He recently had the opportunity to travel to seoul where he addressed the korean Abraham Lincoln society. I know id like to hear more about that. How can i get on that gravy train . Today he will talk to us about his new book, the black heavens. Abraham lincoln and death which was published earlier this year by Southern Illinois university press. A review at civil war monitors states, students of the 16th president will want to add this concise thoughtprovoking and sensitively written volume to their bookshelves. Please welcome me in joining please join me in welcoming brian dark. Hello everybody its great to be here. I want to thank you for the invitation. Ive gotten to see some old friends, among many my come pinion in korea, fred. We had fun. Meaning lots of wonderful people. You are heroes, everybody in this room is a hero to a group of students at Anderson University who are going to get tomorrow off because i am here. They love the lincoln form. They are like doctor dirk. How fun, take your time. If you want to tour the battlefield, do it. Do it twice. We will struggle without you. The Lincoln Forum scholarship programs, if you would contact the 42 students who would normally be in my 9 am morning class not get to sleep in i would imagine you would get some money out of those kids if you really work at it a little bit. Really thank you very much for inviting me this has been a wonderful experience. As john was pointing out my latest book is called the black heavens. Abraham lincoln and death. My usual reaction when i say that is to get a raised eyebrow. Death . My kids refer to it as the death book. That house the death book coming along . Its a little weird. I should say a couple of things about how i got to writing about that. My fellow authors in the room will probably relate to this. There are occasions where you begin to write one book and end up writing a totally different book. I see everyone nodding over there. The book was originally going to be a study of the summer of 1864. I was going to call it lincolns hardest summer. Look at his leadership during this difficult summer of 1864. As we know hes up for reelection, he does not think hes going to get reelected and the body count is going through the roof. Then i started looking at questions surrounding that summer. I discovered that there was very little written about how lincoln understood death and dying. There are a couple of things. Dont get me wrong. Scattered here in there. But no one ever try to follow that particular thread. I was on contract for the hardest summer. It was like sylvia do you mind if i write a totally different book . She was so nice about it. It actually turned up rather well. I will speak a little bit about some of the things i wrote about in that book. Leave some time for questions because there will be so many things i will not be able to address during this brief period. I hope we get some questions. On a frigid evening in december of 1860 to, governor andrew curtain from pennsylvania arrived at the white house to meet with president lincoln. It was late at night. So much so that lincoln was already in bed when the governors arrived. But he left word that he wanted to see curtain no matter what the our. So the governor was escorted into lincolns bedroom where the president was sitting on the edge of the bed in his night shirt. Curtain had just returned from fredericksburg and lincoln asked what he had seen of the battlefield. Curtain was rather despicable at times and immediately retorted battlefield . It was not a battlefield it was a slaughter pen. I was sorry the moment i said that curtain later recalled for lincoln groaned, run his hands and uttered exclamations of grief. It was only with considerable difficulty that he was able to get lincoln calmed down enough to get back into bed. As he was getting back into bed he told curtain quote, if there is a worse place than hell i am in it. A year and a half later it was summer, and not winter. The height of the bloody 1864 campaign season. Ulysses as grant was locked in a titanic struggle to destroy it once and for all robert easily of northern virginia. And his army. His grinding campaign and eventually siege of petersburg was driving the casualty rates to ungodly numbers. Many northerners believed the deaths of so many soldiers were not acceptable. Even mary lincoln believed this to be so asking her husband to fire grant because he was a butcher. Lincoln received a letter in august from his commanding general, grant, who was aware of the casualty rate. He expressed his desire to keep pressing the enemy. I have seen your dispatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where you are lincoln replied. Neither am i willing. Hold on with a bulldog grip and true and choke as much as possible. Those are the two sides of Abraham Lincoln and his relationship with the war. Two different images. They lincoln sitting on the edge of his bed in his night short, horrified at the body count. A man in a place that is worse than how. But we also have the grim lead determined iron jawed lincoln defying everyone who tells him the human cost of grants strategy is unacceptable including his own wife. He ignores all of this and urges grant to chew and choke. He must have known this would lead to more casualties and an ever higher body count. Here was a man who could ordered thousands upon thousands of soldiers to their deaths and at the very same time right in agony over the wars human cost. Weve long celebrated both of these lincolns. Historians and celebrated his hard but clear eyed understanding of killing enemy soldiers and relentlessly pursuing the enemy to victory. We all believe he was right when he told mcclelland that he should have pursued the enemy. We all know the agony he went through when george mead did not pursue him from gettysburg. And how horribly upset he was. At the same time we also celebrated his essential humanity. His ability to appreciate and empathize with the unprecedented human suffering that was the American Civil War he seems to have been able to do both things at once, to be both a man of empathy and a man of heart action. A president who can order meant to their deaths and yet genuinely route the dying. It is this quality of lincoln that we dont often appreciate. We dont often remark upon it. His ability to balance things. He was able in so many aspects of his life, to find a proper balance point between extremes, whether it be the intellectual realm, this balancing the constitutions pragmatism with the declarations idealism or the political realm. His ability to steer the middle course between the radical and conservative elements of his own party, or the personal realm with his lifelong balancing of humor and sadness, fatalism and idealism. Abraham lincoln was many things, but he was a man of exquisite balance. How did he do it . We have this balancing act before the war was dead . Where did this come from . The capacity to be once both hard as nails and exquisitely empathetic. To mourn the dead, yet except the death of the worst tragic price . I think the ability that he showed to maintain this particular balance stems back to his very earliest days. To before the war, stretching all the way back to his childhood. Abraham lincoln you death from an early age. His first encounters stemmed from much the same source as any other young boy growing up in early kentucky and indiana. Hunting. His father thomas was unenthusiastic hunter as was his cousin dennis hanks. They spent a great deal of time together. We all hunted pretty much all the time dennis remembered the country was full of wild game. Dense vegetation. We could track a bear, deer, or world will for miles through the matted feints we depended on hunting for a living. This included the Young Abraham. Dennis remembered an incident during the Families First days in Southern Indiana right after they arrived at kitchen creek. Abraham spotted a flock of turkeys nearby. Thomas lincoln and dennis were away from the camp at the time and abraham was too little to load and prima gotten himself, so his mother nancy had to do it. Abe poked the gun through the crack of the cannon and accidentally killed one. Dennis amusingly reset, you know what the truth is . Lincoln disliked hunting. He later and rather proudly wrote that the turkey shooting that he had quoted, never since pulled a trigger on any larger game. He did not much like killing. Killing or torturing the animals that were everywhere in the indiana woods. One neighborhood recalled him writing essays of being behind animals and crawling insects. When his stepfather crushed a turtle against a nearby tree, abraham preached against cruelty to animals contending that and aunts life was to it as sweet as ours to us. As indiana friends and neighbors referred constantly to his tendered heartedness. Here was a far from callous youngster quite the contrary. If anything he seems to have been notable in his capacity to feel the suffering and loss of others around him, even turtles. Soon after the family arrived in indiana, the Young Abraham was forced to confront death and a far more profound and painful way. Sometime in the early fall of 1818, several neighbors of lincolns fell seriously ill. First with an uncontrollable shaking, then a severe thirst, a loss of appetite and general fatigue. Then with severe stomach cramps and vomiting that grew steadily. Worse they were suffering from what was known as the milk sickness cost when cows ingested a local plant called white sneak up. It resembles the daisy, the white snake room seemed to contain tramadol, a chemical chemical that turned cows milk into a deadly poison. Milk sick sickness was much feared, usually fatal scourge amongst settlers in indiana and other parts of the region. Abrahams mother nancy came to the aid of her ill neighbors and at some point, she and just at the this poison herself. She lingered for quite awhile after initially falling ill, struggling on day by day, as dennis hanks recalls. It must have been excruciating pain. The vomiting and retching produced by milk sickness being so persistent and violent that some even refer to it as quote, the puking disease. The fatigue and racking pain, soon had nancy bed ridden in their little cabin. By the time a week had passed, she knew she was going to die. According to dennis. He remembered her calling abraham and his sister sarah to her bedside and telling them to be good and kind to their father. She expressed a hope that they might live as they had been taught by her two love men and with love reverence and worship god. Thus passed away dennis later recalled, one of the very best women in the whole race. Her body was hauled on a makeshift sled to an old and buried under trees to the rest of the. Stay what did abraham feel and experience as a nine year old boy . He was watching with growing alarm the signs of nancys imminent death. This is unknown and an knowable. But there are characteristics from which we can generalize among women and children placed in similar circumstances. Children who lose a parent at an early age often wrestle with conflicting emotions. They are ill equipped to control and impotent sort of anger at what seems an unfair loss as common as is a general sense of helplessness and foreboding about the future. Most evoke, children of a dying parent experience loss of security and comfort. Parents typically offered their Young Children a sense of permanence. In lincolns case, a mother who was always present and supplying his daily needs as he grew up in kentucky and indiana. Death would now sever. No one recorded though, how abraham reacted to the surely imminent and immense stress of his mothers illness and death. Whether he lashed out in frustration, kept his turmoil buried deep inside, or perhaps exhibited some other form of behavior, but the very silence of the historical record is perhaps itself telling. Friends and relatives who later recalled in great detail, the circumstances surrounding her illness and death had nothing to say good or bad, about her young sons reaction. Dennis remembered at the time, both abraham and his sister sarah, did some work, little jobs, errands and light work of that sort, that neither dentist or anyone else recorded exactly how abraham reacted emotionally during the ordeal. He seems to have faded into the background. Nursing a private grief while his father and other friends and family were preoccupied. With easing nancys final days. Lincoln himself remembered an exceedingly lonely episode in his life. Some historians later theorized that lincolns adult melancholy and depression stemmed from this experience. It is striking that the various accounts we have on this time lack direct testimony, regarding just what lincoln was doing as his mother lay dying and how he reacted. I do not want to be misunderstood. I am not suggesting that linkedin was somehow cold and indifferent to his mothers passing, how could this be so . Any child who would feel the suffering of a turtle. But he found ways to internalize his grief, dealing with it quietly and calling upon reserves of inner strength. One imagines a silent Young Abraham watching his mothers body being dragged up a hill on a rough wooden sled, think so little and doing so little, that no one then or since remarked upon his behavior or even where he was at. He may have been compelled to help push the sled up the hill. Doing so perhaps with a silent, stoic reserve. Certainly he did not sentimentalize his mothers death. This in itself was remarkable. Living as he did in a sentimental age, particularly where death and dying were concerned. Unlike dennis, who described her passing with his vignette of the dying mother, telling her children to be kind to their father, abraham never romanticized his mothers passing if he saw any means in and sees that, he never recorded the fact. Referring briefly in a letter many years later to his mothers final resting place, he observed that it was quote, as an poetical as any spot on earth. Otherwise he barely mentions nancys death at all. Just a brief, dry reverence and one Campaign Autobiography he wrote in the third person in the autumn of 1818. His mother died. Nor did he comment much on the other major family lost he endured in indiana. The death of his older sister sarah, who died in 1828 from pump complications related to childbirth. Variously described as industrious, and quick minded sarah was a little bit thick set like her father with dark hair and complexion like her mother. Her death was apparently a dreadful ordeal. Perhaps even more so than abrahams mother. She had married a local man named aaron crispy. Griggs be. He had become quickly pregnant. She went into labor one cold february night with some unidentified complications sinking her into the depths of almost an endurable pain. And woman recalling her calling in agony for her father. A woke. Thomas went after a doctor but he was too late. They let her lay too long thought the neighbor. Sarah gave birth to a stillborn son and then died herself. Either during the birth or shortly afterwards. As with so much surrounding lincolns life we have little solid information regarding precisely what happened to sara and her baby. There seems to have been a midwife present and aaron was nearby. Typically fathers did not attend childbirth. One account has thomas sending for a doctor. Another has earned himself growing alarmed and his wife and her labor pains. Attacked seeing ox into a sleigh, carrying her to his Fathers House three quarters of a miles away. Arriving at his familys house, erin then sent for a doctor. When the doctor arrived he was so drunk they were forced to find a second doctor who lived so far away that he did not arrive before it was too late. Which of these stories is accurate and what exactly what went wrong is impossible to determine. Stillbirths can result from a number of possible causes. Congenital birth defects that stress the baby prior to labor, an issue with the umbilical cord wrapped around the 80s neck or possibly a blockage in the baby socks supply causing it to suffocate. There might have been an issue extracting the baby that proved fatal. We do not know what waiting too long meant. Sarah painful and probably gory ordeal on a hard winter indiana night was levant by no sentimental scenes of the last rituals. Or soft words. She and her child were buried together in the Little Pigeon Creek baptist cemetery. The suns body wrapped in the mothers arms. According to several accounts, abraham grieved for the death of his sister. The first record we possess of him openly displaying emotion and grief at a death. He quote sat down on a log and hid his face in his hands while the tears rolled down remembered one observer. Local tradition has it that abraham felt not only grief but anger toward errant and his family, holding him responsible for allowing sarah to suffer too long. There might be some truth because lincoln did bear a grudge towards them. All of this would suggest that abraham felt sarahs passing, probably as deeply as his mothers passing years before. At times those feelings show themselves in a bout of sobbing. In a sense of anger towards saras husband and family. Maybe we should also note limits of his open displays of emotion. Before he did not break down in a lengthy or uncontrollable outburst of grief. Nor does he seem to have acted upon his rage with any acts of outright violence. One wonders if this provides context to the nasty poem he wrote about the brothers which caused a great deal of animosity between them and himself. What we see through lincoln is a child and young man who learns both to feel and yet control those feelings. Of course he was sensitive. The suffering to suffering and loss. Even to that of animals. Hes also seemed to found ways to deal with that sensitivity by internalizing it. By quieting his own emotions. I hesitate to use the word suppress. This might imply something repressive and unhealthy. Rather i believe that lincolns reticence and his self control were on the whole positive attributes allowing him to both feel and to function. He grew into a young man who felt deeply. And yet created for himself and emotional tool box to control and hide those emotions. It was inability that would serve him well later in life. He was 19 when his sister died. A big jangling and reslate restless young man who wanted by this time to leave pigeon creek. In 1831, after the entire family left indiana and relocated to equally primitive circumstances in eastern illinois. He wandered into the village of new salem and settled in a life pursuing odd jobs. It brokered bread and kept body and soul together as lincoln said. Lincoln met and rod village, the daughter of a new salem innkeeper. She was a goodlooking smart lively girl with fair hair and eyes with a lively disposition. She was a housekeeper with a moderate education having had a bit of schooling in nearby jacksonville. At some point abraham and and struck up a romantic relationship. This entire affair is shrouded in mystery and lacks evidence. According to the best available accounts, and was engaged to marry another man. He had left the new salem area for a prolonged absence and and was uncertain whether he would return. She seems to have subsequently agreed to marry lincoln. Before they could do so, typhoid fever swept through the area. It killed and father and she herself died in august of 19 1835. Some claim that abraham went nearly insane with grief at this particular death. The effect upon mr. Lincolns mine was terrible recalled ands brother. He plunged into despair and many of his friends that reason would desert him. Others recall that he became temporarily deranged to the point that his friends felt compelled to remove sharp objects from his presence. One neighbor remembers that lincoln was locked up by his friends to prevent derangement or suicide. Some friends thought he was forever changed thereafter. This grief extended into his later years as president. According to a friend from new salem, lincoln still mourned his lost love even during the war. Is it true that you fell in love and courted and rudd ledge . It is true. True indeed i did lincoln is alleged to replied. I have loved the name of rutledge to this day. I think often of her. Recorded after lincolns death and many years after he left new salem, there is no direct evidence to record lincolns reaction to her death he never mentioned her or alluded to her or even hinted at any relationship with her in any extent letter or speech. The absence of direct evidence along with the various biases and idiosyncrasies of william hurd in his former law partner. It has led some historians too seriously doubt whether any such romance existed. As for myself, given the multiple eyewitness accounts, it seems quite a stretch to suggest that abraham and ann were not involved at all. Following this it is reasonable to conclude that when she died, lincoln was distraught with grief. But those two simple nuggets of truth. The romance and grief, have long been heavily swat in multiple layers of syrup sentimentality. Tails of her flawless character and beauty abound. To the point that friends and funding biographers and even hollywood added in later years improbable details the bigger belief. The real cause of and death being her conflicted heart over lincoln and his rival. Of lincoln never having carried a pocket knife after her death for the fear of the sudden impulse to injure himself if he recalled her demise. Which we all know is a bunch of because they found a pocket knife in his pocket after he got shot of his grieving being suddenly triggered by violent weather, we watched during storms, fogs and damp gloomy weather, mr. Lincoln, for fear of an accident. Now this and brett lynch myth is another reiteration of the good death sentimentality with which death and dying was wrapped during lincolns time. Where nancy was the pious christian mother imparting last words words of wisdom to her children and was the star crossed lover. The flower cut short then full bloom. It was a chance that eternal marital bliss and ever after giving thoughts of gloom and triggered by the gothic detail of a thunderstorm. I can never be reconciled to have the snow and the rains and the storm speed upon her grave he is supposedly declared. Another friend believed he avoided ever using the word love after and died, his heart being so sad and broken. In fact, and could not have had a good death, any more than nancys endless puking and that smoke filled cabin, or sarah lincolns grizzling stillbirth on a miserable winter night typhoid or brain fever was a horrible way to die. Its symptoms not all that different from milk sickness caused by a bacterial infection resulting from the contamination of Drinking Water with human feces. Typhoid subjected its victims to more debilitating bouts of diarrhea, stomach cramps and above all headaches and a crushing fever. One reason why it was often referred to as brain fever in lincolns day. Lincoln saw and suffer the throws of fever much has he surely saw his mothers pain and suffering from the milk sickness years earlier. And lingered for four or five days and we do know that he visited her at least once right before she died. It was very evident that he was much distressed. Remembered a friend. We saw him after. What is telling here is not so much the second hand accounts of lincolns distress or his supposedly suicidal behavior. What i find interesting is his silence. His failure to ever even once mention his relationship with and or his reaction to her death. A year after he died he began a brief courtship with another woman named mary owens mary later quote i do not him recollect ten mentioning ands name. You it was more or less business as usual of seeing after and died. But then again perhaps not. For entirely in keeping with lincolns reactions to the deaths of his mother and sister, and died much as nancy and sarah in a sudden and ugly way, cut short before their time by it another form of death that stopped the areas in which he lived. Some people believed that the deaths of nancy sarah and anne fostered in him a life long tendency towards melancholy and deep seat of loneliness that data from the start days. Perhaps, but on a more does direct observable level the deaths of these three women were raw, ugly unfiltered things. Cruel content trust with the chin teal good death that respectable americans and his day thought and strong to attain. Discouraged romantic ideas of the nature of living and dying had lincoln been born and raised in different circumstances in early 19th century america, say a comfortable middle class home in a more settled area, he might well have learned too thickly coat death and the layers of sentiment and anxious emotionalism that characterize his ideas of the best way to die. Lincoln never seems to have thought this way. Instead, he learned very in life that death could be an often was wrong and unforgiving. From the screams of his dying sister to the wretched wasting away from disease evident in his mother and fiancee to the almost daily fair link encounters with animals in the indiana wilderness. I am not a very sentimental man lincoln once remarked. And this was certainly truth when death and dying were concerned now years later he would experienced yet another death. This from the perspective not of son or brother for lever, but rather apparent. This death of his young son eddie would not be a frontier death in an raw and undeveloped rural area. It would be a middle class death experienced by lincoln, the respectable husband father and professional attorney and a scholar town setting. Eddie lincoln was three years old in early december of 1849 when he began to have persistent bouts of coughing slight at first persistent a, little thing. Abraham and mary might not have thought much of it at least not right away. But the truth is eddie had always been rather sick and one of the few surviving letters to her husband, mary refers to eddie having recovered from his little spell of sickness but she offers no details the previous summer. Mary in the boys that accompanied abraham on a speaking tour upstate new england where it he had again fallen ill during the trip compelling married to devote most of her time and energy to nursing him. Now in 1849 came a cough which grew steadily worse. If his parents were initially inclined to downplay the significance, that is one more unfortunate unmanageable trial for a little eddie. They were soon disabused as the coughing became ever more ferocious with eddie experiencing ever greater trouble catching his breath. They know it is spots of blood on his lips and shun and greenish yellow phlegm he had begun to expel. People in lincolns time called this consumption, which was actually a catchall phrase and the scientifically imprecise times, could noting any disease causing a consuming or wasting of the body, scientific classification was so vague that some historians what exactly caused cities illness . Odds are it was tuberculosis. By the end of january 1850, every when you add his condition was grave. The wasting aspect of the disease would now have been evident his skin would have had a ghastly or whitish pallor. Hence the name white played attached by some to the disease and his muscle tone would have been diminished both from the bloods decreased oxygen content and from what was likely by this point a prolonged period of time spent and bed. The difficult breathing and coughing spells continued punctuated by hoarseness and diminishing ability to speak. Night sweats were another common symptom. And some late stage, tuberculosis patients suffered bouts of diarrhea adding more to the missouri. If eddie had lived in a later age, he might have been taken to a sanatorium with other patients, places that segregated the dying process into its own institutionalized rules and routines. Instead, like nearly everyone else in that period, he spent his last days at home, and lincoln would have been squarely in the middle of it all, living day in and day out with the specter of his young boys imminent death growing ever more present. Now lincoln did reduce his workload, somewhat. He only litigated during eddies illness, ten cases i went back and look at the previous years. He normally litigate it two to three many times that many cases. You can see that he cut back on his workload. He also did not go anywhere. Whereas, he would routinely travel to various places but he stayed at home he made an effort to become more involved, but he also sustained a more or less normal routine. He did go to work he did argue some cases and he wrote letters. If you read those letters, you see no indication that there was anything unusual in his family life. He tried to bury his sons ordeal as a strong man remember the friend, the one who resolve to keep his feelings under firms way. Shades of his quiet reaction to his mothers and sisters and relatives death. Sometime towards the end of january, he wouldve undertaken the practical preparations for the funeral. He and everyone else we knew it was imminent he would have done most of the planning himself. There were no Funeral Directors or homes and springfield and the modern Funeral Service did not yet exist he would have purchased a coffin there were at least two downtown businesses and springfield that sold coffins. He would have made the necessary arrangements for burial in lincolns case, he chose the hutches sin cemetery in springfield, a privately owned cemetery run by a cabinet maker named john hutch a son who in all likelihood provided the hearse as well. There were rules about regarding just how all this was going to be done the exact trim of the hearse for example hearses back then always had white feathers sticking out the stated back to the medieval area when they had lit candles around bodies lying in state. The placing of an appropriate biblical saying on a headstone, the exact arrangement for where he would have the service which would be at home with that would look like an all. That lincoln could not afford to ignore these rules. He was a man of humble farming routes. Constantly strove to escape those and white middle class respectability. Lincoln wanted and needed acceptance into polite springfield circles. The memories of Little Pigeon Creek with all of its wilderness and primitive nips. Not to mention his mother, sister and ann rutledge and theyre awful suffering. He wanted to get as far away of that life as possible. He was an ambitious man. He had to do dying as well as living right. Eddie died at six in the morning on friday february the 1st 1850. Just four weeks shy of his fourth birthday. We lost our little boy lincoln wrote to his step brother. He was sick 52 days. The funeral followed the custom of the day and occurred in the parlor of the lincoln home. Eddies body would have been prepared for viewing. He was probably not embalmed, and expensive process not yet widespread. He was washed and dressed, tasks usually performed by the deceaseds mother and the help of other women. In some communities, ladies advertised their services as laying out women. Mary probably did the task herself possibly assisted by her sisters or some neighbors. The hearst drew eddie to the grave site with lincoln, the reverend and others acting as a small cortege. Following the burial, the lincoln family entered a period of mourning which society had a strict protocol. Men and women were subjected to different rules. As the father of the child, he wore black clothing, lincoln did. Men were to suppress their feelings during the process of dying and so did too they submerge their grief afterwards. Had lincoln warned morning clothing for what his friends and family consider a long time. He would have been feminist in his grief. He was expected to be a man who maintained the outward appearance of keeping his emotions in from masculine control. For the most part he seems to have done so. The people closest to him noticed a deep seated sadness in the days following eighties aerial. I found him very much depressed and downcast at the death of his son a neighbor later remembered who visited him to further console him on his loss. This is hardly surprising. Lincoln reserved those feelings of depression for private encounters behind closed doors of his home. There is reliable evidence of only one open outburst, immediately after the funeral, he saw a card with eighties last medical prescription laying on the table. He picked it up, threw it away and rushed out of the room crying. Otherwise lincoln seems to have firmly maintained the self control expected of him. Even this slight loss of emotional control occurred in a domestic setting. His professional behavior in the office and elsewhere it was normal. Neither his law partner or anybody else remarked otherwise. His correspondents during that time period is entirely businesslike and ordinary. His only mention of eddies death at all came in a brief letter on february 23rd, responding to his star brother he wrote, as you make no mention of it i suppose you have not learned that we lost our little boy we can wrote. We miss him very much. Whatever turmoil he felt upon eddies death, he contained within himself and out of the public eye. This was no insignificant matter. For dying and its aftermath was one of americas most rigidly prescribed and emotionally sensitive rituals. Lincoln was given a certain set of guidelines. Cultural tools from which to navigate the dying process for his son. These tools were partly designed to help ease personal grief but they also allowed the community to properly assess the distressed parents respective characters. People believed they could tell a lot about their neighbors values, beliefs and even the state of their souls by watching how they handled death. So, taking these four deaths that lincoln experienced before the war. His mother. His sister. Ann rutledge and his son eddie. Note the strong echoes of lincoln and his careful balancing act during the war. There is every indication that prior to the war, Abraham Lincoln was an emotionally sensitive and empathetic as anyone, maybe even more so. He was not in any sense indifferent to the pain and pat those of the dying or the loss of their loved ones. He had felt all of these things himself, keenly so, as he watched his loved ones suffer and die. But he learned to function within that loss. He learned to balance grief with acceptance. A motion with reason. Feeling the loss of the president with the act of moving forward into the future. He followed his mothers body on that sled, watched her burial, descended in that lonely on poetic null in Southern Indiana and moved on. He watched his sisters burial. His dead nephew wrapped in her arms. He sob and then he moved on. He mourned and. And then he eventually married mary todd. He mourned eddie but would raise three more boys. He moved on. From getting on with life following these private losses before the war he would extrapolate getting on with life. Getting on with the job during the war. Because there would be more personal loss during the war. Particularly and most grievously the death of his favorite son willie from typhoid in february of 1862. A death so emotionally racking that it seems to have very nearly incapacitated him. I never saw a man so bone down with grief marys seamstress recalled. He came to the bed, where will these bed what body was lying. Lifted the cover from the face of his child, gazed at it long and earnestly murmuring my poor boy. He was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven but then we loved him so. It is so hard, hard to have him die. He then burst into what was described as great sobs. He walked into his private Secretaries Office later on and said my boy is gone. He is actually gone. Lincoln then burst into tears and left. He very nearly shut down for several days afterwards. When newspaper claimed that he was in a stupor of grief and seemed to care little even four Great National events for several days. He was unable to celebrate the great Union Victories that occurred at this time because he was grieving his son. Willis funeral was on a friday. But by sunday evening, sunday evening, he was beginning to pull himself together. Another newspaper reported quote, he had begun to recover from the shock and is not incapacitated for the duties of his position. He moved on. He moved forward. The grief of willies death never entirely subsided. He was wearing a bit of black bunting on his stovepipe hat one he was assassinated. He bounced his grief with the need to win the war. To get on with the job. To make the death mean something. The balancing act seeped into his speeches as well. Including his greatest words as a president. When it here in gettysburg in november 1863 he told the nation that bought it was altogether fitting to mourn the battlefield dead, it is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the great and finished work for which they fought here. It is for us to remain dedicated to the great task. From these deadly take dedicated devotion. Here again was that exquisite act of balance where he again moved on, where he balanced sadness and hope. He balanced death and he balanced life itself. I believe it was a balancing act that he learned and a very early age. Thank you very much. My name is jeff from middle town connecticut. Hello. You touched on a very good subject that i like. Obviouslyy suffered and handled grief and so forth. Do you suppose this had any correlation with how he handled the socalled dreams of his own assassination . Wow. I tend to be a bit of a minimalist when it comes to lincoln evidence, i stick to the collective works mostly. There is an account that he had a dream permitting his own assassination. Im not saying he did not have the dream, he may well have but im a little skeptical about it. Its an after 1865 look guys i dont mean to disparage the people who say that it couldve happened. , when it comes to anything stated about lincoln after 1865, about things like this, you better take them with a big grain of salt, frankly. Im not sure he did. He did believe and the power of dreams because there is a collective works of letters he wrote to mary when shes off traveling and he says, mary tell tad to put that pistol away i had a dream about it. He did believe and some four tenths of dreams. I am just not sure he had dreams. Im not sure i want to comment. But it is a great question. It really is. I am a doctor from washington d. C. What i know about death and dying ive learned a lot and that period from the dale files book. Gosh. Yes its a great book im wondering in your research what her premises they believed in a good death back then . Did lincoln subscribe to that or was he involved in his thinking about you, know if this was a good that he could then move on . Let me preface this by saying, i love that book. The republic of suffering, you know what im talking about. That was a pioneering work. I strongly believe that lincoln scholarship should take it into account. That said without arguing with professor vows we look to a far Greater Group of people. I was just looking at land can, and i argue in my book that there is very little indication that he fought a good death in 19th century terms. You hardly ever see him sentimental icing any death are dying. He very rarely, maybe a half dozen times this whole light even mentioned heaven. He believes in the after life i think, he certainly is a christians that he is a very vague believer. I have a chapter on this, actually. I do talk about that, that he has sort of a fatalism you think scott has a plan, that people die for a plan but hes not speculating as to why, and you never really see him pursuing the good death tropes of dying exhortations. The sentiment the sentimental romanticizing grief, it is just not him. It is not his personality. When applause its a real honor to introduce someone who its kind, classy and a careful scholar, and someone who has been the heart of the Lincoln Forum since its inception. Edna Greene Medford it is now the associate pro most of Faculty Affairs at Howard University and this place is her in an enviable position of having to say no to everyone