Herndon on Lincoln: Letters

[Steve]

Rob,
Thanks for sharing the Wilson article. I definitely concur with Wilson that Herndon tried to give a factual accounts, as he understood it, of Lincoln's life. I do think that each Herndon-Weik related anecdote/story has to be individually checked for its reliability based on each source, how it was transmitted to us and how might errors have crept in to it's transmission to Herndon and through him, us. I own a copy of Wilson's book Herndon's Informants because it's usually so helpful in doing that.

For instance, I agree with the argument made by Wilson that Lincoln was in fact a "defaulting bridegroom" on their first engagement because it was Mary's sister, Elizabeth, who brings it up, using the words "Every thing was ready & prepared for the marriage - Even to the supper &c". Surely, Elizabeth would've been an eyewitness to this and I can't understand why some scholars, like the Randalls, wouldn't take her account seriously and even suggest it was Herndon's "framed-up".

On other arguments I think Wilson goes too far in his defense of Herndon. Personally, I'm skeptical of the Ann Rutledge romance story. This article by Lewis Gannett sums up a lot of my problems with it and Wilson's defense of it:

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/262986...w=fulltext

I don't think Herndon promoted the Ann Rutledge story to specifically maliciously get at Mary. He obviously thought it was true and as such important for the public to know about Lincoln's past. After reading the accounts of Herndon's sources on Rutledge, I just come to a differing opinion (and conclusion) from him on how strong of evidence they are. But just because I don't find Herndon reliable on this point/conclusion doesn't mean one should ignore Herndon's other collected accounts of parts of Lincoln's life as "unreliable" without a thorough examination of the evidence for each of them.