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347 Afterword: Picturing Lincoln Editor’s note: Stoddard’s original manuscript continued for more than two hundred additional pages, carrying the author from war-torn Arkansas to a new life in New York. But save for one long passage, his most historically important revelations were behind him. Besides, by 1906, when he resumed his memoir-writing in earnest, like many men his age the author possessed more precise recall of his early days than of the more recent events of his long life. Stoddard told the rest of his story, he conceded, in “kaleidoscopic” form, acknowledging that “at this distance of time, the almanac begins to resemble the records of the Continental congress” (original Stoddard manuscript, 505). We know that, saddled with his and his brother’s debts, Stoddard at first harbored postwar hopes of becoming “a planter as well as a politician ” (531), even while facing “ten times more personal peril [from bandits , unreconstructed Confederates, and guerillas] than any soldier in the Southwest—most of whom were no longer in any peril whatever from any hostile forces” (532). “Money was scarce and land was a drug” (536), and Stoddard, only twenty-eight, felt for a time that if he withstood the rigors of Arkansas he might become one of its Senators by the time he reached thirty (555). Instead, malaria struck him down, and “almost dead and assured by doctors that I could not possibly live thirty days” (559), Stoddard left the Southwest and headed north, his funds depleted, his possessions gone, and his “Arkansas ambitions . . . a thing of the gloomy, disappointing past” (559). America’s—and Stoddard’s—war was finally over. Stoddard chose not to throw himself on the mercy of the new president, convinced that Andrew Johnson “had never quite forgiven me for my atrocious conduct at Baltimore in forcing upon him his nomination for Vice 348 afterword President, which was the cause of all his subsequent troubles.” Stoddard convinced himself that “but for me he would never have been President and would never have been so dreadfully impeached” (561). He does manage one more visit to the White House, in 1866, using his trusty old latchkey to let himself in—security apparently no more rigorous than in Lincoln’s day, assassination notwithstanding. Stoddard’s manuscript went on to trace his emergence as a New York writer, a career that blossomed despite his refusal—a decision he implied that he regretted—to accept an offer to become assistant editor of Harper’s Weekly (574). Stoddard recalled at one sad point that his old trunk of letters and “priceless” autographs went up in flames (596)—making his ability to recollect his presidential years in their absence all the more remarkable. The onetime White House secretary had yet to publish his first book on Lincoln, but he had one more major contribution, of the nonliterary kind, to make in preserving the sixteenth president’s memory. When his upstate New York friend, artist Francis B. Carpenter, turned to him for help in convincing a stubbornly indifferent Congress to acquire his famous Emancipation Proclamation painting in 1877, Stoddard rose to the challenge [see pages 63–64]. The picture had long been well known and well regarded. The giant, fifteen-by-nine foot canvas had been exhibited throughout the country to such frenzied acclaim that, in Pittsburgh, the painting aroused public fervor “to such a pitch that, once at least, the exhibition room had actually to be closed.” An 1866 engraving became an instant bestseller.1 Yet Carpenter had been unable to convince the public, or their representatives, that the picture deserved permanent, public display. The artist yearned for the recognition—and the money—he thought he deserved. Stoddard came to the rescue, lobbying and testifying before Congress to convince House Democrats and Senate Republicans to accept the gift of the picture—an unexpectedly difficult challenge. He told the detailed story, since unpublished, near the end of his voluminous manuscript. Reprinted here as an afterword to his book, it serves as a fitting coda to the autobiography of the presidential secretary who helped preserve Abraham Lincoln’s memory in picture as well as word. More than one effort to obtain Congressional action had failed, for lack of time at the session’s end, but Carpenter was not discouraged . He came to see me one day and told me that he had secured a loft in New York City and had set up his canvas there for final touches before conveying...

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