Good evening and welcome to the Lincoln Group of washington, d. C. It is a pleasure to have you all here tonight for our speaker program. Those also who are watching on cspan. The Lincoln Group of washington, d. C. , is the longest, continuously functioning lincoln organization having been founded in the 1930s. Www. Ve a website at lincolngroup. Org, which is where our members and friends find out what we are doing. We are pleased tonight that our speaker is charles strozier. Charles is both a historian, professor at the City University of new york, but also a practicing psychoanalyst, and his study of Abraham Lincoln, which began many years ago 40 years ago and more has culminated in the book he published last year, your a. Lincoln the enduring friendship of Abraham Lincoln and joshua speed. Author of many books. In particular in 2011, and the anniversary of 9 11, his book until the fires stopped burning the11 and new york city in words and experiences of survivors and witnesses was nominated for the pulitzer prize. His first lincoln book lincolns quest for union a psychological portrait was published in 1982. I just finished the book. I believe that no future biography of Abraham Lincoln and be able to ignore it that every past biography of Abraham Lincoln has to be reevaluated in light of it, so it is with great pleasure that i introduce dr. Charles strozier. [applause] charles thank you. It is a great honor to be here. I am very impressed with what a robust group you have and all your activities. You take trips and go to the lincoln sites. It is wonderful. In middecember, my wife and i got a dog, a maltese dog. We named it lincoln. At least, i named it lincoln, and my wife agreed reluctantly. It started recognizing itself in the mirror. It recognized something that looks like another dog in the mirror. The next sequence was when we watched nature shows or he saw a wolf or a bear, he would run over to the tv and growl, and at the end of january trump came on the tv, and he ran over to the tv and growled. [laughter] charles i thought that was a smart dog. I want to try an experiment. It is dealing thank you very much for your nice comments. One of the dilemmas of my book is that the punchline comes towards the end with the speed correspondents. I cant emphasize enough the significance of this correspondence. This is when the only people he opened up to and totally trusted. The letters, lincoln did not keep speeds letters. But speed cap everything he got from lincoln. These are, without question, the most important source of insight into lincolns inner life. They also happen to be authentically in lincolns words and a primary source. This is in the context of what has emerged in the last couple of decades as for me a depressing false positivism in the lincoln field. The letters in the last century have never been fully appreciated. The letters themselves, speed did not have children, but they ended up in the hands of his nephew. Thats be in the 19teens sold them to a great collector who shared them with Carl Sandburg in the 90s. Then he died in 1952, the Springfield Library bought them for 52,800 which was this deal. A steal. L which was but they had been in the public realm before that. When herndon was carrying out his oral history he asked speed for a copy of these letters. It was the famous letter from 1855 and june 22 1865, and then november 30, 1865. Speed sent letters copies of the letters to herndon. That is why he had them and they were available to herndon. Also another ended up with those copies in 1894 in a 10 volume biography. They published the letters in their works in 1905. They were in the public realm. For 400 years nobody knew what to do with them. Nobody knew what to do with them. Beginning with lord chernwood in 1917. Carl sandberg was the first one to get at them. He did not know what to do with it. All of the biographies from Doris Kearns Goodwin and others. Whether fulllength biographies or biographical studies, all of them use parts. They quote a passage but nobody dives into the letters themselves. In my experience in my first job in 1972 in springfield, illinois. I had gotten my phd in european history so i stumbled on lincoln, what else are you going to do in springfield, illinois except study lincoln. I was 28 years old. In 1973i stumbled on these letters and i said, wow, amazing. I started working on them and thinking about them. After 1976, what convinced me that i should stay with this was i got to know the editor of the collected works. He was a wonderful garrulous type. He said you have to keep at this. He said Carl Sandburg used to tell me he did not know what to do with these letters. Somebody has to really interpret these letters. I had to back off from them because i did not feel i was qualified. That was all very encouraging. I then wrote it as a chapter in my first book. In retrospect i realized it was much too abbreviated because what it set in motion was out of that book, because we slept in the same bed for four years, what it occasions was the stuff about gay lincoln. Im responsible. Part of writing this book is to atone for that sin and to show why that hold. Dachshund that whole theory whole theory is wrong. But you cant just say it is wrong, you have to show it in detail. The whole literature, many others have written books about gay lincoln taking off from nothing and going nowhere. That in turn has occasioned another literature in the last 2025 years, a defense of lincoln against the image of gay lincoln. The two key figures in that our books by two writers with a high testosterone lincoln. Matilda edwards becomes the foil in that story. Ive been watching this unfold for many decades becoming increasingly frustrated and feeling strongly that everybody has it wrong. It was time to revisit this whole subject. I would like to say, i write another book about lincoln every 40 years. What i want to do in looking at these letters, i want to attempt what the french call an explication of text, looking closely at the text and explaining the meaning of what it is about. The first letter is dated january 3, 1842. It happens that there is no postmark or date on this letter. The reason is that it wasnt mailed. Lincoln had visited speed in kentucky and gone to see his plantation in farmington in late august or september. He was a very large slave owner. Speed had come back to springfield more about that, they were living together above the store where they had been before speed had left the nonback to kentucky. There is this wonderful image as they are about to part that speed is about to leave in springfield and go back to kentucky. Lincoln is writing the letter that he is going to get to him as he departs. My image is he probably stored it in his top hat after sitting in the law offices working all day, he would write it, and has the left he handed it to him. The date in the collected works assigned there, and he has january 3 . It is in parentheses because there is no postmark. He is actually wrong. It matters that it is wrong because speed road to herndon in september 22, 1866 that he remained in springfield until the first of january 1842. That means he left on the first. Why does that matter . It matters because what it elicited psychologically was an anniversary reaction, particularly on the part of lincoln because the letters are from lincoln. We actually know much more, thankfully. I would rather know more about lincoln than, but i want to know about both of them. It is a very important anniversary reaction, to a day lincoln always called the fatal first. Lincoln road, speed, i have responded to your last letter. It gave me more pleasure than the total sum that i have experienced since when i broke up with mary todd. Since then i should have been entirely happy but for the never absent idea that there is still one unhappy life contributed to make so. His sense of remorse having broken the engagement and leaving mary unhappy. The broken engagement, im sure most of you are familiar with the story, mary had come to live in springfield in late 1839 to live with her elder sister. Elizabeth edwards, they lift in the mansion on aristocracy hill or quality hill as the locals called it in springfield. Very quickly it is clear that they began that winter. Mary, one of the things in the recent literature is the denigration of mary. I find that amazing because she was a wonderfully interesting, exciting, sprightly, exciting, educated, she was very political, she could quote poetry at great lengths. She was described by one friend as certainly very pretty with her blue eyes and complexion. She had a perfect arm and hand. She was a bright faced eager girl, warmhearted, interested in everything, joyous in life. One friend said mary was the very creature of excitement. She can make a bishop forget his prayers. She was a wonderful conversationalist. Almost immediately lincoln fell for her. Elizabeth, marys older sister with whom mary was living during this courtship drama and later, is by far and away the best witness to this unfolding drama and the significance of lincolns love for mary. She said that lincoln was charmed with marys wit and fascinated with her will, nature, and culture. I have happened in a room where they were sitting and mary let the conversation. Lincoln would listen and gaze on her as if drawn by some superior power, irresistibly so. There is no question that they were engaged to be married. Lincoln talks about the broken engagement. What baffled everybody in late december, lincoln broke it off. The reason he talked about the first of january, 1841 as the fatal first, that was the day they were to be married. The broken engagement was a week or 10 days before that. The anniversary reaction a year later is twofold psychologically because the other thing that happened on that date is lincoln separated from speed, with whom he had been living and sleeping in the same bed for the previous 3. 5 years since he first arrived in springfield from new salem. He moved upstairs to the male dorm where herndon lived for two years and slept in another bed. Other people came in and out. What really happened, i go into this in great detail in the book, what happened as a background was speed, because his father was died and he was head of the family and they needed him back in louisville to run a plantation, he had made the decision in late summer that he was going to leave. The process of getting rid of the store was long and laborious. The real shadow that hung over lincoln throughout the fall of 1840 was the imminence of speeds departure. The notice of the store and the separation of their mutual head appeared in the local paper the springfield journal on january 1, 1841. When i argue is that separation from speed is what through threw lincoln into a panic that led him to be confused about all kinds of issues of love and intimacy and led him to break off his engagement with mary todd. In this first letter if you look at it, he goes on and he says, as i know you do, feeling as i know you do, he knows what speed feels. He puts himself into speeds existence. He extends himself into speeds life. I adopt this is the last method of him handing him the letter. He goes on, is it reasonable that he will feel very badly sometime between this and the final consummation of your purpose. What is the purpose . Speed has left springfield because he is going back to kentucky to marry on february 15. The noun consummation in this context is interesting, to say the least. He says why i say it is reasonable that you will feel very badly yet are because of three special causes. I just want to say one thing i forgot to mention, the fact of handing him the letter gives the letter makes it a talisman, a magical thing that speed is supposed to carry with them and hold him. Whenever he feels badly and feels depressed he can take a letter out and read it and presumably feel better. It is a further way of connecting the two men as they part and as speed goes off to marry in kentucky. Lincoln talks about how he has a naturally nervous temperament. They talked about the technical term, hypochondriasis. Lincoln shortened it to hypo, which he talked about in some of his letters as an affectionate term. Basically it is depression. What he feels is that they are both depressed i have so many pieces of paper i cant find what i want to find. When they when lincoln had gone to kentucky in late summer of 1841 to visit, almost the minute he arrived back in kentucky with his friend, speed at that point suddenly and very dramatically fell in love with Fanny Henning and asked her to marry him. It only could happen for speed with lincoln at his side. Speed later wrote to herndon the following, in the summer of 1841 i became engaged to my wife. He, lincoln, was here on a visit when i courted her. Strange to say, something of the same feeling which i regarded as so foolish in him took possession of me and kept me very unhappy from the time of my engagement until i was married. In other words, speed himself was depressed, anxious about intimacy, anxious about love, and confused he was not basically melancholy and depressive in the way lincoln was, but as soon as speed himself was engaged, he adopted the same foolishness that lincoln had adopted when he is when he had engaged to mary become engaged to mary todd. He lists things to worry about, bad weather, getting busy, but the third, the thing you really need to worry about, the rapid and near approach of that crisis on which all your thoughts and feelings concentrate, which is of course the imminent marriage on february 15. Top of the next page, same letter, i know the painful point with you is at all times when you are unhappy. It is an apprehension that you do not love her as you should. Just before i give some theory about this, go to the letter on february 3, the next page. Two passages there in the next paragraph. I hope and believe that your present anxiety about her health and her life will and forever banish those horrid thoughts about the truth of your affection for her. For the ron the death scenes of , those we love our painful painfulainful are enough that those we are prepared for and expect to see, they happen to all and all know they must happen. They are not an unlooked for sorrow. Should you fear you be destined for an early grave, it is great consolation to know that she is so wellprepared to meet it. Theres no indication there was anything wrong with fanny. [laughter] charles this is all in his imagination. What is going on . This is a series of profoundly important contradictions in lincolns thoughts. I think there are two parts to it. One of them is those you most love die, and this is when he is projecting onto speed. Those you most love die. And, you bear in your relationship to the person who dies, you bear some unconscious responsibility for that death. We know something about morning, think what isnd i evoked in speed leaving and marrying Fanny Henning and by the fact of marrying fanny means lincoln loses speed. He wants them to marry, you will see the double role that he is to play in that, and i think it evokes to be brief, certainly , we dont have much evidence, but it evokes what mustve been the serious drama lincoln trauma lincoln suffered when his mother died when he was nine. It was sudden, he was her beloved son. A beloved woman, and every indication in the oral history of their relationship is that it was rich and abiding. She was a wonderful mother, then she suddenly died. She suddenly died. His sister died which he was 18. There is no indication as to how traumatic that was. The next great trauma is when an rutger died in 1835. This was a serious relationship. It has been reconsidered for a long time. Middle of the 20th century it was regarded as a lot of bunk, but now after the work of simon and wilson in the 1980s, everybody recognizes it was a very serious relationship. She suddenly died and he was absolutely distraught and was suicidally depressed. It suggests, probably it evokes the death of his mother. But youre been to new salem, it is just 25 cottages spread out on a dirt road. His friends set up what amounted to a suicide watch. They watched him all the time. You told a he told a fellow legislator that he was afraid to carry a pocket knife. Nobody has noticed the significance of lincoln telling a friend in the legislature that he was afraid to carry a pocket knife, that is because he was afraid he would commit suicide. That is what you do, you slid your slit your wrist. That is why in psychiatric hospitals you are not allowed to have a pen, pencil let alone a , knife. That of course, the suicidal depression that we know the most about is what lincoln fell into in january 1841 fell into a after he broke off the engagement and separated from speed. He did not go immediately back to kentucky, but they split from their common bed and left a couple months later. He was staying with the butlers. They took away razors and knives. Watch, and mrs. Butler was particularly fond of lincoln. She and speed were on a rotating suicide watch. Herndon was hallucinating. In clinical depression, people often hallucinate. Lincoln was hallucinating in the middle of january 1841. Harnden said later that he was crazy as a loon, because he stopped his law practice and stop attending the legislature. It was a very serious event. Moving on where am i, im still on the february 3 letter. He said at the end of it why if , you do not love her, although you might not wish her death, perhaps this point is no longer a question with you and by dwelling upon it is a rude intrusion on your feelings. If so, you must pardon me. You know the hell i have suffered on that point and how tender i am upon it. This is a reiteration of the same theme, those you love die. There is an additional element that this passage suggests, and that is to be extension that lincoln has made his speeds dilemma, courtship, and relationship with fanny on extension of his own. He is speed, speed is lincoln. He so thoroughly has made speeds dilemma his own he can experience it vicariously as his own experience. That is really the power of that passage. The tension begins to mount. You get to the february 13 letter. The tension that is mounting is as the marriage approaches. He says, here is the first instance the first of february, came to hand three or four days ago. When this shall reach you, you would have been fannys has been several days. You know my desire to befriend you is everlasting, you know i will never cease being a friend while i know how to do anything. He writes the letter knowing that speed will read it after the promised marriage and consummation of the marriage. He is clearly highly agitated by this, by knowing that that was about to occur, the talismanic quality of the letter. Speed will be reading it in that context. At the end of the letter, there is a ps which has been controversial. He says, ps, ive been quite a man ever since you left. It could mean he is going off to prostitutes. Ive a whole chapter in my book about sex and prostitution. Som