Booknotes: Lincoln the Citizen, The Complete Version

New Arrival:

• Lincoln the Citizen - February 12, 1809 to March 4, 1861: The Complete Version by Henry C. Whitney, ed. by Michael Burlingame (Univ of Ill Press, 2025).

Of the group of individuals who both knew Abraham Lincoln intimately and contributed to the field of Lincoln biography, Henry Clay Whitney is a person of whom I am not familiar. General info online tells me that Whitney was a fellow lawyer who met Lincoln in Illinois and joined him on the circuit in that state. Showing yet again that it helps to have friends in high places, Lincoln appointed him Assistant U.S. Paymaster in 1861 and Whitney served in that capacity for almost the entire length of the war. Long after Lincoln's assassination, Whitney put pen to paper and authored a two-volume biography of his personal friend and political associate (Lincoln the Citizen and Lincoln the President) along with another book, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln.

In this new edition of Lincoln the Citizen, editor and eminent Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame "restores material cut by editors of the original 1907 publication to present Henry Clay Whitney’s work in full." Whitney's account "offers a rare character study and insightful biography of Lincoln before he became president." Burlingame's brief but informative introduction summarizes Whitney's own background and contextualizes Whitney's volume in terms of both content and reliability while also offering useful comparisons to how other biographers presented certain aspects of Lincoln's life, legal career, and character. In Burlingame's view, Whitney "significantly complements Herndon's biography." He also rates Whitney's presentation of Lincoln's character as being filled with "keen insights." Whitney covers a lot of ground that interests today's scholars and readers alike, including Lincoln's childhood, family, early adventures, his time in New Salem, relations with Anne Rutledge and other women, his legal and political careers, and even his physical appearance. In Burlingame's estimation, the book contains much in the way of "valuable information not found elsewhere" (pp. xii-xiii).

On the other hand, serious charges have been levied against the veracity of Whitney's works, and Burlingame addresses those matters as well. As mentioned above, Burlingame "places Whitney’s singular contributions within Lincoln studies," but he "also weighs criticisms of the book and disputes over what information the author may or may not have invented." Taking all that into account, one gets the clear impression that Burlingame firmly believes that the reliable good outweighs the unreliable bad in Whitney's writings. "A restored edition of an invaluable memoir," Lincoln the Citizen "presents a wealth of overlooked biographical detail by one of the people who knew Lincoln best."