Lincoln's Quest for Union - A Psychological Profile

[Gene C]

This is the first of two rather long posts.
From Strozier's book p29

"In his autobiography, Lincoln tells a curious story of killing a wild turkey just before his eighth birthday. The story, which he told in the third person and placed in parentheses, goes:

(A few days before the completion of his eight year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin
and A. with his riffle gun, standing inside, shot through a crack, and killed one of them. He has never since pulled the trigger on any
larger game) [Collected Works 4]

"The turkey story follow a brief description of the move to Indiana in 1816, when Thomas settled 'in an unbroken forest' and Lincoln 'had an axe put in his hands at once'. But then the first sentence after the turkey story relates both the death of his mother and his father's remarriage: "In the autumn of 1818, his mother died:, and a year afterwards his father married Mrs. Sally Johnston." Such a juxtaposition of memories suggest an association between the wild turkey and his mothers death. Both are helpless, and both die. The odd insertion of the turkey scene in parenthesis between the description of Indiana and the report of Nancy's death seem a symbolic way of communicating unconscious feelings about his mother's death. The most important detail in the turkey story is Lincoln's responsibility for killing the bird. This apparently left remorse - guilt in our terms - and makes it impossible for Lincoln to pull " a trigger on any larger game". This guilt, one suspects, had been displaced from his mother onto the wild bird. Thus it seems he felt somehow responsible for causing his mothers death"

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In honor of Thanksgiving, I personally think his theory is full of gobbeldygook.

Eva asked if I would recommend this book. I think there are better books to spend your money and time on, although it does have some more reasonable sections later in the book. The part on Lincoln and his mother are just to far fetched. In the next day or two I'll tell you more.