Lincoln's Journalist

John Hay's Anonymous Writings for the Press, 1860-1864

Edited by Michael Burlingame

paper, 0-8093-2712-0, $24.95t
978-0-8093-2712-6
424 pages, 6x9
American History/Lincoln

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Presenting an inside look at Lincoln’s administration through the anonymous writings of his friend, aide, and confidant

In the Civil War White House, John Hay became the ultimate insider, the man who had the president’s ear. “Only an extremely small number of persons ever saw Abraham Lincoln both day and night in public as well as private settings from 1860 to 1864,” notes Wayne C. Temple, chief deputy director, Illinois State Archives. “And only one of them had the literary flair of John Milton Hay.”

            The most privileged of reporters, Hay sent out dispatches and editorials that shed direct as well as indirect light on Lincoln. With ample access to the president, Hay was in a position to report his words and deeds as well as to offer opinions that may have reflected Lincoln’s own views. Indeed, Burlingame suggests that Lincoln influenced Hay to write and place the articles in northern newspapers.

Burlingame takes great pains to establish authorship of the items reproduced here. He convincingly demonstrates that the essays and letters written for the Providence Journal, the Springfield Illinois State Journal, and the St. Louis Missouri Democrat under the pseudonym “Ecarte” are the work of Hay. Additionally he finds much circumstantial and stylistic evidence that Hay wrote as “our special correspondent” for the Washington World and for the St. Louis Missouri Republican. Easily identifiable, Hay's style was “marked by long sentences, baroque syntactical architecture, immense vocabulary, verbal pyrotechnics, cocksure tone (combining acid contempt and extravagant praise), offbeat adverbs, and scornful adjectives.”

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“A marvelous work [that] will be heartily welcomed by all those who fancy the Civil War era, those who research and write in this field of study, or those who merely collect important pieces on the Civil War or Lincolniana.”—Wayne C. Temple, Chief Deputy Director, Illinois State Archives

“John Hay may not be the most famous presidential secretary in American history.  .  .  .  But he surely is the best writer and most incisive observer among them, and that alone makes his newspaper dispatches worth reading. Michael Burlingame deserves credit for making this possible.”—Jean Harvey Baker, H-Net Reviews

“Burlingame has rescued from obscurity some remarkable, even brilliant, journalistic pieces.  .  .  .  he warrants three cheers.”—Richard Carwardine—Times Literary Supplement

 

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Michael Burlingame, Sadowski Professor of History Emeritus at Connecticut College, is the author of The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln and the editor of ten volumes of primary sources about Lincoln, including At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings. He won the prestigious Lincoln Prize, honorable mention, for his five edited collections of letters, memoranda, editorial essays, lectures, and interviews by Lincoln’s White House private secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John M. Hay, all published by Southern Illinois University Press.