CORRESPONDENCE WITH LINCOLN, NOTT, AND BRAINERD

(From Robert Lincoln)

MANCHESTER, VERMONT,

July 27, 1909.

DEAR MAJOR PUTNAM:

Your letter of July 23rd reaches me here, and I beg to express my thanks for your kind remembrances of me in London.... I am much interested in learning that you were present at the time my father made his speech at Cooper Institute. I, of course, remember the occasion very well, although I was not present. I was at that time in the middle of my year at Phillips Exeter Academy, preparing for the Harvard entrance examination of the summer of 1860.... After the Cooper Institute address, my father came to Exeter to see how I was getting along, and this visit resulted in his making a number of speeches in New England on his way and on his return, and at Exeter he wrote to my mother a letter which was mainly concerned with me, but which did make reference to these speeches.... He said that he had had some embarrassment with these New England speeches, because in coming East he had anticipated making no speech excepting the one at the Cooper Institute, and he had not prepared himself for anything else.... In the later speeches, he was addressing reading audiences who had, as he thought probable, seen the report of his Cooper Institute speech, and he was obliged, therefore, from day to day (he made about a dozen speeches in New England in all) to bear that fact in mind.

Sincerely yours,

ROBERT LINCOLN.

(From Judge Nott)

WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.,

July 26, 1909.

DEAR PUTNAM:

I consider it very desirable that the report of Mr. Lincoln's speech, embodying the final revision, should be preserved in book form.... The text in the pamphlet now in your hands is authentic and conclusive. Mr. Lincoln read the proof both of the address and of the notes. I am glad that you are to include in your reprint the letters from Mr. Lincoln, as these letters authenticate this copy of the address as the copy which was corrected by him with his own hand....

The preface to the address, written in September, 1860, has interest because it shows what we thought of the address at that time.... Your worthy father was, if I remember rightly, one of the vice-presidents of the meeting....

Yours faithfully,

CHARLES C. NOTT.

(From Cephas Brainerd)

NEW YORK, August 18, 1909.

DEAR MAJOR PUTNAM:

I am very glad to learn that there is good prospect that the real Lincoln Cooper Institute address, with the evidence in regard to it, will now be available for the public.... I am glad also that with the address you are proposing to print the letters received by Judge Nott from Mr. Lincoln. One or two of these have, unfortunately, not been preserved. I recall in one an observation made by Lincoln to the effect that he "was not much of a literary man."

I did not see much of Mr. Lincoln when he was in New York, as my most active responsibility in regard to the meeting was in getting up an audience.... I remember in handing some weeks earlier to John Sherman, who, like Lincoln, had never before spoken in New York, five ten-dollar gold pieces, that he said he "had not expected his expenses to be paid." At a lunch that was given to Sherman a long time afterward, I referred to that meeting. Sherman cocked his eye at me and said: "Yes, I remember it very well; I never was so scar't in all my life." ...

The observations of Judge Nott in regard to the meeting are about as just as anything that has ever been put into print, and as I concur fully in the accuracy of these recollections, I do not undertake to give my own impressions at any length. I was expecting to hear some specimen of Western stump-speaking as it was then understood. You will, of course, observe that the speech contains nothing of the kind. I do remember, however, that Lincoln spoke of the condition of feeling between the North and the South.... He refers to the treatment which Northern men received in the South, and he remarked, parenthetically, that he had never known of a man who had been able "to whip his wife into loving him," an observation that produced laughter.

In making up the notes, we ransacked, as you may be sure, all the material available in the libraries in New York, and I also had interviews as to one special point with Mr. Bancroft, with Mr. Hildreth, and with Dr. William Goodell, who was in those times a famous anti-slavery man.

Your father^[3] and William Curtis Noyes were possibly more completely in sympathy than any other two men in New York, with the efforts of these younger men; they impressed me as standing in that respect on the same plane. The next man to them was Charles Wyllis Elliott, the author of a History of New England. We never went to your father for advice or assistance when he failed to help us, and he was always so kindly and gentle in what he did and said that every one of us youngsters acquired for him a very great affection. He always had time to see us and was always on hand when he was wanted, and if we desired to have anything, we got it if he had it. Neither your father, nor Mr. Noyes, nor for that matter Mr. Elliott, ever suggested that we were "young" or "fresh" or anything of that sort. The enthusiasm which young fellows have was always recognised by these men as an exceedingly valuable asset in the cause.... Pardon all this from a "veteran," and believe me,

Sincerely yours,

CEPHAS BRAINERD.