Good morning. My name is jonathan white, and im the vice chair of thehe Lincoln Forum. Our final speaker this morning isbrian dirk. Ian is a professor of history at Anderson University in indiana. He is the author of numerous books on Abraham Lincoln, imagining america, lincoln in indiana, lincoln the lawyer, and others. His subjects probe some of the most interesting and relevant topics in lincolns life and he has won awards for his work including from the new york civil war roundtable for the best book on Abraham Lincoln published in 2007. He recently had the opportunity to travel to seoul, where he addressed the korean Abraham Lincoln society. I know. Id like to hear more about that. How can i get on that gravy train . Today he will talk to us about his new book the black heavens Abraham Lincoln and death, published earlier this year. A review at civil war monitor states students of the 16th president will want to add this concise, thoughtprovoking, and sensitively written volume t to theirook shelves. Please join me in welcoming brian dirck. [ applause ] well, hello, everybody. Its good to be here. It really is. I wanted to thank you for the invitation. Ive gotten to see some old friends, among many. My boone comnion in korea, fred youre here somewhere. We had fun. We sure did. Meeting a lot of Beautiful People but you are heroes. No, everybody in this room is a hero to a group of students at Anderson University who are going to get tomorrow off because im here. They love the Lincoln Forum. Theyre like, no, dr. Dirck, have fun, take your time. If you want to go tour the battlefield do it. Do it twice. You know, we will ruggle through without you. As a matter of fact, if youre involved in any of the Lincoln Forum scholarship programs and need donations if wow would contact the 42 students that would normally be in my 9 00 a. M. Morning class who now get to sleep in, i would imagine youll getome money ouof those kid if you really work at it a little bit, you know. So you know, really, thank you very much for inviting me. This has been a wonderful experience. As john was pointing out, my latest book is called the black heavens Abraham Lincoln and death, which my the usual reaction when i name that is to get kind of a raised spok eyebrow because death, wow. You know . My kids refer to it as the death book. So gee, dad, hows the death book coming along . You know, which is a little bit odd. It ihould say a couple things about how i got to the point i wrote about that. My fellow authors in the room will probably relate to this, that there are occasions whwher you begin to write one book and end up writing a totally different book. I see everybody nodding over there. Yeah. The book was originally going to be a study of the summer of 1864. I was going to call it lincolns hardest summer and look at his leadership during this very, very difficult summer of 1864 when, as we all know, hes up fo reelection, doesnt really think hes going to get reelected and the body count is just going through the roof with the Wilderness Campaign and all that. But then i started looking at questions surrounding that summer and discovered that there was very little written about how lincoln understood death and dying. There are a couple of things, dont get me wrong, scattered here and there but nobody had ever tried to follow that particular thread. So, i contacted my wonderful editor at the press, under whom ipw was on contract for the hardest summer. I was like sylvia, do you mind if i write a totally different book . You know, like that, and she was so nice about it and ion a frig of 1862, governor andrew curtain of pennsylvania arrived at the white house to meet with president lincoln. So much so that lincoln was already in bed when the governors arrived but he left word that he wished to see curtain no matter what the hour and so the governor was escorted into lincolns bedroom where the president was sitting on the edge of the bed in his nightshirt. Curtain had just returned from fredericksburg and lincoln asked what he had seen of the battlefield. Now, curtain was a rather dyspeptic sort at times and he immediately retorted, battlefield . It was not a battlefield, mr. President. It was a slaughter pen. I was sorry the moment i said that, curtain later recalled, for lincoln groaned wrung his hands and uttered exclamations of grief. It was only with considerable difficulty, curtain later remembered, that he was able to lincoln calmed down enough to get back into bed. As he was getting back into bed he told him quote, if theres a worse place than hell, i am in it. A year and a half later it was summer and not winter. The height of the bloody 1864 campaign season. Grant was locked in a titanic struggle to destroy once and for all robert e. Lees army of northern virginia. His relentless grinding Wilderness Campaign and eventual siege of petersburg was driving the casualty rates of ungodly numbers. Many northerners believed the deaths of so many soldiers were unacceptable. Even mary lincoln believed this was so, telling her husband to fire grant, because grant was, quote, a butcher, unquote. Lincoln received a message from august from his commanding general in which grant, who was well aware of the enormous pressure to fall back from the front lines and regroup, expressed his desire to keep pressing the enemy. Ive seen your dispatch, expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where you are, lincoln replied. Neither am i willing. Hold on with a bulldog grip and chew and choke as much as possible. Now, there are the two sides of Abraham Lincoln and his relationship with the war dead. Two very different images. The lincoln sitting on the edge of his bed in his nightshirt, horrified at the body count, a man in a place that is worse than hell. But we also have the grimly determined, iron jawed lincoln defying everyone who tells him the human cost of grants strategy is unacceptable, including his own wife, but who ignores all of this and urges grant to chew and choke. An exhortation that he must have known would lead to more casualties and an ever higher body count. Here was a man who could order thousands upon thousands of soldier to their deaths and at the very same time writhe in agony over the wars human cost. And you know, we have long celebrated both of these lincolns. Historians admire him for his hard, but clear eyed understanding that the war was essentially about killing enemy soldiers and relentlessly pursuing the enemy to victory. I mean, we all believed he was right when he told mcclellan should have pursued the enemy and we all know the agony he went to when george meade did not pursue him from gettysburg and how horribly upset he was but at the same time we celebrate his essential humanity. His ability to appreciate and empathize with the unprecedented human suffering that was the american civil war. He seems to have been able to do both things at once, to be both a man of empathy and a man of hard action. A president who could order men to their deaths and generally rue the dying. And, you know, its this quality of lincoln that i think we dont often appreciate and dont often remark upon, his ability to balance things. He was able, in so many aspects of his life, to find a proper balance point between extremes, whether it be the intellectual realm, his balancing the constitutions pragmatism with the declarations ideal i, or the political realm. His ability to steer a middle course between the more radical and conservative elements of his own party, or the personal realm with his lifelong balancing of humor and sadness, fatalism and idealism. Abraham lincoln was many things, but he was a man of exquisite balance. So how did he do it . What of this balancing act for the wars dead . Where did this come from . This capacity to be once both hard as nails and exquisitely empathetic to both mourn the dead and yet accept the death as the wars tragic price. Well, i think the ability that lincoln showed to maintain this particular balance stems back to his very earliest days to before the war, indeed stretching all the way back to his childhood. Abraham lincoln knew death from an early age. His first encounters stemmed from much the same source as any other young boy growing up in early kentucky and indiana, hunting. His father thomas was an enthusiastic, hunter as was his cousin dennis hanks, with whom he spent a lot of time. We all hunted all the time, dennis remembered. The country was full of wild game, dense with vegetation and swampy. We could track a bear, deer or wolf for miles through the matted vines. We more or less depended upon hunting for a living and this included the Young Abraham. Dennis remembered an incident during the familys first days in southern indiana, right after they arrived at Little Pigeon Creek. Abraham spotted a flock. Thomas lincoln and dennis were away from the camp and abraham was too little to load and prime a gun himself so his mother nancy had to do it. Abe poked the gun through the crack of the camp and he accidentally killed one, dennis rather amusedly remembered. But you know the truth is, lincoln disliked hunting. He later in rather proudly wrote of the turkey shooting that he had quote never since pulled a trigger on any larger game. He did not much like killing. Killing in the boys sense of torturing the animals that were everywhere in the indiana woods. One neighborhood recalled him writing essays on being kind to animals and crawling insects. When his stepbrother captured a turtle and crushed it against a nearby tree, abraham preached against cruelty to animals, contending that an ants life was as sweet to it as ours was to us. His friends and neighbors referred constantly to his tender heartedness. So, here was a far from callous or unfeeling youngster, quite the contrary. If anything he seems to have been notable in his capacity to feel the suffering and loss of others around him, even turtles. Soon after the family arrived in indiana, the Young Abraham was forced to confront death in a far more profound and painful way. Sometime in the early fall of 1818, several neighbors of the lincolns fell seriously ill, first with an uncontrollable shaking, then a severe thirst, a loss of appetite and general fatigue, and then with severe stomach cramps and vomiting that grew steadily worse. They were suffering from what was known at the milk sickness, caused when cows ingested a local plant called white snake root. Res resembling a daisy, it seemed innocuous enough, but it contained a chemical that turned the cows milk into a deadly poison. Milk sickness was a much feared usually fatal scourge among settlers in indiana and other parts of the region. Lincolns mother nancy came to the aid of her ill neighbors and at some point she ingested this poison herself. She lingered for quite a while after initially falling ill, struggling on day by day as dennis hanks recalled. It must have been excruciating pain, the vomiting and wretching produced by milk sickness being so persistent and violent that some even refer to it as, quote, the puking disease. The fatigue and racking pain soon had nancy bedridden in their little cabin. By the time a week had passed, she knew she was going to die, according to dennis. He remembered her calling abraham and his sister sarah to her bedside and telling them to be good and kind to their father. She then expressed a hope that they might live as they had been taught by her, to love men and with love reverence and to worship god. Thus passed away, dennis later recalled, one of the very best women of the whole race. Her body was hauled on a makeshift sled to a knoll and buried under a grove of persimmon trees where it rests to this day. What did abraham feel and experience as a 9yearold boy, watching with growing times with signs of nancys imminent death . This is unknown and is unknowable, but there are characteristics from which we can generalize among women and children placed in similar circumstances. Children who lose a parent at an early age often wrestle with conflicting emotions they are ill equipped to control. An imp tent sort of anger at what seems an unfair loss is common, as well as a general sense of helplessness and foreboding about the future. Most of all children of a dying parent experience loss of security and comfort. Parents typically offer their Young Children a sense of permanence. In lincolns case, a mother who was always present and supplying his daily needs as he grew up in kentucky and indiana that death would now sever. No one recorded, though, how abraham reacted to the surely immense stress of his mothers illness and death whether he lashed out in frustration, kept his turmoil buried deep inside, or perhaps exhibited some other form of behavior. But the very silence of the historical record is perhaps itself telling. Friends and relatives who later recalled in great detail the circumstances surrounding nancys illness and death have nothing to say, good or bad, about her young sons reaction. Dennis remembered that at the time, both abraham and his sister sarah, quote, did some work, little jobs, errands and light work of that sort but neither dennis or anyone else recorded exactly how abraham reacted emotionally during the ordeal. He seems to have faded into the background. Nursing a private grief while his father and other family and friends were preoccupied with easing nancys final days. Lincoln later himself remembered this time as an exceedingly lonely episode in his life. And some historians later theorized that lincolns adult bouts of melancholy stem from this experience. But its striking about the various accounts at this time lack direct testimony regarding just what lincoln was doing as his mother lay dying and how he reacted. Now, i dont want to be misunderstood here. I am not suggesting that lincoln was somehow cold and indifferent to his mothers passing. How could this be so in a child who felt the suffering of turtles . But i do wish to suggest that he seems to have found ways to internalize his grief dealing with it quietly and calling upon reserves of inner strength. One imagines a silent Young Abraham watching his mothers body being dragged up a hill on a rough wooden sled, saying so little and doing so little that no one then or since remarked upon his behavior or even where he was at. He may have been compelled to help push the sled up the hill. Doing so perhaps with the silent, stoic reserve. Certainly he did not sentimentalize his mothers death. Now, this in itself is remarkable. Living as he did in a sentimental age, particularly where death and dying were concerned. Unlike dennis, who described nancys passing with his vignette of the dying mother telling her children to be kind to their father, abraham never romanticized his mothers passing. If he saw any meaning in nancys death, he never recorded the fact. Referring briefly in a letter many years later to his mothers final resting place he observed that it was, quote, as unpoetical as any spot on earth. Otherwise, he barely mentions nancys death at all. Just a brief, dry reference in one Campaign Autobiography he wrote in the third person, quote, in the autumn of 1818 his mother died. Nor did he comment much on the other major family loss he endured while growing up in indiana. The death of his older sister sarah, who died in 1828 from complications related to childbirth. Variously described as good humored, industrious, quick minded. She was seat like her father like dark hair and complexion like her mother. Her death was a dreadful ordeal perhaps more so than lincolns mother. She had married a local man, a part of a town lived near pigeon creek and she became quickly pregnant. She went into labor one february fight with some unidentified complications sinking her into the depths of unendurable pain. A neighbor woman later recalls her calling in agony for her father, who heard her screams and awoke abraham and their cousin, dennis, saying something is the matter. Thomas went after a doctor but was too late. They let her lay too long thought the neighbor. Sarah gave birth to a stillborn son and then died herself either during the birth or shortly afterwards. Now, as with so much else surrounding Abraham Lincolns early life, we have little solid information regarding precisely what happened to sarah and her baby. There seems to have been a midwife present, the aforementioned neighbors aunt, and aaron was nearby though typically fathers did not attend childbirths. While one account has thomas sending for a doctor, another has aaron himself growing alarmed at his wifes labor pains and hitching a team of oxen to a sleigh, driving her to his fathers house, threequarters of a mile away, a panicky decision that did his suffering wife no good, the rig careening over snags and rough ground with every jolt sharpening sarahs labor pains. Arriving at his familys house, aran then sent for a doctor. But when the doctor arrived he was so drunk they were forced to go find a second doctor who lived so far away that he did not arrive before it was too late. Now, which of these stories is accurate and what exactly went wrong is impossible to determine. Stillbirths could result from any of a number of possible causes. Various congenital birth defects that fatally distressed the baby prior to labor, an issue with the umbilical cord wrapped around the babys neck possibly, or exiting before the baby, or possibly a blockage in the by babys oxygen supply causing it to suffocate. Letting sarah lay too long, as it was described suggests there was an issue with extracting the baby that eventually proved fatal. Though, again, we do not know exactly what laying too long meant. Sarahs painful and probably gory ordeal on a hard winter indiana night was leavened by no sentimental scenes of last rituals or soft words. She and her child were buried together in the Little Pigeon CreekBaptist Churchs cemetery, the sons body wrapped in the mothers arms. According to several accounts, abraham grieved for the death of his sister. The first record we possess of him openly displaying emotion and grief at a death. He, quote, sat down on a log and hid his face in his hands while the tears rolled down, remembered one observer. Local tradition has it that abraham felt not only grief but anger towards aaron and his family, holding them responsible for allowing sarah to suffer too long. Now, there may well be some truth to this, for abraham did nurture a grudge fed by one neighbor said by what he perceived as, quote, aarons cruel treatment of his wife. All of this is to suggest that abraham felt sarahs passing, probably as deep as his mothers passing years before and at times those feelings showed themselves in a bout of sobbing, in a sense of anger toward sarahs husband and family. But maybe we should also note the limits of his open displays of emotion. For he did not break down into a lengthy or uncontrolled outburst of grief, nor does he seem to have acted upon his rage at aaron with any acts of outright violence, though one wonders if this provides a bit of context to the biting and nastily funny poem he wrote about two of the grimesby brothers, the socalled chronicles of ruben, which cause aid good deal of animosity between the grimesbys and himself. What we see the frontier lincoln there is a child and young man who learns to both feel and yet control those feelings. Of course he was sensitive to suffering and loss. Even down to that of animals. But he also seems to have found ways to deal with that sensitivity by internalizing it, by quieting his own emotions. Now, i hesitate to use the word suppress because this might imply something repressive and unhealthy. Rather i believe that lincolns reticence and his selfcontrol were, on the whole, positive attributes, allowing him to both feel and function. He grew into a young man who felt deeply and yet created for himself an emotional toolbox to control and hide those emotions. It was an ability that would serve him well later in life. He was 19 when his sister died. A big, gangly and restless young man who wanted badly to leave Little Pigeon Creek. He made his escape in 1831 after the entire family had left indiana and relocated to equally primitive circumstances on a farm in eastern illinois. He wandered into the village of new salem and settled into a rambling life pursuing odd jobs, manual laborer, postman, store clerk, surveyor, which at beast quote procured bread and kept body and soul together unquote as lincoln himself later put it. Sometime soon after he arrived lincoln met a young woman named ann rutledge, the teenage daughter of a inn keeper with whom lincoln boarded. Ann was described as amiable, a goodlooking, smart, lively girl with fair hair, eyes and a cheerful disposition. She was also a good housekeeper with a moderate education, having had a bit of schooling in nearby jacksonville. At some point abraham and ann apparently struck up a romantic relationship. Now, this entire affair is shrouded in mystery and a lack of solid primary source evidence. According to the best available accounts, ann was engaged to marry another man named john mcnamara, but he had left the new salem area for a prolonged absence, and ann was uncertain whether he would return. She seems to have subsequently agreed to marry lincoln but before they could do so typhoid fever swept through the area, killing her father. She herself died in august of 1835. Some people later claimed that abraham went nearly insane with grief over this particular death. The effect upon mr. Lincolns mind with us terrible, recalled anns brother, robert. He became plunged in despair and many of his friends feared that reason would desert him. Others recall that he became quote temporarily deranged to the point that his friends felt compelled to remove sharp objects from his presence. One neighbor remembered that lincoln was, quote, locked up by his friends to prevent derangement or suicide. Some thought lincoln was ever thereafter changed and sad. These stories of lincolns lifelong grief even extended to his later years as president. A new salem friend who later visited the white house, lincoln still mourned his lost love even during the war. Abe, is it true that you fell in love with and courted ann rutledge recalled the conversation . It is true, true indeed i did. Lincoln is alleged to have replied. I have loved the name of rutledge to this day. I did honestly and truly love the girl and i think often, often of her now. But aside from such recommend reminiscences, there is no direct evidence to record republican lincolns reaction to ann rutledges death. He never mentioned her or alluded to her, or even hinted at any relationship with her in any letter or speech. The absence of direct evidence along with the various biases and idiosyncrasies of william herndon, lincolns former law partner, who gathered all the information about ann and first broached the idea of a romance between her and abraham has led to such doubt as if any romance even existed. As for myself, it seems quite a stretch to suggest that abraham and ann were not involved at all. And following this it is reasonable to conclude that when she died lincoln was distraught with grief. But those two simple hard nuggets of truth, the romance and the grief, have long been heavily swathed in multiple layers of syrupy sentimentality. Tales of anns flawless character and beauty abound. And lincolns bottomless sorrow have been piled upon more tales to the point that friends, fawning bfawn ing biographers added in later years improbable details that beg belief of the real cause of anns death being her conflicted heart over lincoln and his rival. Of lincolns having never carried a pocket knife after her death for fear of the sudden impulse to injury himself if you recalled her demise which we all know is a bunch of crap because they found a pocket knife in his pocket after he got shot but thats another story. Okay . Of his grieving being suddenly triggered by violent weather. We watched during storms, fogs and damp gloomy weather mr. Lincoln for fear of an accident, claimed one neighbor. Yet another it ration of the now, this ann rutledge myth is yet another it ration of the good death sentimentality with which death and dying was wrapped during lincolns time. Where nancy was the pious christian mother, imparting lost words of wisdom and was the star crossed lover, the flower cut short before fool bloom and ever after giving him thoughts of gloom and worse triggered by the gothic detail of a thunderstorm. I can never be reconciled to have the snow and the rains and the storms beat upon her grave, hes supposed to have declared. Another friend believed he avoided ever using the word love after ann died, his heart being so sad and broken. In fact, ann could not have had a good death. Any more than nancy lincolns endless puking in that smokefilled cabin or Sarah Lincoln grimsbys stillbirth on a winter night. Typhoid or brain fever was a horrible way to die. Caused by a bacterial infection ruling from the contamination of Drinking Water with human feces, typhoid subjected its victims to bouts of diarrhea, stomach cramps and above all headaches and a crushing fever. One reason why it was often referred to as brain fever in lincolns day. Lincoln saw ann suffer the throes of brain fever, as much as he saw his mothers suffering from the milk sickness years earlier. Ann linger for the record four or five days, and we do know he visited her at least once right before she died. It was very evident that he was much distressed, remembered a friend who saw him after the visit. But you know what is telling here is not so much the second hand accounts of lincolns distress, or his supposedly suicidal behavior, but what i find interesting is his silence. His failure to ever even once mention his relationship with ann or his reaction to her death. A year after she died, he began a brief courtship with another young woman named mary owens. Mary later wrote, quote, i do not now recollect of ever hearing him mention anns name. Others also recalled that lincoln was more or less business as usual soon after ann died. Its a curious matter on its face, but then again perhaps not, because it would be entirely in keeping with lincolns reactions to the deaths of his mother and sister. Ann died much as nancy and sarah, in a sudden, ugly way, cut short before their time by yet another form of death that stalked the areas in which he lived. Some people believed that the deaths of nancy, sarah and ann fostered in him a lifelong tendency toward melancholy and a deepseeded loneliness from these dark days. Perhaps. On a more direct observable level the deaths of these three women were raw, ugly, unfiltered things, cruel contrasts with the gentile good deaths that americans of his day thought they deserved and strove to attain. Environments that discouraged the ideas of living and dying. Had lincoln been born and raised in different circumstances, say a comfortable middleclass home in a more settled area, he might well have learned to thickly coat death in the layers of sentiment and emotionalism that characterize that idea, that eras idea of the best way to die. But lincoln never seems to have thought this way. Instead he learned very early in life that death could be and often was raw and unforgiving. From the screams of his dying sister to the wretched wasting away from disease evident in his mother and fiancee to the almost daily feral encounters common with animals in the indiana wilderness. I am not a very sentimental man, lincoln would once remark, and this was certainly true where death and dying was concerned. Now, years later he would experience yet another death, and this from the perspective not of a son or a brother or a lover but rather a parent. This death of his young son, eddie, would not be a frontier death in a raw and undeveloped rural area. Instead it would be a distinctly middleincome class death. Experienced by lincoln, the professional husband, father and professional attorney. Eddie lincoln was 3 years old in early december of 1849 when he began to have persistent bouts of coughing. Slight at first but persistent. A little thing in a little boy. Abraham and mary might not have thought much of it, at least not right away, but the truth is eddie had always been rather sickly. In one of the few surviving letters to her husband, mary refers to eddie having recovered from his little spell of sickness but she offers no details. The previous summer mary and the boys had accompanied abraham on a speaking tour of upstate new england, where eddie had again fallen ill during the trip, compelling mary to devote most of her time and energy to nursing him. And now in 1849 came this cough, which grew steadily worse. If his parents were initially inclined to downplay its significance, one more unfortunate but manageable trial for their little eddie, but eddie experienced ever greater trouble catching his breath. They might have noticed spots of blood on his lips and chin or a greenish yellow phlegm he had begun to expel. People in lincolns time called this consumption, which was actually a catchall phrase in those scientifically imprecise times connoting any disease causing a wasting of the body. Scientific classification was so vague that some historians have since wondered what exactly caused eddies illness. Odds are it was tuberculosis. By the end of january 1850, everyone knew eddies condition was grave. The wasting aspect of the disease would now have been evident. His skin would have had a ghastly or whitish pallor, hence the name white plague attached by some to the disease, and his muscle tone would have been diminished. From the oxygen decreased content and a prolonged period of time spent in bed. The difficult breathing and coughing spells continued, also with hoarseness and a diminishing ability to speak. Night sweats were another common symptom. And some latestage tuberculosis patients suffered bouts of diarrhea, adding a further dimension to their misery. If eddie had lived in a later age, he might have been taking to a sanatorium with other patients. Segregating them into its own institutionalized rules and routines. Instead, like nearly everyone else in that period, he spent his last days at home, and lincoln would have been squarely in the middle of it all living day in and day out with the specter of his young boys imminent death growing ever more present. Now, lincoln did reduce his workload somewhat. He only litigated during eddies illness ten cases and i went back in the previous years going back and forward he litigated two or three times that many cases. So, you can see evidence that he cut back on his workload. He also didnt go anywhere, whereas he would routinely travel to various places but he stayed at home. He made an effort to become more involved, but he also sustained a more or less normal routine. He did go to work. He did argue some cases, and he wrote letters. And if you read those letters you see no indication that there was anything unusual in his family life. He tried to bear his sons ordeal as a strong man, remembered a friend, one who had resolved to keep his feelings under firm sway. Shades of his quiet reaction to his mothers and sisters and ann rutledges deaths. Sometime toward the end of january, he would have undertaken the practical preparations for the funeral he and everyone else knew was imminent. He would have done most of this planning himself. There were no Funeral Directors or homes in springfield, and the modern Funeral Service industry did not yet exist. He would have purchased the coffin, there were at least two downtown businesses in springfield which sold coffins and he would have made the necessary arrangements for burial. In lincolns case he chose the Hutchinson Cemetery in springfield, a privately owned cemetery run by a cabinet maker who in all likelihood provided the hearse as well. Now, there were rules regarding just how all this was to be done. The exact trim of the hearse, for example. Hearses back then almost always had white feathers sticking up and this dated back to the medieval era, where they had lit candles arnold bodies lying in state. The biblical saying on the headstone, the arrangement where they would have the service which would be at home, what that would look like and all of that, and lincoln could not afford to ignore these rules. He was a man from humble farming roots, who constantly strove to escape those roots and enter white middle income class respectability. Lincoln wanted and needed acceptance into polite springfield circles. The memories of Little Pigeon Creek with all the wilderness primitiveness, not to mention his mother, his sister and anns awful suffering could not have been pleasant, and lincoln wanted to get as far away from that life as possible. He was an ambitious man on the make and he had to do dying as well as living right. Eddie died at 6 00 in the morning on friday, february 1st, 1850, just four weeks shy of his fourth birthday. We lost our little boy, lincoln wrote to his stepbrother. He was sick 52 days. The funeral followed the custom of the day and occurred in the parlor of the lincoln home. Eddies body would have been prepared for viewing in the formal front room. He was probably not embalmed, an expensive process not yet widespread in america. He was washed and dressed, tasks usually performed with the deceased mother with help from other women. Ladies advertised their services as quote, laying out women. But in all likelihood mary performed the task herself, assisted perhaps by one or more of her sisters or possibly a neighbor. After the service, the coffin was carried to the waiting hearse which drew eddie away to the grave side with lincoln, the reverend who performed the service and others. Following the burial the lincoln family entered a period of mourning for which society also stipulated a strict protocol. Men and women were subjected to different rules. As the father of a dead child, lincoln wore black clothing. He had a predeliction for black coats anyway. And perhaps a black arm band or hat wrap for a while. A few months at most. I mean, this wasnt much. Men were to suppress their feelings during the process of dying and so too did they submerge their grief afterwards. Had lincoln worn mourning clothing for what his neighbors and friends considered an inordinately long period of time, he would have risked gossip that he had become femininized in his grief. He was expected to be a man who maintained the outward appearance of keeping his emotions in firm masculine control. And for the most part he seems to have done so. The people closest to him noticed a deep seeded sadness in the days following eddies burial. I found him very much depressed and downcast at the death of his son, a neighbor later remembered, who visited him to further console him on his loss but this is hardly surprising. Lincoln reserved those feelings of depression for private encounters behind the closed doors of his home. There is reliable evidence of only one open outburst, when immediately after the funeral he saw a card with eddies last medical prescription lying on a table in the lincoln home. He picked it up, threw it away and rushed out of the room crying. Otherwise, lincoln seems to have firmly maintained the selfcontrol expected of him. And even this slight loss of emotional control occurred in a domestic setting. His professional behavior in the office and elsewhere was normal. Neither his law partner or anybody else remarked otherwise, and his correspondence during that time period is entirely business like and ordinary. His only mention of eddies death at all came in a brief letter on february 23rd, again responding to his stepbrother, he wrote, as you make no mention of it, i suppose you had not learned that we lost our little boy, lincoln wrote, we miss him very much. Whatever turmoil he felt upon eddies death he contained within himself and out of the public eye. Now, this was no insignificant matter. For dying and its aftermath was one of america antebellums most ridgedly prescribed and emotionally social rituals. Lincoln was given a certain set of guidelines, cultural tools from when to navigate the dying process for his son. These tools were partly designed to help ease personal grief but they also allowed the community to properly assess the distressed parents respective characters. People believed they could tell a lot about their neighbors values, beliefs, even the state of their very souls by watching how they handled death. So taking these four deaths that lincoln experienced before the war, his mother, his sister, ann rutledge and his son, eddie, and note the strong echos of lincoln in this careful balancing act during the war. Theres every indication that prior to the war Abraham Lincoln was emotionally sensitive and empathetic toward the suffering and the dead as anyone, maybe even more so. He was not in any sense indifferent to the pain and pathos of the dying or the loss of their loved ones. He had felt all these things himself, keenly so, as he watched his loved ones suffer and die but he learned to function within that loss. Learned to balance grief with acceptance, emotion with reason, feeling the loss of the present with the act of moving forward into the future. He followed his mothers body on that sled, watched her burial, descend into that, quote, lonely unpoetic knoll in southern indiana, and moved on. He watched his sisters burial. His dead nephew wrapped in her arms. He sobbed and then he moved on. He mourned ann and yet he eventually married mary todd. He mourned eddie but he would raise three more boys. He moved on. From getting on with life following these private losses before the war, he would extrapolate getting on with life, getting on with the job during the war. Because there would be more personal loss during the war. Particularly and most grievously, the death of his favorite son, willie, from typhoid in february of 1862, a death so emotionally wracking that it seems to have very nearly incapacitated him. I never saw a man so bowed down with grief, marys seamstress Elizabeth Keckley recalled. He came to the bed where willies body was lying after he died, lifted the cover from the face of his child, gazed at it long and earnestly, murmuring, my poor boy. He was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I know he is better off in hemp but we loved him so. It is so hard, hard to have him die. He then burst into what was described as great sobs. Later that day the president walked into his private secretarys office. Well, my boy is gone, lincoln said. Hes actually gone. Lincoln then burst into tears again and left. He very nearly shut down for several days afterwards. One newspaper claimed that he was, quote, in a stupor of grief and seemed to care littler e even for Great National events for several days. He was unable to celebrate the great Union Victories at forts henry and donaldson that had occurred at that time because he was grieving his son. Willies funeral was on a friday. But by sunday evening, sunday evening he was beginning to pull himself together. Another newspaper reported he had begun to recover from the shock and is now, though deeply bowed down by no in way impositions. He balanced the grief with the need to win the war. To get on with the job, to make all that death mean something. The balancing act seeped into his speeches as well. Including his greatest words as a president. He told the nation that while it was altogether fitting to mourn the battlefield, it is for us the living rather to be dedicated to the great unfinished work for those who fought here have thus far nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from the honor they gave the cost to the last full measure of devotion. Here again, was exquisite act of balance. Where he again moved on. He balanced sadness and hope. He balanced death and life itself. It is balancing act he learned at a very easterly yaj. Thank you very much. We have time for just maybe two questions. So at the mike. Good morning. My name is jeff howie from middletown, connecticut. Hello. Hi. Touched on a very good subject that i like about obviously, he suffered through all this stuff and handled grief and so forth. Do you suppose he had this had any correlation how he handled so the called dreams of his own assassination . Wow. Look, i tend to be a bit of a minimalist when it comes to lincoln evidence, those that read my books, i like to really stick to the collected works and little else. There is an account that he had a dream for staging his own assassination. Im not saying he didnt have the dream. He may well have. But im a little skeptical about it. Its an after 1865 account. Im saying he didnt have it. Okay. Look, guys, i just i dont mean to disparage the people who say that. It could have happened. It just when it comes to anything stated about lincoln after 1865 about things like this, you better take them with a big grain of salt, frankly. Im not so sure he did. Now he did believe in the power of dreams because there is a collected works letter he wrote to mary when off traveling. He says mary tell tad to puss that pistol away, i had an ugly degree murder about it. I believe he did believe in some dreams. Im not sure he had the dreams. Thats a great question, it really is. Yeah. Dr. John well in washington, d. C. I know about im a doctor so im into this a little bit. But what i know about death and dying, ive learned a lot in that period from dale fousts book. Gosh. Great book. Yeah. Im wondering if your research, did you encounter what her premise is they believed in the good death back then. Did lincoln subscribe to that or was he involved in his thinking about, you know, if this was a good death he could then move on . Let me preface this by saying i love that book. If anybody ever read the republic of suffering that, is a pioneering work. I strongly believe that lincoln scholarship should take that into account. That said, without arguing with professor foust who looked at a far Greater Group of people than i did. I just was looking at lincoln. I argue in my book there is very little indication that he thought much about a good death in 19th century terms. You hardly ever see him sethinkg about death or dying. He very rarely, maybe a half dozen even mentioned heaven. He believes in the after life, i think. He is certainly a christian. But hes a very kind of vague belief. I have a chapter on this actually. I do talk about that. That he has sort of a fatalism. He thinks god has a plan. But hes not going to speculate as to why. You never really see him pursuing the good death tropes of the romanticized grief. Its just not him. Its not his personality. [ applause ] thanks. Cspan has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events. From the president ial primaries through the impeachment process. And now the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online, or listen on our free radio app. And be part of the National Conversation through cspans daily washington journal program. Or through our social media feeds. Cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Tonight on American History tv, beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, historian and tour guide garret peck discusses prohibitions rise as well as fall 13 years later with the repeal of the 18th amendment. This year marks 1900th anniversathe 100th anniversary of the start of prohibition. Watch on cspan3. Up next on American History tv, historians discuss the effect of media and technology on politics. Topics include silicon valley, Artificial Intelligence and Cable Television. This is about 90 minutes from purdue university. So good morning and welcome to the Media Technology and state panel. This is part of a larger two day session called remaking american political history where were all talking about history and how