Inside Lincoln's White House, The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay (review)

226CIVIL WAR HISTORY conventional wisdom; it is difficult to see where Wilson is going. The last chapter in the book, "Lincoln's Declaration" suggests a destination. In this piece, Wilson traces the development of Lincoln's views about the Declaration of Independence , particularly the "all men are created equal" clause. These two chapters begin and end the book, but they might be better placed side-by-side. They suggest the question of whether common reading experiences had anything to do with Lincoln's "special affinity" ( 1 66) for Jefferson's document, but the question goes unanswered or, indeed, unasked. Of the remaining chapters, the most interesting is "The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: An Unfinished Text," in which Wilson argues, convincingly, that a new definitive version of Lincoln's speeches in these debates ought to be written by comparing the accounts of newspapers that supported and those that opposed Lincoln. This sums up the value of the volume as a whole: not as the last word on any aspect of Lincoln's life or development, but as a source of suggestions about new pathways in researching and writing about one of the most examined figures in American historiography. Deren E. Kellogg University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Inside Lincoln 's White House, The Complete Civil War Diary ofJohn Hay. Edited by Michael Burlingame, with John R. Turner Ettlingen (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997. Pp. xx, 393. $39-95·) The diary of John Hay, one of Abraham Lincoln's Civil War secretaries, has been published twice before, once in 1908 in a private edition compiled by Henry Adams and Clara Louise Stone Hay, his widow, and again in 1939 in a more scholarly version edited by Tyler Dennett. However, as historian Allan Nevins noted, the Dennett rendering suffered from being "casually edited." Specifically, Dennett omitted about 10 percent of Hay's material, provided only limited annotation, and made a number of errors in deciphering Hay's rather difficult handwriting. Utilizing a much more accurate text—prepared by John Ettlinger, the former Special Collections Librarian at Brown University—Michael Burlingame has produced what is destined to be the definitive edition of this classic work. Not only have Burlingame and Ettlinger restored the material that Dennett cut, but the very full notes are an important addition, shedding much more light on the persons and events Hay discusses. In their ability to find material about even the most obscure references, the editors show themselves to be ingenious historical detectives. While there were other diary keepers among Lincoln's cabinet and political associates, none provide the intimacy Hay's account does. In fact, it is impossible to write about the Lincoln presidency without turning to the Hay diary. While Abraham Lincoln may not have had the warmest of relationships with BOOK REVIEWS227 his eldest son, Robert, he treated both John Hay and his other Secretary, John Nicolay, who lived in the White House, as surrogate sons. The president placed great faith in Hay despite the fact that in 1861 he was only twenty-three years old. Hay moved very easily among the powerful men of Washington and often carried out sensitive missions for his chief. Thus, we find Hay bringing enrollment books to Florida for citizens to take loyalty oaths as part of Lincoln's Reconstruction initiatives as well as accompanying Horace Greeley to Niagara Falls to deal with rebel peace commissioners. Hay's diary, while often not the only reference, is also a source for such well-known Lincoln Statements as his assessment after Gettysburg that, "If I had gone up there I could have whipped them myself." He also recorded the president's rather scathing denunciation of General Rosecrans after the battle of Chickamaugua, that he "is confused and stunned like a duck hit on the head." Equally important, however, are the more private revelations which had no direct bearing on affairs of state. For example, Hay recounts his own amusement at the president's attempt to converse with some NativeAmericans, "Where live now? When go back Iowa?" or Lincoln's own pleasure in a Richmond Examiner article criticizing Jefferson Davis, which he said showed that Davis had the same kind of troubles with newspapers...