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.Ward Hill Lamon’s The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Boston, 1872) and William H.Herndon and Jesse W.Weik’s Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (New York, 1889) both draw on letters and interviews gathered by Herndon from people who knew Lincoln in his early years.Herndon’s own depiction is especially important, for he was a friend and an observer of Lincoln’s development from 1837 on.The letters and interviews he gathered from others are used selectively and with altered texts in his biography, but they are presented accurately and in their entirety in Douglas L.Wilson and Rodney O.Davis, eds., Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln (Urbana, 1998).There are two excellent studies of Lincoln’s relationship to his father: John Y.Simon, “House Divided: Lincoln and His Father,” The Tenth Annual R.Gerald McMurtry Lecture (Fort Wayne, 1987) and Rodney O.Davis, “Abraham Lincoln: Son and Father,” The Edgar S.and Ruth W.Burkardt Lecture Series (Galesburg, Ill., 1997).Lincoln’s young manhood began in Indiana, where he lived from age 7 to age 21, and this period of his development is most in need of study.Still useful for basic information in this period are three older works: J.T.Hobson, Footprints of Abraham Lincoln (Dayton, 1909); J.Edward Murr, “Lincoln in Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History 13:4(1917), 14:1 & 2 (1918); and Bess V.Ehrmann, The Missing Chapter in the Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago, 1938).A book that can be recommended for its sources but not its text is Francis Van Natter, Lincoln’s Boyhood: A Chronicle of his Indiana Years (Washington, 1963).The most comprehensive coverage of these important years thus far is Louis A.Warren’s Lincoln’s Youth: Indiana Years (New York, 1959), though Warren’s treatment of the young Lincoln’s development is not searching, and it leaves some promising sources and avenues unexplored.For Lincoln’s early Illinois years in New Salem, Thomas P.Reep’s compilation of portraits and traditional stories, Lincoln at New Salem (n.p.: The Old Salem League, 1927), is an important source.Inspiring less confidence but more colorful are the recollections of Lincoln and his New Salem neighbors in T.G.Onstot, Pioneers of Menard and Mason Counties (Forest City, Ill., 1902).Benjamin Thomas’s Lincoln’s New Salem (Chicago, 1954 [1934]) is an authoritative treatment that, despite being somewhat dated, is still the best overview of the brief life of the village.Ida M.Tarbell’s little book, The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1896), based on her articles for McClure’s magazine, was the first carefully researched book on this topic and is still evocative, not least because it is so well illustrated.The first volume of Albert J.Beveridge’s Abraham Lincoln: 1809–1858 (Boston, 1928) is by far the most detailed treatment of Lincoln’s early life and continues to be useful.John Evangelist Walsh’s The Shadows Rise: Abraham Lincoln and the Ann Rutledge Legend (Urbana, 1993) is the first full-length exploration of an important episode in Lincoln’s early life that had long been labeled a myth.A groundbreaking work on Lincoln’s psychological development, which pays close attention to this period, is Charles B.Strozier’s influential book, Lincoln’s Quest for Union: Public and Private Meanings (New York, 1982).Michael Burlingame’s The308T h e L i n c o l n E n i g m aInner World of Abraham Lincoln (Urbana, 1994) is a provocative investigation of Lincoln’s psychology and particularly his emotional life, and the documentation for his discussion of these topics is especially full and useful.David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln (New York, 1995), is distinctive among major biographies for being a source of many insights on the young Lincoln’s development.“Young Man Lincoln” expands on ideas and information concerning Abraham Lincoln’s formative years laid out in Douglas L.Wilson, Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1998).It attempts to show the difficulties Lincoln encountered—educational, vocational, and particularly emotional—that have heretofore been neglected in the accounts of his legendary rise.What Lincoln’s poems on his Indiana childhood tell us about him is the subject of Douglas L.Wilson, “Abraham Lincoln and the ‘Spirit of Mortal,’” in Lincoln Before Washington: New Perspectives on the Illinois Years (Urbana, 1997), and the same author’s “The Literary Lincoln” (forthcoming).For a revealing treatment of the young William James’s experience with madness, referred to in this essay, see Louis Menand, “William James & the Case of the Epileptic Patient,” New York Review of Books 45:20 (Dec.17, 1998), 81–93.Three: A MarriageThe Lincoln marriage has long fascinated scholars because it is an avenue toward understanding a president whom nobody knew very well, except his wife.Today’s scholars are interested in the marriage for additional reasons: because it is a well-documented union between two middle-class Americans and because, while any president is exceptional, the marriage tells us about nineteenth-century rituals of courting, matrimony, sex, and child-raising.Thus, anyone who would understand the Lincolns’ marriage must place it in the context of other American marriages of the time.There are several useful studies of American marriage that do so.They include Ellen Rothman, Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America (New York, 1984); Karen Lystra, Searching the Heart: Women, Men and Romantic Love in 19th Century America (New York, 1989); and E.Antonio Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York, 1993)
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