A FRIEND OF MR. LINCOLN

Fiction

No sentimental blather

A FRIEND OF MR. LINCOLN

By Stephen Harrigan

411 pp. Alfred A. Knopf

Reviewed by Marty Carlock

It’s 1832, and Micajah Weatherby has just survived a brutal attack on his company by a band of Black Hawk warriors. He is assigned to lead a few soldiers who have come to their aid to the site of the battle to retrieve the bodies of the dead. One introduces himself: “I’m Abraham Lincoln.”

He was not as freakishly remarkable in his appearance as it would later become fashionable to recall. Lincoln was exquisitely self-conscious, thought he was ugly, and later reckoned he had no choice but to promote himself as such. But it was his height and strength that marked him in Cage’s mind that day…and something else—the fact that he had introduced himself to Cage when none of the other men had bothered to do so, and the plaintive note of human comradeship in his eyes when Cage returned the handshake.

Micajah – Cage – and Lincoln become friends when Lincoln relocates from New Salem to Springfield, the new capital of Illinois. Cage is an aspiring poet and is surprised and delighted to learn that his new friend shares his love of literature. With some of the young blades of the young city, they form a poetry society. Cage watches as Lincoln runs for office, maneuvers with Whig rivals, and wins audiences with his easy-going good humor.

So seamlessly does the author immerse himself, and us, in the period that he disdains to explain some arcane terms. We can infer that “fives” is something like handball and that “the hypo” is what we call depression. But if we don’t already know the “almost comical” cause of William Henry Harrison’s death, he isn’t going to tell us.

Cage Weatherby is a fiction, a synthesis of several young men who were friends of the budding Illinois lawyer, as are several other characters. As for the many political names that surface, we have to find out for ourselves (thank you, Google!) who’s real.

We follow the untutored suitor through a failed courtship with a woman from Kentucky, who finds he lacks manners, and through the off-again-on-again relationship that ends with his marriage to Mary Todd. Harrigan portrays her as smart, ambitious and manipulative, a she-devil who has, in the end, no friends in Illinois.

Readers may flinch from the off-color male joke or the detailed nauseating description: the look of scalped and butchered bodies on the battlefield, or a doctor’s explanation of what happens when a bullet pierces the large intestine.

A more pleasant plot centers on Cage’s involvement with Ellie, a strong woman who has left an abusive husband and is set up by Cage’s friend Speed as a high-class prostitute.  She’s an unforgettable character, an independent female who accepts what she needs from men but refuses to be owned by anyone.

Harrigan deftly captures Lincoln’s wit: “Everybody’s drunk except for me… Somebody get Cage a glass. Temperance is a terrible vice and I don’t want him to fall into ruin on account of my example.” And his propensity for falling into depression: “This is not blue, Cage! This is black…the blackness of a wasted life…” And his burning ambition, a trait most of us had not associated with this icon.

Late in the book, Cage is stunned to find Lincoln won’t represent him because he has already agreed to represent another figure in the same case. Cage believes friendship should count; for Lincoln, his ethics dictate his choice. The final rupture between the two friends comes when Cage, an abolitionist, discovers Lincoln is to represent a slave owner trying to claim a runaway. The lawyer argues:

‘It’s not wrong for me to take it. If a man comes to me for help, no matter how despised or degraded he is, it’s my duty to help. In that respect I have the same duty as a physician.' 

‘That’s fatuous.’ 

‘It may be so to you, but I happen to believe it…What if I and other lawyers only represented clients we agreed with? The law wouldn’t be the law, it would just be theater, a spectacle of shifting passions. The whole edifice of society would crumble…’

If Harrigan invented this thought from Lincoln, it’s a piece of genius. If he found it in his research, more power to him. It sheds so much light not only on the sixteenth president, but on the ethics of the rule of law.

After the president’s death, his law partner Billy Herndon talks of gathering people’s memories about him: “You misunderstand me…I’m talking about something essential. The verifiable truth about him, not sentimental blather.”

This is not a sentimental book. More so than most historical fiction, it’s a tough telling. Whether true or not, who can say? No one alive today knew the real Lincoln. But it has the ring of veracity. It’s an outstanding read.