Abraham Lincoln seems to have had a falling out with his father later in life, rarely visiting once he had a family of his own. When Thomas passed away at the age of 73, Abraham was home tending to a sick wife and his rambunctious boys. Thomas died on January 17, 1851.
I recently visited Thomas Lincoln’s gravesite near Lerna, Illinois. Today there is a beautiful headstone marker noting Thomas Lincoln and his second wife, Lincoln’s stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln. It guards a small fenced area that also includes small individual markers at the foot of each of their graves.
Originally the Gordon Burial Ground, then the Shiloh Cemetery, and now called the Thomas Lincoln Cemetery, the gravesite sits next to the Shiloh Presbyterian Church on the way to the Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site. Abraham Lincoln visited his father’s grave shortly before heading to Washington to be inaugurated as our 16th president.
He would not have seen a grave marker. Likely no more than a rock marked the site at the time, a nephew said that Abraham placed a board with the initials T.L. during his visit. Whether that story is true or not, a permanent gravestone was not erected until 1880 after donations by local friends and Robert Todd Lincoln.
But that isn’t the end of the story, for the gravestone erected then is not the one passersby see today, unless they pay attention. The beautiful grey headstone most obvious to visitors was installed in 1924 by the Illinois Lions Club, with the two smaller footstones donated by the Kiwanis Club a year later. The more unassuming original marker sits in its own wrought iron fenced area about 50 yards from the modern marker. This small spire had been slowly chipped away by tourists seeking souvenirs, hence the need for a surrogate stone. A “Looking for Lincoln” sign sits in the small parking lot in back of the church, and only its readers are tipped off to the location of the original gravestone.
George Balch, a local farmer and poet who knew Thomas and Sarah Lincoln, wrote a poem years later to bring public attention to the neglected condition of the grave. A portion graces the waymarker sign; the following presents the entire poem.
I
In a low, sweet vale, by a murmuring rill,
The pioneer’s ashes are sleeping.
Where the white marble slabs are so lonely and still,
In the silence their vigil are keeping.
II
On their sad, lonely faces are words of fame,
But none of them speak of his glory,
When the pioneer died, his age and his name,
No monument whispers the story.
III
No myrtle, nor ivy, nor hyacinth blows,
O’er the lonely grave where they laid him;
No cedar, nor holly, nor almond tree grows
Near the plebian’s grave to shade him.
IV
Bright evergreens wave over many a grave
O’er some bow the sad weeping willow,
But no willow trees nor evergreens wave
Where the pioneer sleeps on his pillow.
Some are inhumed with honors of state
And laid beneath temples to moulder;
The grave of the father of Lincoln the great,
Is known by a hillock and boulder.
VI
Let him take his lone sleep, and gently rest,
With naught to disturb or awake him,
When the angels shall come to gather the blest
To Abraham’s bosom, they’ll take him.
Abraham would never see his stepmother again as she was too old to make the trip to Washington and President Lincoln never traveled back to Illinois. He was assassinated in office on April 14-15, 1865, days after the end of the Civil War. Sarah Bush Lincoln outlived her stepson, passing away on April 12, 1869.
David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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It was here that I also grew up. ” Here I grew Up” Is the name of the film that visiters veiwed at the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial In Lincoln City Indiana. As I stated it weas also where I grew up in my most formitive years. My parents bought a home that was just 200 yards from the origional Thomas Lincoln Home site in 1977. It sits on a portion of the Lincoln farm. I could look out of my bedroom window and see the replica cabin and farm site. I walked the fields and drank from the same springs tyhat the Lincoln family did when they moved here from Kentucky. The very property that we owned was most likely cleared by Young Abe himself. As I walked around the woods and fields and played in the creek behind our home I often wondered if Abe himself did the same thing..I always felt a sense of the history that was created by Abe during those formitve years of age seven until twenty one. I often wished that the land that Abe toiled in created in me the same man that it created in Abe. I feel proud to have lived there…
That must have been quite an experience. I was there this past spring and felt a connection being on the same site, but that must pale to our feelings growing up on the very same ground.
Thomas Lincoln Reconsidered
By Richard E. Hart
Thomas Lincoln has been the subject of description and judgment since at least 1860 when a political biography of his son Abraham was written. Since then, about 18,000 titles have been published about Abraham, with a majority having some brief description of Thomas. Those written shortly after Abraham’s death were assembled quickly to meet the demand for a record of Abraham’s life and accomplishments. Some elevated Abraham to Biblical heights. Indeed, he became Father Lincoln. As Abraham rose to the heavens, Thomas was pushed into an abyss. From that post mortem period to present, most critical judgments of Thomas conclude that he was a miserable failure both as a man and as a father. It is time to reconsider those judgments.
There have been historians who differed with and questioned the conventional wisdom in judging Thomas. In 1942, Louis A. Warren wrote a critique clearly describing what he thought was the unfair demonization of Thomas Lincoln.
Thomas Lincoln has been the scapegoat for all who would make Lincoln a saint… Folklore and tradition have made him one of the most despised characters in American history, and as long as he is portrayed as a vagabond, an idler, a tramp, a rover, and as poor white trash, lacking in energy, void of ambition, wanting in respectability, and a general failure in life, it will be impossible to trace any tendencies which the President may have inherited from his father. If no one challenges the statements that Thomas Lincoln was ignorant, shiftless, indolent, restless, unsuccessful, thriftless, trifling, hopeless, improvident, listless, lazy, and worthless, those who feel that the President’s environmental surroundings may have contributed to his advancement will have difficulty in finding any worthwhile influences exerted over him by his father.
Warren was not alone in his nonconventional, sympathetic view of Thomas. Some teachers, historians, writers, historical societies, and Lincoln aficionados who lived in Indiana and Kentucky agreed with Warren’s assessment of Thomas. It was easy to ignore and even brush them aside as provincial defenders of their own and Thomas’s home turf. The conventional wisdom that Thomas was a deplorable man and father remains alive and well today.
Until a few years ago, I accepted the conventional wisdom and was among those who without question judged Thomas a worthless failure. After all, these were the judgments made by several of my closest friends and prominent Lincoln biographers. At that point, however, I was unaware of the small band of Indiana dissenters, the Warren school, and I had no reason to conclude that one was correct and one was incorrect.
Then I discovered a whole new Thomas Lincoln. He was revealed to me by Indiana and Kentucky friends of the Warren school who are part of a growing, somewhat silent, unorganized, subculture of Thomas Lincoln revisionists. Their voices are quiet and unpretentious, but what they say resounded in my ears like a loud clap of summer thunder rolling across the Illinois prairie.
The revisionists strongly disagree with the conventional descriptions of Thomas Lincoln found in many contemporary biographies. To support their position, they generously share photographs and information about Thomas’s abilities as a cabinet maker. And not just a rough cabinet maker, but a master, whose pieces are treasured by private collectors, museums, and universities. As I learned more about Thomas’s beautiful cabinets, I agreed with the revisionists. Thomas was truly a master craftsman with superior artistic and mathematical skills. This became even more remarkable when I learned that Thomas was blind in one eye at least since he first moved to Indiana and that his eyesight continued to decline. By the time of his death, he was most likely blind in the other eye. In modern parlance, he was physically disabled and would have been eligible for public assistance. I did not find these important facts in my favorite biographies of Lincoln. I wondered why and I still do.
As I examined other aspects of Thomas’s life, I continued to discover a man unlike the one described by some Lincoln biographers. He and his famous son were different in their views of the world and their hoped-for position in the world’s future. Thomas’s was a matter of fact, unconscious acceptance of a hard and unjust life driven by day to day survival on the edge of the American frontier and spiritual dependence on a literal and judgmental Lord. Abraham’s was a conscious, cerebral examination–an expansive overview of life and of its possibilities beyond the day to day grueling fight for survival. Abraham’s view made possible by Thomas’–the survival mentality of the early pioneer Thomas was followed by Abraham and the second generation of fresh pioneers. But their differences did not create hatred or disgust. Their “differences” were nothing more than the father-son rivalry and tension common to man since the beginning of time. The differences did not squelch the love and respect of father for son and vice-versa.
In analyzing and describing the relationship between father and son, some historians have taken letters and events and interpreted them erroneously. These stretched interpretations need to be reexamined.
One such misinterpretation is of a letter from Abraham to his stepbrother, John D. Johnston, about Thomas Lincoln who was sick and dying. On January 12, 1851, five days before Thomas died, and 22 days after Willie Lincoln’s birth, Abraham responded to John’s letter. He said he could not come because Mary given birth to Willie 3 weeks earlier, and she was sick-abed. (Baby Eddy had died 10 months before.) Certain parts of the letter have been interpreted in a way that is offered as evidence of Abraham’s disdain of his father. Here is Abraham’s letter.
Dear Brother [John D. Johnston]: Springfield, Jany. 12. 1851 –
On the day before yesterday I received a letter from Harriett, written at Greenup. She says she has just returned from your house; and that Father [is very] low, and will hardly recover. She also s[ays] you have written me two letters; and that [although] you do not expect me to come now, yo[u wonder] that I do not write. I received both your [letters, and] although I have not answered them, it is no[t because] I have forgotten them, or been uninterested about them — but because it appeared to me I could write nothing which could do any good. You already know I desire that neither Father or Mother shall be in want of any comfort either in health or sickness while they live; and I feel sure you have not failed to use my name, if necessary, to procure a doctor, or any thing else for Father in his present sickness. My business is such that I could hardly leave home now, if it were not, as it is, that my own wife is sick-abed. (It is a case of baby-sickness, and I suppose is not dangerous.) I sincerely hope Father may yet recover his health; but at all events tell him to remember to call upon, and confide in, our great, and good, and merciful Maker; who will not turn away from him in any extremity. He notes the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads; and He will not forget the dying man, who puts his trust in Him. Say to him that if we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant; but that if it be his lot to go now, he will soon have a joyous [meeting] with many loved ones gone before; and where [the rest] of us, through the help of God, hope ere-long [to join] them.
Write me again when you receive this.
Affectionately A. Lincoln
Abraham’s letter is beautifully poignant in its gentle words to be given to his father in his final illness. It is the Lincoln of our better angels. However, some have cited the letter as acceptable evidence of the low regard with which Abraham considered his father.
Abraham used the word “painful” as a description of the sorrow he would feel if he were to see his father on his deathbed. The pain he would experience was not a loathing or disdainful pain, but rather a sorrowful pain. The “loathing pain” interpretation would be totally contrary to Abraham’s nature, a nature that found it hard to harm an ant, turtle, turkey, or small animal, much less his father on his deathbed.
If the “loathing pain” interpretation were true, it would be Abraham and not Thomas who would and should suffer in repute. What son would write such a cruel letter to his 73-year-old father in his final moments of life? A dastardly, mean-spirited, and cruel son. Abraham had none of those characteristics.
When the letter was received, Thomas was dying, partially if not totally blind, and very weak. He was probably beyond the point of being capable of reading Abraham’s letter, and possibly unable to understand what it said when read to him. His wife Sarah, however, was not. It would have been Sarah, not Thomas, who would have been the recipient of Abraham’s cruel judgment. Surely Abraham realized this as he wrote the letter, and he would not have hurt his beloved stepmother in this way.
To support the “loathing pain” interpretation, some point out that Abraham did not attend his father’s funeral that was held only a short time after the January letter. Some suggest and some with great certitude assert that Abraham’s absence is clear evidence of his disdain for his father.
But, one must ask, who would suffer the shame of Abraham’s slight? Not Thomas. He was dead. It would have been Sarah, but Abraham would not have punished poor Sarah in this manner. Acts of intentional, harmful judgment were not something that were a part of Lincoln’s character. And how presumptuous to think that Abraham left us such little clues of his hatred of his father, clues that future historians might examine like tea leaves and discern the truth of that relationship.
Common sense is often the best method to determine the meaning of human activity or inactivity. In 1851, communication and travel were slow. Burials were not. By the time Abraham learned of his father’s death, arranged for the care of his Springfield family, and undertook a 100-mile journey across the January prairie to Coles County, the funeral would have been long over.
And if one accepts the premise that important deductions can be made about one’s feelings for another by failure to attend a funeral, then why no similar analysis and judgment about Mary and her father, Robert Todd? Neither Mary nor Abraham Lincoln attended his funeral after his death on July 17, 1849, at age 58 in Lexington, Kentucky.
One cannot conclude that Abraham did not attend his father’s funeral because he disliked him or had extreme, unresolved issues with him. I believe that it was the living, Mary and the new baby boy Willie, and their needs that Abraham chose to care for, rather than his father’s final illness and death. To read more into Abraham’s failure to attend his father’s funeral defies common sense and is a real stretch.
Thomas Lincoln was a man well-suited for his place and time, on the cutting edge of the 19th -century American western frontier with thousands of other like men. He moved into places where there was little or no semblance of western civilization, and brought the rough, foundational elements of that civilization to those new places. He did so by establishing a home, raising a family, providing for them through subsistence farming and masterful cabinet making, participating in the churches, the militia and public institutions of the communities where he lived and fending off the last resistances of the American Indians. He rightfully and thankfully demanded that his son assist in these tasks as he grew. Without the vanguard of Thomas and his ilk, the subsequent flow of American settlers could not have occurred. There would have been no Abraham Lincoln.
I respectfully urge Lincoln historians to take a fresh look at Thomas and reconsider their judgments. To do so will be a pursuit not only of truth, but also answer the call of the better angels within us.
Richard E. Hart
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