Lincoln's White House Secretary : The Adventurous Life of William O. Stoddard

by Holzer, Harold

• ISBN13: 9780809327539
• ISBN10: 0809327538
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-05-21
• Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ Pr

Summary

William Osborn Stoddard, Lincoln's "third secretary" who worked alongside John G. Nicolay and John Hay in the White House from 1861 to 1865, completed his autobiography in 1907, one of more than one hundred books he wrote. An abridged version was published by his son in 1955 as "Lincoln's Third Secretary: The Memoirs of William O. Stoddard." In this new, edited version,Lincoln's White House Secretary: The Adventurous Life of William O. Stoddard,Harold Holzer provides an introduction, afterword, and annotations and includes comments by Stoddard's granddaughter, Eleanor Stoddard. The elegantly written volume gives readers a window into the politics, life, and culture of the mid-nineteenth century. Stoddard's bracing writing, eye for detail, and ear for conversation bring a novelistic excitement to a story of childhood observations, young friendships, hardscrabble frontier farming, early hints of the slavery crisis, the workings of the Lincoln administration, and the strange course of war and reunion in the southwest. More than a clerk, Stoddard was an adventurous explorer of American life, a farmer, editor, soldier, and politician. Enhanced by seventeen illustrations, this narrative sympathetically draws the reader into the life and times of Lincoln's third secretary, adding to our understanding of the events and the larger-than-life figures that shaped history.

Author Biography

Harold Holzer is the senior vice president for external affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among the country’s leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War era, Holzer is the author, coauthor, or editor of twenty-six books—including The Lincoln Image, The Lincoln Family Album, and Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech that Made Abraham Lincoln President. He is a cochair of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. ix
The Stoddard Family Tree	p. 15
Childhood in Rochester	p. 22
Boyhood in Homer	p. 27
The Old Garret and Other Wonders	p. 38
In the Village	p. 46
The River	p. 51
The Hill and the Woods	p. 57
The Academy and the Shop	p. 62
Syracuse: The Young City	p. 67
The Onondaga Street House	p. 73
Hoyt's School	p. 79
The Bookstore	p. 86
The New Garret	p. 92
The Church	p. 99
The Jerry Rescue Riot	p. 105
Miscellaneous	p. 112
Going to College	p. 121
College Days	p. 128
Junior Year	p. 137
Grand Prairie	p. 146
Log Cabin Home	p. 157
Prairie Life	p. 166
Prairie Winter	p. 173
Frontier Journalism	p. 179
Forward	p. 187
Suppers, Characters, and Incidents	p. 194
Lincoln and a New Beginning	p. 204
War	p. 218
A New Life in Washington	p. 233
The War City	p. 239
Guns and Things at the White House	p. 247
A Very Busy Year	p. 263
Wartime Enterprises	p. 273
About Mr. Lincoln	p. 286
The Long Winter of 1862	p. 292
Forward March	p. 303
On Assignment by the President	p. 314
Year of Decision, 1864	p. 325
Notes from the Southwest, and the Death of Lincoln	p. 341
Afterword: Picturing Lincoln	p. 347
Post Impressions	p. 361
Notes	p. 369
Index	p. 399
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