• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
THE EVERY-DAY LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

A NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE
BIOGRAPHY WITH PEN-PICTURES
AND PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
BY THOSE WHO KNEW HIM

BY FRANCIS FISHER BROWNE
Compiler of "Golden Poems," "Bugle Echoes, Pose of
the Civil War," "Laurel-Crowned Verse," etc.

NEW AND THOROUGHLY REVISED EDITION, FROM NEW PLATES, WITH
AN ENTIRELY NEW PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN, FROM A
CHARCOAL STUDY BY J.K. MARBLE

CHICAGO
BROWNE & HOWELL COMPANY
1913

vFRANCIS FISHER BROWNE
1843-1913

The present revision of "The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln" was the last literary labor of its author. He
had long wished to undertake the work, and had talked much of it for several years past. But favorable
arrangements for the book's republication were not completed until about a year ago. Then, though by no
means recovered from an attack of pneumonia late in the previous winter, he took up the task of revision and
recasting with something of his old-time energy. It was a far heavier task than he had anticipated, but he gave
it practically his undivided attention until within three or four weeks of his death. Only when the last pages of
manuscript had been despatched to the printer did he yield to the overwhelming physical suffering that had
been upon him for a long time past. His death occurred at Santa Barbara, California, on May 11.

Francis Fisher Browne was born at South Halifax, Vermont, on December 1, 1843. His parentage, on both
sides, was of the purest New England stock. Early in his childhood, the family moved to Western
Massachusetts, where the boy went to school and learned the printing trade in his father's newspaper office at
Chicopee. As a lad of eighteen, he left the high school in answer to the government's call for volunteers,
serving for a year with the 46th Massachusetts Regiment in North Carolina and with the Army of the
Potomac. When the regiment was discharged, in 1863, he decided to take up the study of vilaw. Removing to
Rochester, N.Y., he entered a law office in that city; and a year or two later began a brief course in the law
department of the University of Michigan. He was unable to continue in college, however, and returned to
Rochester to follow his trade.

Immediately after his marriage, in 1867, he came to Chicago, with the definite intention of engaging in
literary work. Here he became associated with "The Western Monthly," which, with the fuller establishment
of his control, he rechristened "The Lakeside Monthly." The best writers throughout the West were gradually

THE EVERY-DAY LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
1

enlisted as contributors; and it was not long before the magazine was generally recognized as the most
creditable and promising periodical west of the Atlantic seaboard. But along with this increasing prestige
came a series of extraneous setbacks and calamities, culminating in a complete physical breakdown of its
editor and owner, which made the magazine's suspension imperative.

FRANCIS F. BROWNE

The six years immediately following, from 1874 to 1880, were largely spent in a search for health. During
part of this time, however, Mr. Browne acted as literary editor of "The Alliance," and as special editorial
writer for some of the leading Chicago newspapers. But his mind was preoccupied with plans for a new
periodical\u2014this time a journal of literary criticism, modeled somewhat after such English publications as
"The Athen\u00e6um" and "The Academy." In the furtherance of this bold conception he was able to interest the
publishing firm of Jansen, McClurg & Co.; and under their imprint, in May, 1880, appeared the first issue of
THE DIAL, "a monthly review and index of current literature." At about the same time he became literary
adviser to the publishing department of the house, and for twelve years thereafter toiled unremittingly at his
double task-work. In 1892, negotiations were completed whereby he acquired Messrs. McClurg & Co.'s
interest in the periodical. It was enlarged in vii scope, and made a semi-monthly; and from that time until his
death it appeared uninterruptedly under his guidance and his control.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Francis Fisher Browne.
BY FRANCIS FISHER BROWNE
2

Besides his writings in THE DIAL and other periodicals, Mr. Browne is the author of a small volume of
poems, "Volunteer Grain" (1895). He also compiled and edited several anthologies,\ue000"Bugle Echoes," a
collection of Civil War poems (1886); "Golden Poems by British and American Authors" (1881); "The
Golden Treasury of Poetry and Prose" (1883); and seven volumes of "Laurel-Crowned Verse" (1891-2). He
was one of the small group of men who, in 1874, founded the Chicago Literary Club; and for a number of
years past he has been an honorary member of that organization, as well as of the Caxton Club (Chicago) and
the Twilight Club (Pasadena, Cal.). During the summer of 1893 he served as Chairman of the Committee on
the Congress of Authors of the World's Congress Auxiliary of the Columbian Exposition.

THE PUBLISHERS
ix
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The original edition of this book was published about twenty years after Lincoln's death at the close of the
Civil War. At that time many of the men who had taken a prominent part in the affairs, military and civil, of
that heroic period, many who had known Lincoln and had come in personal contact with him during the war
or in his earlier years, were still living. It was a vivid conception of the value of the personal recollections of
these men, gathered and recorded before it was too late, that led to the preparation of this book. It was
intended to be, and in effect it was, largely an anecdotal Life of Lincoln built of material gathered from men
still living who had known him personally. The task was begun none too soon. Of the hundreds who
responded to the requests for contributions of their memories of Lincoln there were few whose lives extended
very far into the second quarter-century after his death, and few indeed survive after the lapse of nearly fifty
years,\ue001though in several instances the author has been so fortunate as to get valuable material directly from
persons still living (1913). Of the more than five hundred friends and contemporaries of Lincoln to whom
credit for material is given in the original edition, scarcely a dozen are living at the date of this second edition.
Therefore, the value of these reminiscences increases with time. They were gathered largely at first hand.
They can never be replaced, nor can they ever be very much extended.

This book brings Lincoln the man, not Lincoln the tradition, very near to us. Browning asked, "And did x you
once see Shelley plain? And did he stop and speak to you?" The men whose narratives make up a large part of
this book all saw Lincoln plain, and here tell us what he spoke to them, and how he looked and seemed while
saying it. The great events of Lincoln's life, and impressions of his character, are given in the actual words of
those who knew him\ue002his friends, neighbors, and daily associates\ue003rather than condensed and remolded into
other form. While these utterances are in some cases rude and unstudied, they have often a power of
delineation and a graphic force that more than compensate for any lack of literary quality.

In a work prepared on such a plan as this, some repetitions are unavoidable; nor are they undesirable. An
event or incident narrated by different observers is thereby brought out with greater fulness of detail; and
phases of Lincoln's many-sided character are revealed more clearly by the varied impressions of numerous
witnesses whose accounts thus correct or verify each other. Some inconsistencies and contradictions are
inevitable,\ue004but these relate usually to minor matters, seldom or never to the great essentials of Lincoln's life
and personality. The author's desire is to present material from which the reader may form an opinion of
Lincoln, rather than to present opinions and judgments of his own.

Lincoln literature has increased amazingly in the past twenty-five years. Mention of the principal biographies
in existence at the time of the original edition was included in the Preface. Since then there have appeared,
among the more formal biographies, the comprehensive and authoritative work by Nicolay and Hay, the
subsequent work by Miss Ida Tarbell, and that by Herndon and Weik, besides many more or less fragmentary

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Francis Fisher Browne.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
3
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...