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Think you know every last biography of Abraham Lincoln? Think again.
The Washington Post notes that some 16,000 books have been written about Abraham Lincoln, whose 200th birthday we celebrate this week. To judge from the book review sections lately, another thousand or so are being published to coincide with the bicentennial. Without vouching for their historical accuracy, here are a few of the ones I’ve read so far.
Team of Weevils, by Samantha Ort. Ort, author of several revisionist books, including Churchill the Tyrant and Hitler, Peacemaker posits that Lincoln’s Cabinet was actually a hotbed of back-stabbing, name-calling, and even, on one occasion, a shoving match that left Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase with a bloodied nose after he called War Secretary Edwin Stanton a “hemorrhoid-faced poltroon.” Navy Secretary Gideon Welles broke up the fight by threatening to dispatch an ironclad to bombard Stanton’s house. Ort writes: “The real civil war was taking place not on the killing fields of Virginia, but on the ground floor of the White House.” Her assertion that Lincoln was “passed out drunk” during Cabinet meetings may cause some grumbling in certain quarters.
A new book says there is “overwhelming” evidence that President Barack Obama is a direct lineal descendant of Abraham Lincoln.
Mary Quite Contrary, by Herbert Donald David. David, author of 27 books of Lincolniana, now says that there is “persuasive evidence” that Mary Todd Lincoln was in fact a man. “If you look closely at the photographs,” David writes, “it’s like, way obvious. The face, the hands, they couldn’t possibly have been those of a woman. The intriguing part is how she was able to conceal the fact from her husband all those years.” Intriguing, indeed. The presidential children, Tad and Willie, were, in David’s telling, actually born to a Danish housekeeper named Hagnar, whom “Mary”—his birth name was allegedly Seymour Pitt—kept in the basement.
Dream of the Father, by William Smuntz. Smuntz, who was physically ejected from the American Genealogical Society in 2002 for his monograph proposing that George W. Bush was related to Albert Einstein, now says there is “overwhelming” evidence that President Barack Obama is a direct lineal descendant of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, he says, citing conveniently recently unearthed memoirs of one of the White House gardeners, had an affair with “a fetching and willing” upstairs housemaid named Merrie Christmas. Lincoln, in this telling, was “at a low point, both in the progress of the war and in his personal life, having just discovered that his wife was in a fact a man,” and thus “sought solace in the arms of the comely and willing Merrie.” When Merrie became pregnant, Lincoln’s secretary John Hay quietly arranged for her to be sent to Kenya, but said presciently, “I suspect this will not be the last of it.”
No new crop of Lincoln books would be complete without yet another version of the assassination, and so comes Wilmot Dimwiddle’s somewhat expansive, five-volume Sick Semper.
Somewhat boiled down (and trust me, I’m doing you a favor by boiling it down), Dimwiddle’s thesis is that Lincoln, bored “out of his gourd” by the play Our American Cousin, was scratching the back of his head with the .44 caliber derringer when it went off accidentally. John Wilkes Booth, he asserts, had snuck into Lincoln’s box to congratulate him personally on winning the war and freeing the slaves. When the gun went off, Booth’s “acting instincts spontaneously took hold of him, like a sudden fever.” Realizing this could be “the role of a lifetime,” he pulled out his knife, carved Major Rathbone “like a Thanksgiving turkey, and leapt onto the stage, spouting Latin.” Dimwiddle even goes so far as to allege that Booth, “an early proponent of Method Acting, broke his leg on purpose, knowing that this would give his performance extra flavor.”
Over to you.
Christopher Buckley’s books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. His journalism, satire, and criticism has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Esquire. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Forbes FYI.
How Rich People Smoke Pot
Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
Justice Clinton?
As vice chairman of Public Strategies and president of Maverick Media, Mark McKinnon has helped meet strategic challenges for candidates, corporations and causes, including George W. Bush, John McCain, Governor Ann Richards, Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong, and Bono. McKinnon is co-chair of Arts & Labs, a collaboration between technology and creative communities that have embraced today's rich Internet environment to deliver innovative and creative digital products to consumers.
One Hell of a Speech
Christopher Buckley's books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir. Buckley's Daily Beast column is the winner of an Online Journalism Award in the category of Online Commentary.
The Audacity of Oops
Christopher Buckley's books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir. Buckley's Daily Beast column is the winner of an Online Journalism Award in the category of Online Commentary.
Too Big to Succeed
Christopher Buckley's books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir. Buckley's Daily Beast column is the winner of an Online Journalism Award in the category of Online Commentary.
photoshock
And back to you sir! In the world of historical revisionism, there are always the crackpots and loonys.
These so-called historians suffer from what I term, Revisionist Historical Syndrome, or more colloquially, Right Hand Syndrome. For these people suffer from an overuse of their right hands for the sole purpose of inflicting pleasure on themselves for writing such nonsense and drivel.
Hopefully, one day they will find a cure for this dreaded and debilitating disease, but until then, one can only hope that the sufferers of this dreaded syndrome, Right Hand themselves out of existence.
Mr. Buckley, thank you so much for your acute sense of right and wrong and the ability to see through the miasma of the revisionist thinking.
FrankleeMiDeer
Not bad, sir. Not bad at all. (I always did wonder about M.T. Lincoln, but never quite had the nerve to say anything.)
dearlizzie
Hilarious! Great way to start my day.
"I suspect [and hope] this will not be the last of it." Keep the spoofs coming, please.
Can you tackle supremely irrelevant political analogies next? Like annual expenditures since Jesus's supposed birth.
theblender
very very funny. lol agreeing with dearlizzie...great way to start the day....
Knapp515
Merrie Christmas Gracie?
drzarkov47
Dear CB,
May I recommend "It Was All Abe's Idea" by Chester Choler, Professor of American History, Emeritus at Bob Jones University.
Jones supplies ample evidence that a chance enounter between A. Lincoln and a Miss L. Borden directly led to the disaster at Fall River. Apparently misinterpreting Lincoln's use of the term "whack job" expressed while he was eating his favorite bowl of N.E. Clam Chowder (light on the cream, heavy on the Oysterettes) combined with Miss Borden's hearing difficulty (deafness in the left ear caused by her diving into an icy river to save her brother Harry) resulted in one of our many crimes of the century.
Available in the New Age section of B & N.
finderj
Oh, thank you. A short look at how the ridiculous prey on the credulous and make money at the same time. Say, do you think I could make up a story about how Lincoln was actually a woman and get paid for it?
nodrama
Can't recall whom, but someone recently quoted New Yorker reviewer Edmond Wilson's review of Carl Sandburg's biography of Lincoln to the effect that Sanburg's biography was "... the worst thing to happen to Lincoln since John Wilkes Boothe."
In recent days, the deifiication of Lincoln has reached epic proportions. One can't skip through the channels without seeing another Lincoln scholar extolling his qualities on cspan. All of them are deadly serious, and all of them raise Lincoln to a level only one notch below Jesus Christ.
My favorite incarnation of this excess of Lincoln comes in the form of Doris Kerns Goodwin, the favorite court "historian" of our day. Ms. Kerns Goodwin claims that she is so familiar with the Lincoln frame of mind that she can posit Lincoln's views on current issues. (I think Ms. Kerns Goodwin also does palmistry at an abandoned store front on Cambridge Square at $5 a pop.)
Looking for someone to blame for all this foolishness, much of the fault should be placed on the shoulders of the late Tim Russert who hosted Kerns Goodwin on his shows. (The exercise typifies much of the problem with "the media.") The premise of these seances was to put Russert's political prejudices on a higher level. If Russert had attempted to propagandize a particular political view, he would have been roundly called out. However, by dressing up the conversation as "history" in the form of Kerns Goodwin or David Beschloss, Russert moved to a higher realm which is more or less beyond criticism.
What is the purpose of Lincoln in today's discussion? One cannot argue with religion. Belief is beyond proof. The deified Lincoln as a projection of our current view of the nation moves debate to a level where only those who know HIS will are able to give us truth.
Call in one of the theogolists from Time or Newsweek. They can lead us to the promised land.
magicman
Very funny, Mr. Buckley. Almost as good as Rope-a-Dope. I was watching Peter Sellers', 'A Shot in the Dark', and was instantly reminded of our Stimulus Package...especially once the ensemble had retired to Camp Sunshine.
What's next? 'Playboy of the Western World'?
ScottRose
What I've heard is that Lincoln and his heirs with in cahoots with a conniving cabal of copper lobbyists, hence, his image on the U.S. penny.
curmodgeon
Abe looked contemporary in his stovepipe hat, but you just look silly in your retro fedora. The fifties are over and Sinatra
is dead. You really need to update a bit.
Zephyr
Re. Sick Temper: It could happen... lol!
magicman
You do know that it is Poe's 200th Birthday this year? Yes, the 'dark' artist is being celebrated in Baltimore. I think they're calling it Nevermore2009.com or something similar. What an appropriate use of words and description...
roseann
Curmodgeon..thank you for commenting on Buckley's photo. It emphasizes the arch poseur twit side of his personality.
Emilia
Brilliant satire.
Thank you.
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