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Getting Straight on Abe Lincoln
Excellent research on the legends of a much maligned President Lincoln Legends: Myths, hoaxes and confabulations associated with our greatest president by Edward Steers. ISBN: 978-0-8131-9241-3
by Vic Chapman
This is a delightful little book that comes at a good time. Abraham Lincoln has ever drawn rabid rage from sore losers of the Civil War and their latter day lightweight descendants who see the 16th president as a foil for everything they despise about this country now. There are still plenty of people angry that the slaves got freed, that federalism won out over states’ rights and that “Dixie” didn’t become the national anthem and they have been long at work to backhand the 16th president ever since he was shot at Ford’s Theatre, calling him everything from a Stalinesque dictator to queer, fratricidal and worse.
Lincoln Legends takes on the myths about Lincoln and deals effectively with them. Author Edward Steers has written two books on Lincoln, Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and The Trial: The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators so is well versed in Lincoln lore. Lincoln Legends is extensively footnoted (22 out of 264 pages) and much of this deals with primary or government sources concerning Lincoln’s life and work.
Without giving all away, it’s worth dealing with one annoying myth that has gained much ground among pseudo-historians in recent years; that of a suregeon named Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, who treated escaping assassin John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg. Mudd was captured, tried by a military tribunal and sentenced to life at hard labor in a hellhole in the Dry Tortugas. Pardoned in 1869, he continued to maintain his innocence and his grandson kept hammering away on the theme that his grand daddy was just doing his job to help a stranger in need and that the Feds punished him unduly for it.
The carefully muddled propaganda surrounding the Maryland doctor made it all the way to the Supreme Court before it was handed back to the Mudd family with “Do not disturb” written on it. The truth was that Sam Mudd was a spy and worked clandestinely in a confederate network in his border state of Maryland. He knew the conspirators in the assassination plot, conspired with Booth and helped him following the murder. He delayed speaking to the Feds for a day in order to give Booth time to flee and lied through his teeth when he finally did. The evidence should have hanged him; the only unclear issue is the jurisdiction of a military tribunal to try an American citizen in the first place. But there is no serious doubt about Mudd’s guilt. As Steers gleefully notes, “Samuel’s name is still Mud.”
Whether Lincoln was gay, or if his wife was a confederate agent, or just how the Gettysburg Address was written, or whether the log cabin in a museum was the one Lincoln was born in and many other legends are well and effectively considered in Steers’ book. An engaging read, it sets a lot of issues straight, finally.
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