Ward Hill Lamon - Lamon As Lincoln's Biographer

Lamon As Lincoln's Biographer

After Lincoln's death, Lamon published two books (one posthumously) about the late President. The more famous of the two is a biography that was largely ghostwritten by Chauncey Black, the son of former Attorney General of the United States Jeremiah Black. The elder Black was Lamon's law partner from 1865 until 1879. The book, published in 1872 by James R. Osgood and Company of Boston under the title The Life of Abraham Lincoln; From his Birth to his Inauguration as President, contained allegations and personal information about Lincoln that were deemed scandalous by nineteenth century society. It was a financial failure. One of the most shocking claims was that Lincoln was not a man of faith: "Mr. Lincoln was never a member of any church, nor did he believe in the divinity of Christ, or the inspiration of the Scriptures in the sense understood by evangelical Christians." The basis of the book was the papers of William Herndon, which Lamon purchased for either $2,000 or $4,000. Shortly after his death, Lamon's daughter collected and edited many of his unpublished writings about Lincoln into a biography of the president, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln (1895). In Recollections, Lamon reversed his earlier denial of the Baltimore plot of 1861, writing, "It is now an acknowledged fact that there was never a moment from the day he crossed the Maryland line, up until the time of his assassination, that he was not in danger of death by violence, and that his life was spared until the night of the 14th of April, 1865, only through the ceaseless and watchful care of the guards thrown around him." The authenticity of this book is generally more highly regarded by the scholarly community than is the earlier volume by Lamon and Black.