Young Lincoln revealed in Harrigan’s latest novel
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| Photo by Joe O'Connell |
That’s what Stephen Harrigan did while writing his latest novel “A Friend of Mr. Lincoln.”
“He had little schooling, he was a great joke teller, and he was politically ambitious,” Harrigan said of Lincoln. “I think that in his mind, he emulated Davy Crockett. Both were these backwoods guys who went into politics. Maybe in his mind he thought he could be that guy.”
Harrigan’s novel follows a young Lincoln finding his political and social way in 1830s Springfield, Illinois. The future president is sometimes gawky, inept in the ways of love, but ever charming and driven.
It’s a time period Harrigan already mined in “The Gates of the Alamo,” which made the project a little easier to research — he knew the big issues of the time, the clothes, the speech.
One of those big issues was Texas. Early in the novel, the Alamo falls, and people in Springfield are alarmed by newspaper reports of the battle.
Later in the book, Texas’ role in the expansion of slavery comes into play, as people debate the Texas republic’s admission to the U.S. union and the consequences of that decision — which led to the war with Mexico. Several men in the book fought in that war.
“As a novelist, a lot of my work, including ‘The Gates of the Alamo’ and ‘Remembering Ben Clayton,’ is centered on San Antonio,” said Harrigan, who is one of the headline authors at the San Antonio Book Festival on April 2. “In this novel, given the time frame and the issues of the day, I wanted to come back to San Antonio, a city that has had such an magnetic pull on my life.”
While “A Friend of Mr. Lincoln” is fiction, and Crockett isn’t a bona fide character in the book, his presence is based solidly in fact, something that could be disconcerting to the longtime Texas Monthly writer, who grew up in Abilene and Corpus Christi, but has called Austin home for many years.
“There’s a sense of a thousand Lincoln scholars looking over your shoulder,” he said of the three-year writing process for the book. “My mind was divided between winning their respect and entertaining the reader. I had to be authentic to history, yet have a credible story.”
Clay Smith, the Austin-based editor-in-chief of Kirkus Reviews and literary director of the S.A. book festival, praised Harrigan’s “bravery” at “taking on another Lincoln book.”
“As a person who receives a lot of books and galleys, the number of books published about Lincoln is just bizarre,” Smith said. “The beauty of a novel about young Lincoln is you have this man who is extremely ambitious, but also very awkward, who doesn’t know what to do with himself at times. Stephen has captured that young man very accurately.”
Harrigan began thinking about the youthful Lincoln during a cross-country car trip a few years ago with his wife of 40 years, Sue Ellen.
Harrigan was reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals,” and was struck by a letter Lincoln had written to Mary Owens, a Kentucky girl he courted, if it can be called that, before meeting future wife Mary Todd, also from Kentucky. (A sample quote from Lincoln: “Nothing would make me more miserable than to believe you miserable — nothing more happy, than to know you were so.”)
“In the letter, he just seemed so confused and so equivocal that I thought there’s something about this guy that we don’t really know about,” Harrigan related. “I wanted to look beneath the facade.”
He succeeds by creating the fictional character Cage Weatherby, the book’s title friend, a poet whom Lincoln both respects and confides in. Like Lincoln, Weatherby is also fired by ambition.
“You can’t be president if you’re not ambitious,” Harrigan said. “It’s the thing that defined Lincoln, that kept him on his path.”
While Weatherby is a fictional character, as is Springfield doctor Ash Merritt, Harrigan weaves real characters into the story such as Lincoln pals Joshua Speed, Ned Baker, John Stuart, John Hardin and Billy Herndon, as well as real events like the Black Hawk War of 1832. Viewed through all these characters’ eyes, Harrigan’s Lincoln is both likeable and perplexing.
“It’s an odd thing to do, to put words into Lincoln’s mouth,” Harrigan said. “I can’t help myself. I want to get in the time machine and go back there.”
It’s been said that more books have been published about Lincoln than anyone except Jesus. So adding another title to that long list can be a daunting proposition.
“I’ve learned not to be afraid,” Harrigan said. “I keep trying to break out of my comfort zone. Lincoln’s is a story that’s both familiar and dangerous. He’s a person everyone in the world has an opinion about. It could easily go wrong.”
Indeed, while the young Lincoln presented in the novel is full of charisma, he also shows cruelty to his political enemies, penning scathing anonymous opinion pieces in local newspapers. He makes some questionable calls with his friends, too.
One aspect of Lincoln that may surprise many readers is his attitude about slavery. While the fictional Weatherby leans toward abolition, Lincoln is stuck in the middle ground of his times.
“He had a strong moral compass,” Harrigan said. “He had deep-set admirable qualities, but he was not an abolitionist. Slavery was not the burning issue it would become. It tracks the people of his time.”
Joe O’Connell is a Texas writer
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