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224. John Hay to William H. Herndon.

Paris, September 5. 1866.

My Dear Mr. Herndon

I am so constantly busy that I have had no quiet day in which I write you what you desired in your letter several months ago. I have been Chargč d'Affaires nearly

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all summer, my day filled with official business and my night with social engagements equally imperative. Even now, I write because I am ashamed to wait any longer and have a few minutes disposable. I will answer your questions as you put them without any attempt at arrangement.

Lincoln used to go to bed ordinarily from ten to eleven o'clock unless he happened to be kept up by important news, in which case he would frequently Remain at the War Department until 1 or 2. He rose early. When he lived in the country at Soldiers Home, he would be up and dressed, eat his breakfast (which was extremely frugal an egg, a piece of toast Coffee &c) and ride into Washington, all before 8 o'clock. In the winter at the White House he was not quite so early. He did not sleep very well but spent a good while in bed. Tad usually slept with him. He would lie around the office until he fell asleep & Lincoln would shoulder him and take him off to bed.

He pretended to begin business at ten oclock in the morning, but in reality the anterooms and halls were full before that hour — people anxious to get the first axe ground. He was extremely unmethodical; it was a four-years struggle on Nicolays part and mine to get him to adopt some systematic rules. He would break through every Regulation as fast as it was made. Anything that kept the people themselves away from him he disapproved — although they nearly annoyed the life out of him by unreasonable complaints & requests.

He wrote very few letters. He did not read one in fifty that he received. At first we tried to bring them to his notice, but at last he gave the whole thing over to me, and signed without reading them the letters I wrote in his name. He wrote perhaps half-a-dozen a week himself — not more.

Nicolay received members of Congress, & other visitors who had business with the Executive Office, communicated to the Senate and House the messages of the President, & exercised a general supervision over the business.

I opened and read the letters, answered them, looked over the newspapers, supervised the clerks who kept the records and in Nicolay's absence did his work also. When the President had any rather delicate matter to manage at a distance from Washington, he very rarely wrote, but sent Nicolay or me.

The House remained full of people nearly all day. At noon the President took a little lunch — a biscuit, a glass of milk in winter, some fruit or grapes in summer. He dined at fr. 5 to 6. & we went off to our dinner also.

Before dinner was over members & Senators would come back & take up the whole evening. Sometimes, though rarely he shut himself up & would see no one. Sometimes he would run away to a lecture or concert or theatre for the sake of a little rest.

He was very abstemious — ate less than any one I know. Drank nothing but water — not from principle, but because he did not like wine or spirits. Once, in rather dark days early in the war, a Temperance Committee came to him & said the reason we did not win was because our army drank so much whiskey as to bring down the curse of the Lord upon them. He said dryly that it was rather unfair on the part of the aforesaid curse, as the other side drank more and worse whiskey than ours did.

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He read very little. Scarcely ever looked into a newspaper unless I called his attention to an article on some special subject. He frequently said "I know more about that than any of them." It is absurd to call him a modest man. No great man was ever modest. It was his intellectual arrogance and unconscious assumption of superiority that men like Chase and Sumner never could forgive.

I cant write any more today. I may see you before long — I dont know — & so I wont waste time by telling you what you must know as well as I do.

I believe Lincoln is well understood by the people. Miss Nancy Bancroft & the rest of that patent leather kid glove set know no more of him than an owl does of a comet, blazing into his blinking eyes.

Bancrofts address was a disgraceful exhibition of ignorance and prejudice. His effeminate nature shrinks instinctively from the contact of a great reality like Lincoln's character.

I consider Lincoln Republicanism incarnate — with all its faults and all its virtues. As in spite of some rudenesses, Republicanism is the sole hope of a sick world, so Lincoln with all his foibles, is the greatest character since Christ.

Yours
J. H.

Library of Congress: Herndon-Weik Collection. Manuscript Division. Library of Congress. Washington, D.C. 2628 — 33; Huntington Library: LN2408, 2:460 — 63

nts

Notes.

1. A disparaging reference to the historian George Bancroft.