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Lincoln at Home

By David Herbert Donald

1999
Blue morocco and blue paste-paper, signed by the author
-- Out of Print

Executive Mansion,
Washington,
April 28. 1864.

Mrs. A. Lincoln
Metropolitan Hotel
New-York

...Tell Tad the goats and father are
very well–especially the goats.

A. Lincoln

Our American heroes often become so idealized, so “icon-ized,” so statued, that we remember them only as images in plaster, marble, or oil– or as carved rock on a mountainside. Of course, we honor a specific exploit or achievement– Washington crossing the Delaware, Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln freeing the slaves, Theodore Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill. But when we measure the public accomplishments of these legends against their private fixations– their family pleasures and pressures, their worries, their debts, squabbles, neglect, their sense of humor in the face of controversy– all these humanizing moments of interruption and obligation, of loyalty and of grief– make even more remarkable their place in history.

Thornwillow press is therefore most pleased to present this extraordinary compilation of Lincoln family correspondence and accompanying commentary by one of the most honored of contemporary Lincoln scholars, David Herbert Donald.

Few american presidents have represented a turning point in this nation’s history so profound as did Abraham Lincoln; indeed, no other American has had so many words written about him. From his humble origins in Kentucky, his rise to prominence as a Whig and then as a founding Republican politician, his election to the presidency, his leadership in the Civil War, and his emancipation of the slaves, Lincoln repeatedly demonstrated his enormous capacity for growth which enabled one of the youngest, least experienced, and most poorly prepared men ever elected to high office to become a giant in the annals of American history.

While there have been several dramas and many histories detailing the marital problems and the personal tragedies that confronted the Lincoln family, the actual communications from his days as a congressman in Washington to his role as an obviously harassed and tormented president, offer confirmation of abiding love and concern and a sense of humor which deflected anger. The profound losses suffered by the Lincolns could well have destroyed a family. Ultimately, slowly, over generations, the Lincolns, living in a house sometimes divided, helped to reunite a nation.

The Domestic Lincoln:

Two Perspectives

The volume is arranged in two parts: the first describes the family’s life in the Executive Mansion (the White House) during the war years. In the second part, Mr. Donald compiles a never-before-seen collection of all the known letters and telegraph communications ex-changed among members of the Lincoln family up to the time of his assassination. Included are two facsimiles of actual letters from Lincoln to his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, and from Mary Lincoln to her husband.

David Herbert Donald

Leading historian and Abraham Lincoln scholar, David Herbert Donald is the Charles Warren Professor Emeritus of American History and American Civilization at Harvard University. The author of Lincoln, Lincoln’s Herndon, Lincoln Reconsidered, and The Civil War and Reconstruction, he has drawn more extensively than any previous writer on Lincoln’s personal papers and those of his contemporaries. He has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for biography: in 1961 for Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, and in 1988 for Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe.

The Edition

Lincoln at Home was printed letterpress directly from the type on paper handmade especially for te edition at The Cardinal Mill in Moravia. The volume contains three photogravure portraits of Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, and Lincoln with his son Tad, and two facsimiles of letters between Lincoln and his wife. The copies are bound in moroccan goatskin and handmade pastepaper and presented in a velvet lined traycase. The edition is limited to 185 copies and is signed by David Herbert Donald.