TAD CARPENTER QUOTE SERIES

TAD CARPENTER QUOTE SERIES

Carpenter also wrote a series of articles about Lincoln, one published just two weeks after the assassination in the New York Independent, and another in June 1865 for the second issue of a new religious magazine, Hours at Home, published by Scribner’s. The essay actually contains a few stories that did not make it into Six Months. Raymond’s 1865 book, Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln. He did publish a few pieces before it appeared, most importantly “Anecdotes and Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln,” a seldom-consulted but very useful 41-page essay printed as an appendix to Henry J. I don’t want to fray any more Carpenter books than I have to. The one I owned first (green) is so tattered by now, so filled with underlined passages and post-it notes, it’s the only edition I consult. The little volumes come in a variety of colors, so over the years I’ve acquired a rainbow of bindings. Of course I own several editions of his 1866 original. I’ve not only quoted Carpenter often, I’ve examined his personal papers and scrapbook, written articles about him, and later, a biographical introduction to a 2008 reissue of Six Months published by the White House Historical Association. Remember, it is subtitled The Story of a Picture, and from the first time I read it, the book struck me as the best account written about the creation of a Lincoln image-in this case the most influential of all Lincoln images. I started my own Lincoln career writing about art and iconography, and Carpenter-as both a painter and memoirist-has been the leading character, and Six Months at the White House my bible.

I admit I also had a personal reason for advocating to Lincoln Lore on Carpenter’s behalf.

And no book presents a better overview of Lincoln’s thoughts, hopes, and doubts leading up, two years earlier, to his most momentous act: the Emancipation Proclamation. And that’s because, aside from John Hay’s diary, no book offers better insight into what actually transpired in the executive mansion between February and July 1864, the year of Lincoln’s re-election. Today, no book about the Lincoln presidency can be undertaken, or taken seriously, unless it uses and cites Carpenter’s memoir. I think Carpenter deserves a place-an important place-as a biographer-in-residence because he wrote a source that every serious Lincoln scholar since has mined and quoted. He saw Lincoln up close and first-hand almost every day for half a year as he worked as an artist-in-residence in the White House on his monumental painting, First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. HH: Of course, Carpenter did not need to do much research (although he did excavate many second-hand anecdotes). Please defend our joint decision that Carpenter’s Six Months at the White House deserves a place in this series. Obviously, Carpenter does not “fit into” the list of biographers who have used research techniques in order to write about Abraham Lincoln. SG: When we first discussed your participation in this series of articles about Lincoln biographers, you asked if I thought that Francis Carpenter should be included. Lincoln Through the Eyes of History: Harold Holzer on Francis Carpenter

Tad carpenter quote