By Paul Carrier
Anyone with more than a passing interest in the Civil War will recognize the names of John Hay and John Nicolay. Dubbed "my boys" by their boss, Hay and Nicolay were President Lincoln’s private secretaries. As historian Joshua Zeitz explains in this multifaceted book, that seemingly mundane job title was misleading because Hay and Nicolay lived in an era when presidential staffs were smaller, and individual responsibilities greater, than they are now.
Zeitz sets several tasks for himself in Lincoln’s Boys. In part a dual biography of Hay and Nicolay, the book explores the inner workings of Lincoln’s White House from the perspective of the two men who were closer to Lincoln during his presidency than everyone but his wife, Mary Todd. But the book’s subtitle makes it clear that there is more going on here than opening a new window on Lincoln’s years in office. Hay and Nicolay, who later published a 10-volume biography of Lincoln, effectively shaped our understanding of the 16th president by creating what some would call the myth of Lincoln. It is that process that occupies much of Zietz's attention.
Their monumental biography "constituted one of the most successful exercises in historical revisionism in American history," Zeitz notes. Writing against "the rising currents of Southern apologia and a popular vogue for reunion and reconciliation," Hay and Nicolay pioneered what Zeitz calls the Northern interpretation of the Civil War.
Zeitz argues that Hay and Nicolay recognized Lincoln’s greatness as an emancipator, military genius, orator, political tactician and "master of a fractious cabinet" at a time - the late 19th century - when even Northern intellectuals and politicians viewed the late president as an honest but out-of-his-depth country lawyer ill-suited to the task he faced as president. Early biographers had slandered Lincoln or grossly misrepresented him, claiming, for example, that Secretary of State William Seward was the real powerhouse who called the shots during Lincoln’s presidency.
Zeitz points out that Hay and Nicolay fought the "political amnesia" that followed the Civil War, which was being recast in the ensuing years as a mere "brothers’ squabble" over states’ rights rather than as "a moral struggle between slavery and freedom." The popular view rejected by Hay and Nicolay claimed, as Zeitz puts it, that "everyone was right and no one was wrong" on either side during the war. To Hay and Nicolay, the "romance of reunion" could not be allowed to overshadow the great sin that triggered the war and that placed Lincoln and the North on the side of the angels during the conflict.
Although Hay and Nicolay are understandably overshadowed by Lincoln, in Zeitz’s hands they are fascinating characters in their own right. The sober-minded, partisan Nicolay (1832-1901) and the glib, language-loving Hay (1838-1905) were impressively articulate, judging by their letters, diary entries and other writings. Hay had a distinguished career later in life, serving as ambassador to Great Britain and as secretary of state under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Even as a young presidential aide, he was remarkably eloquent and pointedly witty.
Following Lincoln’s election in 1860, for example, so many people applied for government jobs that Hay said "the number of people in the United States who find it impossible to earn an honest living must be appalling." Later on, Hay bailed out early while stuck vacationing in New Jersey with Mrs. Lincoln, whom Hay and Nicolay derided as "the hellcat." His excuse? "I impressed her with the belief that the delay of another day would break the blockade, recognize Davisdom, impeach the Cabinet and lose the Capital," Hay wrote. "Like a Roman matron, she sacrificed her feelings to save the Republic."
Zeitz examines Hay’s and Nicolay’s White House years in the larger context of the Civil War’s successes and setbacks, as well as the political machinations that inevitably consumed Lincoln and his advisers as they tried against great odds to run the government and secure election victories while waging a devastating war on a massive scale.
The author also explores how emancipation eventually came to eclipse preserving the Union as the North’s driving force during the war, and how Lincoln and his two closest aides wrestled with the evolution of their own racial views. Lincoln had to weigh his increasingly progressive goals against the need to keep the slave-owning border states in the Union during the war, which prompted him to countermand Union Gen. John C. Frémont’s 1861 decision to free the slaves of Confederate sympathizers in Missouri.
The fact that Hay and Nicolay personally witnessed so much, including Lincoln’s delivery of the Gettysburg Address, made their observations especially compelling and gave them a unique cachet as biographers, albeit with a strong pro-Lincoln bias. Presidential anecdotes abound here.
Hay was on hand in 1861 when Gen. George B. McClellan snubbed the president by going to bed while Lincoln waited in McClellan’s parlor, an insult that Hay recorded in his diary and disclosed in the Hay-Nicolay biography. And Hay was by Lincoln’s side when he died on April 15, 1865, the morning after John Wilkes Booth shot him at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Hay recorded Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s now-famous tribute to Lincoln that morning: "Now he belongs to the ages."
Zeitz’s tangential look at some of Hay’s creative writing - he became a noted poet - is somewhat digressive. But Lincoln’s Boys clearly makes the case that Hay and Nicolay - self-professed "Lincoln men" - were successful in their obsessive quest to protect and shape Lincoln’s legacy. Their vision of Lincoln and the Civil War has waxed and waned in popularity among historians and the general public over the years, but it is now firmly entrenched in the hearts and minds of the American people.
Zeitz sets several tasks for himself in Lincoln’s Boys. In part a dual biography of Hay and Nicolay, the book explores the inner workings of Lincoln’s White House from the perspective of the two men who were closer to Lincoln during his presidency than everyone but his wife, Mary Todd. But the book’s subtitle makes it clear that there is more going on here than opening a new window on Lincoln’s years in office. Hay and Nicolay, who later published a 10-volume biography of Lincoln, effectively shaped our understanding of the 16th president by creating what some would call the myth of Lincoln. It is that process that occupies much of Zietz's attention.
Their monumental biography "constituted one of the most successful exercises in historical revisionism in American history," Zeitz notes. Writing against "the rising currents of Southern apologia and a popular vogue for reunion and reconciliation," Hay and Nicolay pioneered what Zeitz calls the Northern interpretation of the Civil War.
Zeitz argues that Hay and Nicolay recognized Lincoln’s greatness as an emancipator, military genius, orator, political tactician and "master of a fractious cabinet" at a time - the late 19th century - when even Northern intellectuals and politicians viewed the late president as an honest but out-of-his-depth country lawyer ill-suited to the task he faced as president. Early biographers had slandered Lincoln or grossly misrepresented him, claiming, for example, that Secretary of State William Seward was the real powerhouse who called the shots during Lincoln’s presidency.
Zeitz points out that Hay and Nicolay fought the "political amnesia" that followed the Civil War, which was being recast in the ensuing years as a mere "brothers’ squabble" over states’ rights rather than as "a moral struggle between slavery and freedom." The popular view rejected by Hay and Nicolay claimed, as Zeitz puts it, that "everyone was right and no one was wrong" on either side during the war. To Hay and Nicolay, the "romance of reunion" could not be allowed to overshadow the great sin that triggered the war and that placed Lincoln and the North on the side of the angels during the conflict.
Although Hay and Nicolay are understandably overshadowed by Lincoln, in Zeitz’s hands they are fascinating characters in their own right. The sober-minded, partisan Nicolay (1832-1901) and the glib, language-loving Hay (1838-1905) were impressively articulate, judging by their letters, diary entries and other writings. Hay had a distinguished career later in life, serving as ambassador to Great Britain and as secretary of state under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Even as a young presidential aide, he was remarkably eloquent and pointedly witty.
Following Lincoln’s election in 1860, for example, so many people applied for government jobs that Hay said "the number of people in the United States who find it impossible to earn an honest living must be appalling." Later on, Hay bailed out early while stuck vacationing in New Jersey with Mrs. Lincoln, whom Hay and Nicolay derided as "the hellcat." His excuse? "I impressed her with the belief that the delay of another day would break the blockade, recognize Davisdom, impeach the Cabinet and lose the Capital," Hay wrote. "Like a Roman matron, she sacrificed her feelings to save the Republic."
Zeitz examines Hay’s and Nicolay’s White House years in the larger context of the Civil War’s successes and setbacks, as well as the political machinations that inevitably consumed Lincoln and his advisers as they tried against great odds to run the government and secure election victories while waging a devastating war on a massive scale.
The author also explores how emancipation eventually came to eclipse preserving the Union as the North’s driving force during the war, and how Lincoln and his two closest aides wrestled with the evolution of their own racial views. Lincoln had to weigh his increasingly progressive goals against the need to keep the slave-owning border states in the Union during the war, which prompted him to countermand Union Gen. John C. Frémont’s 1861 decision to free the slaves of Confederate sympathizers in Missouri.
The fact that Hay and Nicolay personally witnessed so much, including Lincoln’s delivery of the Gettysburg Address, made their observations especially compelling and gave them a unique cachet as biographers, albeit with a strong pro-Lincoln bias. Presidential anecdotes abound here.
Hay was on hand in 1861 when Gen. George B. McClellan snubbed the president by going to bed while Lincoln waited in McClellan’s parlor, an insult that Hay recorded in his diary and disclosed in the Hay-Nicolay biography. And Hay was by Lincoln’s side when he died on April 15, 1865, the morning after John Wilkes Booth shot him at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Hay recorded Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s now-famous tribute to Lincoln that morning: "Now he belongs to the ages."
Zeitz’s tangential look at some of Hay’s creative writing - he became a noted poet - is somewhat digressive. But Lincoln’s Boys clearly makes the case that Hay and Nicolay - self-professed "Lincoln men" - were successful in their obsessive quest to protect and shape Lincoln’s legacy. Their vision of Lincoln and the Civil War has waxed and waned in popularity among historians and the general public over the years, but it is now firmly entrenched in the hearts and minds of the American people.
