President Lincoln vignettes in F.B. Carpenter's "Six Months at the White House"

[David Lockmiller]

(10-18-2023 09:02 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  The problem is that Burton Hendrick in his book Lincoln's War Cabinet, at page 363, has a quite different interpretation of the same event after quoting extensively from Carpenter's book: "It seems a fair assumption, in view of Seward's evident hostility to emancipation, that he was seeking delay, hoping perhaps that time and events would cause the President to rescind his unhappy mistake."

In the index of Lincoln's War Cabinet, under the subject heading of "Lincoln, Abraham," there is an entry titled by Burton Hendrick as "Welles sees greatness of," at pages 77-78, and it reads in part:

Next morning [after the Cooper Union speech] Lincoln spent an hour with Welles in the office of the Hartford Evening Press, of which he was one of the proprietors, elaborating his remarks of the previous evening, and entertaining the not too humorous Welles with the usual jokes and stories.

Next day, in the Evening Press, Welles gave his impressions of his visitor:

"This orator and lawyer has been caricatured. He is not Apollo, but he is not Caliban [Caliban - a feral, sullen, misshapen creature in Shakespeare's The Tempest]. He was made where the material for strong men is plenty; and his loose, tall frame is loosely thrown together. He is in every way large - brain included, but his countenance shows intellect, generosity, great good nature, and keen discrimination. . . . He is an effective speaker, because he is earnest, strong, honest, simple in style, and clear as crystal in his logic."

One can almost sense Welles, as he wrote these lines, judiciously weighing each adjective. One must keep in mind that this characterization was committed to paper two months before Lincoln's nomination, almost exactly a year before he took up his duties in the White House. Yet the portrait sketched by Welles, after an hour's confidential chat, differs little with that upon which history is now agreed. Thus Gideon Welles, of all the seven men whom Lincoln called to his council, was the only one who had anything approaching an accurate appreciation of his caliber. [Emphais added,]