258 loss for words: Henry Villard's dispatches to the New York Herald give a vivid, day-by-day account of Lincoln's activities. Some of them have been collected in Henry Villard, Lincoln on the Eve of '61: A Journalist's Story, ed. Harold G. Villard and Oswald Garrison Villard (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941).

258 "wear standing collars": "True Republicans" to AL, Oct. 12, 1860, Lincoln MSS, LC.

258 "begin it now?": CW, 4:129130.

258 "puttin' on (h)airs": Charles Hamilton and Lloyd Ostendorf, Lincoln in Photographs: An Alb.u.m of Every Known Pose (Dayton, Ohio: Morningside, 1985), p. 67.

259 the youngest presidents: James K. Polk and Franklin Pierce were slightly younger. So were John Tyler and Millard Fillmore, but they were elected Vice President.

259 to his face: Memoirs of Henry Villard, Journalist and Financier, 18351900 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1904), 1:143.

259 "em a little": Lincoln had used this story as early as 1848. CW, 1:487.

259 Kentucky or Indiana: Lincoln made no claim that most of the stories he told were original, and many of his jokes were hundreds of years old. Reports that he told "obscene" or "s.m.u.tty" stories are hard to verify. Many of these accounts came from political enemies and others from witnesses like Herndon who had no sense of humor. Lincoln's more raunchy stories rarely dealt with s.e.xual innuendo; they usually related to bodily functions, like farting, which members of this Victorian generation considered "dirty." The ribald and Rabelaisian stories that old-timers in Menard County recounted to me some forty years ago were clearly folk-say that made little pretense to authenticity. For Herndon's views, see "'The Coming Rude Storms' of Lincoln Writings: William H. Herndon and the Lincoln Legend," JISHS 71 (Feb. 1978): 6670. Randall, Lincoln the President, 3:5982, offers a balanced statement. P. M. Zall, Abe Lincoln Laughing. Humorous Anecdotes from Original Sources by and about Abraham Lincoln (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), attempts to establish a canon of authentic Lincoln stories.

259 "a satisfactory answer": Segal, Conversations, p. 89.

260 "of fraternal feeling": CW, 4:142143.

260 "Private and confidential": CW, 4:139140.

260 "the most dangerous point": CW, 4:170.

260 any public statement: Thurlow Weed to AL, Nov. 7, 1860, Lincoln MSS, LC.

260 "wolfe [sic] traps": Joseph Medill to O. M. Hatch, Nov. 16, 1860, Hatch MSS, ISHL.

260 "I find it": Donn Piatt, Memories of the Men Who Saved the Union (Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Co., 1887), pp. 3334.

260 "of buckeye wood": John G. Nicolay, memorandum, Nov. 5, 1860, Nicolay MSS, LC.

261 "under any administration": CW, 4:141.

261 "'be given them' ": CW, 4:146. Cf. Luke 11:29: "They seek a sign, and there shall no sign be given."

261 "may have encouraged": CW, 4:142.

261 in the South: Robert W. Johannsen, Lincoln, the South, and Slavery: The Political Dimension (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991), p. 120.

261 M. Blair / Welles: Undated card [Nov. 7, 1860], #6495c, Lincoln MSS, LC. Cf. the long account in Gideon Welles to Isaac N. Arnold, Nov. 27, 1871, MS in Chicago Historical Society (copy in Allan Nevins MSS, HEH), which, however, contains some errors.

262 "was to occupy": Harriet A. Weed, Autobiography of Thurlow Weed (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin &Co., 1883), p. 606.

262 "balanced and ballasted": Ibid., p. 610.

262 "in the highest degree": Day by Day, 2:298.

262 "in the Senate": Baringer, A House Dividing, p. 85.