Lost Conversations with Abraham Lincoln

By Gordon Shepherd

In 'Lost Conversations with Abraham Lincoln,' Gordon Shepherd transports readers back to the formative years of one of America's most iconic figures. This thought-provoking volume consists of five compelling historical fiction stories that revolve around plausible lost conversations during selected moments in the life of Abraham Lincoln, spanning from 1831 to 1861, just before his ascendancy to the White House on the eve of the Civil War.

Shepherd skillfully weaves a tapestry of narratives, drawing from the rich historical tapestry of Lincoln's life. These stories delve into conversations that Lincoln might have had with various individuals, including family members, friends, political colleagues, adversaries, and acquaintances. Through these dialogues, readers gain insight into Lincoln's complex emotions about his family of origin, his marriage, religion, politics, American vigilante violence, and the moral disgrace of American slavery.

The stories' titles, ranging from 'Thomas Lincoln's Son Encounters the World Beyond Pigeon Creek' to 'Father Abraham and the Ghosts of Nauvoo,' provide a captivating glimpse into key moments in Lincoln's life that often go overlooked in mainstream history. Shepherd deftly explores the lesser-known aspects of Lincoln's character and beliefs, shedding light on his virtues rather than his shortcomings.

A unique aspect of this collection is the inclusion of three stories that touch on early Mormonism, placing Lincoln in hypothetical conversations concerning the doctrinal peculiarities and contentious expansion of this controversial new religion in New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350924213

Gordon Shepherd

Gordon Shepherd is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Central Arkansas. Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, Shepherd earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Utah and his PhD from the State University of New York at Stonybrook where he studied social theory under Lewis Coser. In collaboration with his brother, Gary, he has authored numerous academic articles and several books on religion and social change. Along with his brother, his literary repertoire includes a boyhood memoir, Growing Up in the City of the Saints and Stories of Forgotten Sports Idols and Other Ordinary Mortals. Most recently, Shepherd is the author of Lost Conversations with Abraham Lincoln.

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Lost Conversations with Abraham Lincoln

©Gordon Shepherd

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Print ISBN 979-8-35092-420-6

eBook ISBN 979-8-35092-421-3

TO JOYCE ELLIOTT, inspirational public school teacher and progressive Lioness of the Arkansas Senate who insisted on and fought for equality and justice under the law.

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Thomas Lincoln’s Son Encounters the

World Beyond Pigeon Creek

Chapter 3. Abraham Lincoln Meets Parley P. Pratt in New Salem

Chapter 4. Mary, Judge Douglas, and a Moral Question

in the Nation’s Capital

Chapter 5. There’s a Storm Coming

Chapter 6. Father Abraham and the Ghosts of Nauvoo

Epilogue

Appendix 1. The Wife of Father Abraham

Appendix 2. Lincoln and the Little Giant

Appendix 3. The Prophet and the President at the

Edge of the Father of Waters

Selected Readings

Preface

Most people have daily conversations with numerous individuals that are never recorded and subsequently expire from memory. These become lost conversations. This, of course, is also true of people of historical importance, like Abraham Lincoln, whose lives are scrutinized and reconstructed in considerable detail by scholars with access to existing documentary sources. But even the most comprehensive source materials don’t include every moment or detail of a person’s life. There are always gaps. Documentary gaps in people’s lives provide room for plausible stories of fiction that, in historical context, are congruent with the known facts of a person’s life.

In this small volume I have composed five stories that revolve around plausible lost conversations during selected moments in the life of Abraham Lincoln. I narrate these fictional stories over a three-decade span—from 1831 to 1861—in the context of things we do know. We know, for example, that in 1831, Lincoln was accompanied by his stepbrother, John Johnston, and cousin, John Hanks, among several others, on a flatboat journey down the Mississippi River to New Orleans; that in 1833, Lincoln briefly co-owned a small store in New Salem, Illinois; that later, as a young lawyer in Springfield, Lincoln courted and married Mary Ann Todd; that with their two small sons they went to live in Washington, DC after Lincoln was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1846; that Stephen A. Douglas, who had also courted Mary Todd, was a freshman senator in Washington during the same period that Lincoln served his two-year term as a congressman; that in Springfield Lincoln partnered in law with William Herndon, and that Herndon was actively involved in Lincoln’s various political campaigns, including his 1858 senatorial contest with Stephen A. Douglas, which featured a series of famous debates about the extension of slavery in American society; that Lincoln’s secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, were on the train that carried Lincoln from Springfield to Washington, DC for his inauguration as president in 1861, and that Lincoln became especially fond of Hay, who idolized him as a surrogate father.

These are the evolving historical settings in which I have composed stories based on conversations that Lincoln might have had with various family members, friends, political colleagues, adversaries, and other acquaintances that reflect his feelings about his family of origin, his marriage, religion, politics, American vigilante violence, and, of course, the heinous moral incongruity of American slavery—legitimized at the time by constitutional law in a democratic republic.

Like everyone else, Lincoln was flawed by personal eccentricities, imperfections, failures, and mistakes in life, some of which may be inferred from my stories. But he became great for other reasons of circumstance and character, culminating in his unexpectedly decisive command of the Union during the existential ordeal of the American Civil War. Featured in my stories are Lincoln’s virtues, not his shortcomings, and they exhibit some of his most noteworthy character traits: determined ambition—unencumbered by arrogance or pretentiousness—and steadfast perseverance when confronted with adversity; a love of language, literature, and an openness to learning and personal growth; realistic confidence in his own intellect and reasoning abilities offset by self-effacing modesty and a deep consciousness of his impoverished origins; a wry, homespun sense of humor that leavened his pragmatic political sensibilities and willingness to bargain and leverage power for political gain; generosity, forbearance, and a capacity for both objectivity and magnanimity toward rivals; and, above all, moral rectitude in times of crisis and uncertainty, centered by an overriding commitment to equal justice under the law.

Revisiting selected moments of Lincoln’s biography through fictional conversations can take many paths. In this regard, I should point out that three of my five stories include significant mention of early Mormonism, casting Lincoln into hypothetical conversations concerning the Mormons’ doctrinal peculiarities and violently contested expansion as a controversial new religion in New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. My primary justification for this is my own scholarly background in Mormon studies and an interest in illustrating the interconnectivity of Mormon history with that of nineteenth-century American history at a time when the political and civil meanings of a raw and expanding nation were undergoing intensive debate. Referenced in these stories are Mormons’ millennial hopes of Zion, devotion to their founder, Joseph Smith, zealous faith in new scripture and prophetic guidance, and heated conflicts with their non-Mormon neighbors that quickly escalated into mobocracy, violent expulsion, and assassination during the decades when Lincoln was reinventing himself in New Salem and Springfield.

These selected occasions all represent moments in Lincoln’s life for which we have few written records—occasions during which numerous lost conversations occurred. For writers of historical fiction, such documentary gaps provide fertile ground for exercising one’s literary imagination. If thoughtfully and responsibly realized, literary imagination provides one avenue for depicting the personalities, beliefs, and motivations of Lincoln and other historical actors in the context of the times, places, and events that shaped their lives. In saying this, I don’t mean to claim that I am proposing novel insights into Lincoln’s character or creative interpretations of his personal history for historians or Lincoln scholars to consider. To the contrary: I am writing primarily for general readers, not specialists. The historical characters and selected background events that frame my stories are well known to scholars but are less familiar to most people. In this regard I hope my stories serve a modest educational function for readers who are not steeped in the details of Lincoln historiography. This said, readers will also discover that my stories are congruent with conventional Lincoln biographies that depict his improbable rise from impoverished origins to become America’s greatest president in a dark time of disunion and civil war. Literary exposition of salient moments in Lincoln’s life stimulates renewed reflection on his character and the historical circumstances that shaped and equipped him for greatness; it also provides a means for appreciating the perils that challenge American leadership and democracy today in yet another time of disunion and toxic political polarization.

As short appendixes to my five stories, I have included three reflective compositions: one on Mary Todd Lincoln, one on Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, and the last on Lincoln and Joseph Smith.

I am indebted to the following people for their helpful feedback, encouragement, and useful suggestions: Gary Shepherd, Byron Andreason, Ron Esplin, Jay Barnett, Charles Harvey, Douglas George, Faye Shepherd, and especially Holly Rogers, whose critical eye and careful editing have made this book better than it would otherwise have been.

1

Introduction

Abraham Lincoln was named for his paternal grandfather who was killed on the Kentucky frontier in an Indian raid in 1786. Consequently, the elder’s youngest son, Thomas, was left in the care of assorted relatives. Thomas grew up without an education and as a young adult drifted from one temporary job or trade to another to make ends meet. By the time he married mild-mannered Nancy Hanks in 1806 at the age of twenty-eight, Thomas had acquired rudimentary carpentry and handyman skills, but he was scarcely a