This is a rare, never before published manuscript, written circa 1880 by a long time friend and personal body-guard to Abraham Lincoln. The book was found in The Huntington Library in California in 2008.
The editor, Bob O’Connor, transcribed the document and has added footnotes to identify the characters and define the 19th century legal terms used by Mr. Lamon, who was an attorney.
No one had as much access to Abraham Lincoln during his presidency than Ward Hill Lamon. He spent many a night sleeping outside the Lincoln bedroom on the floor to protect his friend from harm. But try as he might, Abraham Lincoln sent Lamon on assignment and went to the Ford’s Theater against his bodyguard’s advice. The rest is history.
Lamon had known Mr. Lincoln since 1848. They were both attorneys on the 8th circuit of Illinois and were law partners from 1852-1856. Lamon was one of only three men Lincoln took to Washington with him when he became President. The other two were his secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay.
Following Lincoln’s death, two books were published listing Ward Hill Lamon as the author. The first, published in 1872, was called “The Life of Abraham Lincoln: From his birth to his Inauguration as President.” The second, originally published in 1895, was called “Recollections of Abraham Lincoln.”
It is of interest to note that neither of those two publications was written by Mr. Lamon. The first book was written by a ghost writer, Chauncey Black, who was paid by Lamon to write a book based on Lamon’s papers and papers Lamon purchased from William Herndon, another of Lincoln’s law partners. The second book was put together after Lamon’s death by his daughter Dollie from her father’s papers.
This book, in fact, is the only book ever written by Lincoln’s bodyguard.
Historians have tagged Lamon as a “braggart” yet those who read this book will find that in every single instance that Lamon talks about himself (as being the “friend who snuck Mr. Lincoln through Baltimore on his way to the Inauguration because plots had been discovered against Lincoln’s life) – Lamon never once identifies that he is talking about himself.
Lamon takes time in his book to talk about the time prior to the Civil War when he says that in the hands of Congress “lay the means of life and the means of death. They gave us one and withheld the other. They declined to take the responsibility of allaying the tumult; but took the far greater responsibility of allowing the nation to drift unconsciously and unprepared into the most gigantic civil war that ever shook the earth…With Congress rested the whole responsibility of peace or war and with them the message was left…but Congress behaved like a body of men who thought that the calamities of the nation were no special business of theirs….It is certain that they did not think the Union in danger or else did not care to preserve it…The nation was going to pieces and Congress left to its fate. The vessel freighted with all the hopes and all the wealth of 30,000,000 people was drifting to her doom and they alone who had the power to control her course refused to lay a finger on her helm.”
Ward Hill Lamon was with President Lincoln on a routine basis every single day. He often entertained the President by singing to him and playing his banjo. Those silly songs got Lamon in trouble along the way.
Mr. Lamon also traveled with President Lincoln to Sharpsburg in October 1862 and to Gettysburg in 1863. Lemon was asked by Judge Wills to orchestrate the entire event. It was Lamon who was Marshal in Chief of Dedication of the National at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863. Lamon set up the order of procession, invited guest from each of the Northern states, borrowed the buggies and horses for the celebrities, was in charge of security, and introduced Mr. Lincoln as he gave what we now know as “The Gettysburg Address.” In fact, Lamon is the only identified person besides President Lincoln in the one known photograph taken that day.
It was Lamon who received a warrant to arrest Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, during the famed habeas corpus controversy. It was Lamon who heard first hand from the President about strange dreams that he was having.
In this book, Mr. Lamon tells of Mr. Lincoln’s daily struggles in talking to widows and women whose husbands were in civil war prisons. He describes Lincoln’s views regarding his family, and especially his young son Tad.
Lamon’s friend J. P. Usher and others urged Ward Hill Lamon to write this book. Usher told Mr. Lamon that “there are now but a few left who were intimately acquainted with Mr. Lincoln. I do not call to mind anyone who was so much with him as yourself.” It is not certain why the book was never published until now.
The editor, Bob O’Connor, has also written a historical fiction account of the life of Ward Hill Lamon, the only account ever written. It is called “The Virginian Who Might Have Saved Lincoln” and was published in 2007 by Infinity Publishing. The book is also available as an unabridged audio book. It has been named finalist in both the Best Book Awards and The Indie Excellence Awards.
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