincoln's intervention dates back at least to 1886, though, when Ben Perley Poore recounted it in his memoirs.

"The House accordingly directed the Sergeant-at-Arms to hold Wikoff in close custody, and he
was locked up in a room hastily furnished for his accommodation. It was generally believed that Mrs,
Lincoln had permitted Wikoff to copy those portions of the message that he had published, and this opinion was confirmed when General Sickles appeared as his counsel. The General vibrated between Wikoff 's place of imprisonment, the White House, and the residence of Mrs. Lincoln's gardener, named Watt. The Committee finally summoned the General before them, and put some home questions to him. He replied sharply, and for a few minutes a war of words raged. He narrowly escaped Wikoff's fate, but finally, after consulting numerous books of evidence, the Committee concluded not to go to extremities. While the examination was pending, the Sergeant-at-Arms appeared with Watt. He testified that he saw the message in the library, and, being of a literary turn of mind, perused it ; that, however, he did not make a copy, but, having a tenacious memory, carried portions of it in his mind, and the next day repeated them word for word to Wikoff. Meanwhile, Mr. Lincoln had visited the Capitol and urged the Republicans on the Committee to spare him disgrace, so Watt's improbable story was received and Wikoff was liberated."

See vol. 2, pp. 142-43.

https://archive.org/stream/perleysremini...2/mode/2up

I do think it's possible that Lincoln privately spoke with the Republicans on the committee, as this account suggests.

[David Lockmiller]

(10-12-2017 04:12 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  David, you wrote an excellent summary of a story that has proved to be apocryphal. Kudos!

Regarding her loyalty, Mary Lincoln withstood a lot of strange rumors - I once read that at least one newspaper wrote that Confederate agents came by ladder to her bedroom window at night where she passed military secrets to them!

Roger, I thought that the most fascinating part of Professor Prokopowicz's work were the references that he made to the the misuse of fictitious Lincoln quotes as a justifiable means to an allegedly "legitimate" end by two members of Congress on separate occasions.

1. During the Watergate hearings, Senator Lowell Weicker read Sandburg’s account aloud in an effort to persuade Richard Nixon to appear before Congress voluntarily and explain himself.
2. In December 2003, a magazine columnist who thought anti-war members of Congress should be “exiled, arrested, or hanged” attributed those words (wrongly) to Abraham Lincoln. . . . It burst into the view of the mainstream when a Representative from Alaska read it on the floor of Congress.
   

I might also add as a cause for concern the following statement made by Professor Prokopowicz:

"[T]he Internet has made it possible for conscientious writers to check the validity of Lincoln stories like this one before incorporating them into speeches, books, or other publications. It has also made it possible for [] malicious writers to create and spread new Lincoln legends much faster than ever before."

Roger, this makes your good work much more difficult.

[RJNorton]

As recently as 2008 this apocryphal story continues to be seen in books. This is from Daniel Epstein's The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The guard at the door admitted the president, but was too tongue-tied to announce him. This was unprecedented. A senator later told the postmaster-general: "There at the foot of the table, standing solitary, his hat in his hand, his form towering above the committee members, Abraham Lincoln stood. Had he come by some incantation, thus of a sudden appearing before us unannounced, we could not have been more astounded. The pathos written upon his face, the almost inhuman sadness in his eyes...and above all an indescribable sense of his complete isolation - the sad solitude which is inherent in all true grandeur of character and intellect - all this revealed Lincoln to me."

No one had any idea what to say, so they sat still and silent. The committee had not summoned him, and they did not know he was aware they were about to "investigate the reports, which, if true, fastened treason upon his family in the White House." When the President at last broke the silence, he spoke in the most sorrowful tone: “I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, appear of my own volition before this committee of the Senate to say that I, of my own knowledge, know that it is untrue that any of my family hold treasonable communication with the enemy.”

Again a heavy silence descended upon the room as Lincoln looked into the eyes of the men around the table. Then he turned and was gone "as silently and solitary as he came." So without any formal discussion, the committees in the Senate and the House, Ben Wade and John Hickman, "dropped all consideration of the rumors that the wife of the President was betraying the Union...We were so greatly affected that the committee adjourned for the day."

[David Lockmiller]

(10-13-2017 04:54 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  As recently as 2008 this apocryphal story continues to be seen in books. This is from Daniel Epstein's The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage.

“I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, appear of my own volition before this committee of the Senate to say that I, of my own knowledge, know that it is untrue that any of my family hold treasonable communication with the enemy.”

I found the variation on this story last night in Hertz's book "Lincoln Talks" at pages 283-84. The same quoted words are used in this version, but are prefaced as follows:

"At last Lincoln spoke, slowly, with infinite sorrow in his tone"

And the final paragraph reads as follows:

"Having said that, Lincoln went away as silently and solitary as he came. We sat for some moments speechless. Then by tacit agreement, no word being spoken, the committee dropped all consideration of the rumors that the wife of the President was betraying the Union. We had seen Abraham Lincoln in the solemn and isolated majesty of his real nature. We were so greatly affected that the committee adjourned sine die."

the attribution made to this story: --Gen. Thomas L. James; Weik's scrap book

[David Lockmiller]

(08-02-2017 09:52 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Ed Steers does a good job of debunking the story about Lincoln appearing before the committee in his Lincoln Legends: Myths, Hoaxes, and Confabulations Associated with Our Greatest President.

Roger, I might respectfully point out that Ed Steers appears to have had rather mixed opinions regarding the story whether Lincoln did appear before the Committee on the Conduct of the War regarding Mary's loyalty to the Union cause.

He wrote: Margaret Leech, whose book Reveille in Washington, 1860-1865 remains among the essential works required for understanding Civil War Washington, wrote: "Reports of Mary Lincoln's treason were persistent enough to cause Senate members of the Committee on the Conduct of the War to gather in secret session to consider them."

Mr. Steers first made the observation: "It seems reasonable to assume that Edwards, Sandburg, Leech, believed the story to be true."

But, shortly thereafter, Mr. Steers concluded: "Like so many myths, Lincoln's appearance before the Joint Committee cannot be traced to its origin. . . . As of this writing, however, the myth remains an orphan, but an interesting one. [I personally do not believe that any "Lincoln myths" are interesting.] Lincoln never appeared before the committee."

I am of the opinion that Lincoln would have done anything in his power to negate a Congressional committee conclusion that the wife of the President of the United States was aiding and abetting the enemy. With all of the ongoing Union military reversals at the time, such a Congressional statement would have both divisive and devastating to public morale.

I believe that in this instance that my standard posting signature should apply.