Abraham and Thomas Lincoln

[David Lockmiller]

(02-03-2022 12:34 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  I'm glad to see Sam is presenting such an interesting topic, as well as learning that he's a forum member.

I've known Sam for years. We first met when he was a grad student of John Y. Simon in Carbondale. I had contributed to his forum and introduced myself to him via (I think) email. Although we haven't seen each other in a number of years, I try to keep in touch with Sam when something of interest concerning Lincoln comes up.

Sam is a dedicated and careful scholar. He is also a fine and decent human being. He did his doctoral dissertation on the poetry of Lincoln under Simon's direction until Simon's untimely death.

Good luck Sam!

Best
Rob

On January 21, 2016, I created the following thread titled "RE: Who wrote the lines of poetry "quoted" by Lincoln at the Soldiers' Home?"

I made the following initial post:

I was reading last night from F. B. Carpenter's book "The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln, Six Months at the White House" (p. 224) the two poetry quotes by Lincoln to the women at the Soldiers' Home cemetery and wanted to know who was the poet and the name of the poem from which Lincoln quoted. I was able to find the first two lines with a Google book search: “How Sleep the Brave” by William Collins (1746). But a similar search for the second two lines which Lincoln "afterwards quoted" -- "And women o'er the graves shall weep, Where nameless heroes calmly sleep." - I could not find either the name of the poet or the poem.

Is it possible that Lincoln himself became the anonymous poet in that moment, in that place, in the fall of 1864?

The complete narrative from one of the women’s story in the San Francisco Bulletin, as written by Carpenter at pages 223-24, reads as follows:

The ‘Home’ only admitted soldiers of the regular army; but in the graveyard near at hand there are numberless graves – some without a spear of grass to hide their newness – that hold the bodies of volunteers.

While we stood in the soft evening air, watching the faint trembling of the long tendrils of waving willow, and feeling the dewy coolness that that was flung out by the old oaks above us, Mr. Lincoln joined us, and stood silent, too, taking in the scene,

“How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their country’s wishes blest,” –
he said, softly.

There was something so touching in the picture opened before us, -- the nameless graves, the solemn quiet, the tender twilight air, but more particularly our own feminine disposition to be easily melted, I suppose, -- that it made us cry as if we stood beside the tomb of our own dead, and gave point to the lines which he afterwards quoted: --

“And women o’er the graves shall weep,
Where nameless heroes calmly sleep.”



I was wondering if Dr. Wheeler had addressed this particular instance in his doctoral dissertation on the poetry of Lincoln. If so, I would very much like to know what he wrote on the subject.