Herndon, William H.

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William Herndon
William Herndon, ca. 1875.
Born	December 25, 1818 Kentucky
Died	March 18, 1891 Springfield, Illinois
Nationality	American
Occupation	Lawyer,biographer

William Henry Herndon (December 25, 1818, Kentucky - March 18, 1891, Springfield, Illinois) was the law partner and biographer of Abraham Lincoln.

Contents 1 Herndon's biography 2 Lincoln's biographer 2.1 Research strategy 2.2 The book and later life 3 Works 4 Biographies 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Herndon's biography

Herndon's family moved from Kentucky to Springfield when he was five. Herndon attended Illinois College from 1836-1837. Following college, he returned to Springfield, where he clerked until 1841, when he went into law practice with Lincoln. Both men were members of the Whig Party and joined the fledgling Republican Party after the dissolution of the Whigs. In 1858, Herndon conducted opposition research in the Illinois State Library to be used against Stephen A. Douglas in the 1860 presidential race.

Herndon was a much stauncher opponent of slavery than Lincoln and claimed that he helped change Lincoln's views on the subject. He felt that Lincoln acted too slowly against the issue following his election as President. Herndon felt that the only way to rid the country of slavery was "through bloody revolution."

[edit] Lincoln's biographer

Following Lincoln’s assassination, Herndon began to collect stories of Lincoln’s life from those who knew him. Herndon aspired to write a faithful portrait of his friend and law partner, based on his own observations and on hundreds of letters and interviews he had compiled for the purpose. He was determined to present Lincoln as a man, rather than a saint, and to reveal things that the prevailing Victorian era conventions said should be left out of the biography of a great national hero. In particular, Herndon believed that Lincoln's "official" biographers, John Nicolay and John Hay, would tell the story of Lincoln "with the classes as against the masses."

[edit] Research strategy

Herndon’s research techniques seem unremarkable by today’s standards (that is, seeking out first hand interviews and information), but were almost unheard of by 19th century biographical standard. The raw material for Herndon’s biography of Lincoln included correspondence, interviews, recollections, notes, newspaper clippings and other material.

Included in such primary material are an interview with Mary Todd Lincoln in 1871, two long interviews with Dennis Hanks (Lincoln's cousin, who lived with Lincoln growing up), and hundreds of letters and notes from Herndon to Weik between 1 October 1881 and 27 February 1891, containing reminiscences of Lincoln's life.

Herndon also sought out and relied upon information from Lincoln's family members, schoolmates, neighbors in New Salem and Springfield, law partners, colleagues at the bar and in the Illinois legislature, political party allies, and White House associates. Representative names include Ninian Wirt Edwards (brother-in-law), Kate Roby Gentry (schoolmate), Mentor Graham (teacher), John Hay, whose letter of 5 September 1866 discusses Lincoln's daily life in the White House and ends with the statement that he was "the greatest character since Christ," John B. Helm (store clerk), Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln (stepmother), Stephen T. Logan (law partner), Leonard Swett (lawyer), Frances Wallace (sister-in-law), and Robert L. Wilson (one of the "Long Nine," a group of tall Whigs, including Lincoln, who served together in the Illinois legislature in the 1830s).

Herndon’s research was organized by such headings as "Lincoln's Development," "Lincoln's Courtship with Miss Owens," "The Lincoln-Douglas Debates," "Miss Rutledge and Lincoln," and "Lincoln's Ways."

[edit] The book and later life

Herndon enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle well into middle age due to the successful law firm and his various elected and appointed offices. Unfortunately he suffered severe financial reversals after the Civil War due to bad investments, bank failures, excessive generosity to his relatives and friends, and his inability to economize when his income declined sharply.

By 1869, he was destitute and facing foreclosure on his home when Ward Hill Lamon, who was then collaborating with a ghostwriter on a Lincoln biography, approached him for assistance. Herndon provided copies of and access to his original correspondences with Lincoln acquaintances and a written agreement not to publish his own biography of Lincoln for at least ten years in exchange for $2,000 cash and an agreement to receive up to $2000 of the book's royalties.^[1]). By the time he was free to release his own biography of Lincoln, a miscellany of personal problems, including continued financial problems and his alcoholism, left him unable to formulate the stacks of papers into a coherent text.

At some point in the late 1870s, Herndon began a correspondence with an Indiana-born Lincoln admirer named Jesse W. Weik. By this time of his life, a growing number of Lincoln enthusiasts (including many like Weik who were children when Lincoln died) had written to Herndon seeking any type of Lincoln memorabilia, especially personal effects and autographs, and Herndon often obliged free of charge. When he supplied the young Weik with a Lincoln autograph from one of the stacks of legal documents in his possession the grateful young man continued writing the old man and a friendship began that would result in the completion of the long-delayed Lincoln biography.

Weik, an aspiring writer, began to meet frequently with the elderly Herndon both at Herndon's farm north of Springfield and later at Weik's family's home in Greencastle, Indiana, where Weik's father owned a general store and Herndon became a frequent guest. Herndon freely conceded that he was unable to complete the biography on his own and must have help if it was ever to reach fruition, thus he helped the worshipful young Weik by supplying his materials and providing constant clarification and elaboration on his own memories of Lincoln. The collaboration between the two men was often contentious due to extreme creative differences in writing style and in their visions of what type of biography should result (Weik favored a narrative linear form while Herndon wanted essentially a loosely connected volume of reminiscences grouped by type [e.g. domestic life, law practice, political philosophy, etc.], though a recognition of their complete dependence on each other (Weik depended on Herndon for the source materials and first person accounts of Lincoln, and Herndon on Weik for the energy of creating the manuscript and increasingly for financial support) guaranteed their continued relationship.

Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, the result of their collaborations, appeared in a three volume edition published by Belford, Clarke & Company in 1889. The majority of the actual writing was done by Weik, who received full credit as co-author. The book received wildly mixed reviews due to the inclusion of such unvarnished elements as Lincoln's mother's illegitimacy (and even the rumors of Lincoln's own), its sometimes viciously negative portrayal of Herndon's longtime enemy Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's suicidal depression, and other decidedly less than hagiographic accounts of the martyred president who was quickly becoming the most venerated and romanticized figure in American history. Particularly damning was the denunciation of the book by Robert Todd Lincoln, whose grudge against Herndon stemmed largely from Herndon's recounting of Ann Rutledge as the only romantic love of his father's life. Questionable business practices and financial reversals on the part of the book's publishers, combined with the book's poor initial sales, made the royalties of its two authors very meager, with most of Herndon's share going to repay the frequent small loans advanced to him by Weik.

Herndon died in 1891 in near poverty at his farm north of Springfield. At the time of his death, the majority of his Lincoln source materials and correspondences were in the possession of his coauthor Jesse Weik, whose family would keep them for fifty more years. Herndon is buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, the same cemetery as the Lincoln Tomb.

[edit] Works

"Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life," William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik (1889)

Letters: (1) William H. Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Jan. 16, 1886, Herndon-Weik Collection, Library of Congress; and (2) Mary Todd Lincoln to David Davis, Mar. 6, [1867], "Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters," ed. Justin G. Turner and Linda Leavitt Turner (1972)

"The Abraham Lincoln Genesis Cover-up: The Censored Origins of an Illustrious Ancestor," R. Vincent Enlow, [relating Herndon's accounts] http://genealogytoday.com/us/lincoln/genesis.html (2001)

"Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln," Abraham Lincoln, Ed. Roy P. Basler (1953): 15 Feb 1848 Letter from Lincoln to Herndon

[edit] Biographies

The standard biography of William Herndon is Lincoln's Herndon by David Herbert Donald.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Herndon-Weik Collection of Lincolniana--A Register of the Collection in the Library of Congress
• Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements About Lincoln at Northern Illinois University Library
• William H. Herndon at Find a Grave

Persondata
Name	Herndon, William
Alternative names
Short description	the law partner and biographer of Abraham Lincoln
Date of birth	December 25, 1818
Place of birth	Kentucky
Date of death	March 18, 1891
Place of death	Springfield, Illinois