Details
TAFT, William H. Autograph letter signed ("Wm. H. Taft"), as President, to Jesse W. Weik, Greencastle, Indiana, 9 January 1913. 1 page, 8vo, White House stationery.
TAFT THANKS HERNDON'S COLLABORATOR FOR SOME LINCOLN MANUSCRIPTS. "I am in receipt of your favor of January 7th last enclosing some handwriting of Abraham Lincoln," the President writes, evidently having met with Weik in his hometown of Greencastle. "I return these interesting memoranda. I am glad by this letter to complete your collection." Weik had been instrumental in bringing Herndon's book to life. Lincoln's former law partner had amassed a vast record of documents by and about Lincoln, but grew discouraged by the mid-1880s over his ability to ever complete the book. The deification of Lincoln was well advanced, and he sensed the public's unwillingness to believe the earthier portrait he planned to offer. Nicolay and Hay's massive biography, Herndon groused, captured "the real Lincoln as well as does a wax figure in the museum" (quoted in Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory, 127). Herndon's Lincoln was not a plaster saint but a man of burning ambition with profound religious doubts and a difficult home life. Jesse Weik started corresponding with Herndon, then meeting with him at Weik's home in Greencastle, Indiana. The younger man's intense interest in Lincoln reenergized Herndon and Weik wrote up their conversations and turned their correspondence into the text of Herndon's Lincoln.
TAFT THANKS HERNDON'S COLLABORATOR FOR SOME LINCOLN MANUSCRIPTS. "I am in receipt of your favor of January 7th last enclosing some handwriting of Abraham Lincoln," the President writes, evidently having met with Weik in his hometown of Greencastle. "I return these interesting memoranda. I am glad by this letter to complete your collection." Weik had been instrumental in bringing Herndon's book to life. Lincoln's former law partner had amassed a vast record of documents by and about Lincoln, but grew discouraged by the mid-1880s over his ability to ever complete the book. The deification of Lincoln was well advanced, and he sensed the public's unwillingness to believe the earthier portrait he planned to offer. Nicolay and Hay's massive biography, Herndon groused, captured "the real Lincoln as well as does a wax figure in the museum" (quoted in Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory, 127). Herndon's Lincoln was not a plaster saint but a man of burning ambition with profound religious doubts and a difficult home life. Jesse Weik started corresponding with Herndon, then meeting with him at Weik's home in Greencastle, Indiana. The younger man's intense interest in Lincoln reenergized Herndon and Weik wrote up their conversations and turned their correspondence into the text of Herndon's Lincoln.