William Herndon (lawyer)

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

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." 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.

Herndon believed that Lincoln's "official" biographers, Nicolay and Hay, would tell the story of Lincoln "with the classes as against the masses."

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."

Numerous obstacles kept Herndon from writing the planned book until he met a young collaborator, Jesse W. Weik, who moved the project to completion, in 1888. The biography finally was published, in 1889, titled "Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life".

Herndon died in 1891 and is buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, the same cemetery as Lincoln.

Works

"Lincoln's Herndon" by David Herbert Donald

"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

External links

* [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?faid/faid:@field(DOCID+ms001002)#Collection%20Summary The Herndon-Weik Collection of Lincolniana--A Register of the Collection in the Library of Congress]
* [http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/rights.html Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements About Lincoln] at Northern Illinois University Library
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