For the past several decades, Michael Burlingame has been considered one of the nation’s leading scholars on Abraham Lincoln. The 83-year-old academic and president of the Abraham Lincoln Association has spent half of his life studying America’s great statesman. He has written or edited 21 works on Lincoln, including his award-winning two-volume biography. James McPherson, the preeminent Civil War historian, once noted that Burlingame “knows more about Abraham Lincoln than any other living person.” When one considers Lincoln’s life, it seems as though destiny led him to greatness. When considering Burlingame’s life, it seems destiny guided him to the great man.
Burlingame jokes about his age, saying that he was born “after the unfortunate event at Ford’s Theatre.” But the Lincoln-Burlingame connection actually began long before his birth in 1941. Burlingame is a descendant of Anson Burlingame, who was Lincoln’s ambassador to China. At 83, the final stop in the professor’s academic career appears to be Illinois, the same place Lincoln’s political career began. Conversely, Burlingame was born in Washington D.C., the same city Lincoln died.
The Student and the Professor
“As an adult what really got me going on Lincoln was an experience I had as a freshman in college,” Burlingame told me. “I was able to take an upper level Civil War course because I passed the qualifying exam to show you knew some European history. The teacher I had was a mesmerizing instructor.”His instructor at Princeton University was David Herbert Donald, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning biographer. Donald had just been awarded his first Pulitzer for his biography of abolitionist Charles Sumner. Not only was Burlingame a student of Donald, but he was soon tabbed to be his research assistant for the second volume of the Sumner biography.
“It was a very heady experience for a 19-year-old kid,” he said. “I was fortunate that I had such a patron and mentor, who happened to be a Lincoln scholar. I got wrapped up in that whole period. If he had been a medievalist, I would probably have been writing about the Middle Ages.”
Donald proved so influential that when he left Princeton to teach at Johns Hopkins University, Burlingame followed him to pursue his postgraduate work. Burlingame, however, wasn’t planning to become a Lincoln scholar. That road was relatively winding. Following in the Civil War-era footsteps of Donald, Burlingame chose to write his dissertation on Carl Schurz, the abolitionist, Union general, and, according to Burlingame, close friend of Lincoln.
While conducting his research, Burlingame discovered letters that Schurz had written to his wife concerning the president. “This got me excited to know that there was new information ... about Lincoln in the public sources,” he said.
A Great Discovery
This discovery was just another step in his journey to Lincoln—a footnote in a tome of scholarship. His next step was while he was teaching at Connecticut College, a small liberal arts school in New London. He said at the time there was not much emphasis on publishing material, like articles, essays, and books. The academic expectation was to teach numerous courses. He taught Civil War history, diplomatic history, American history survey, and even a course on the history of opera. (He calls himself “a big opera nut.”)After about 15 years as a professor at Connecticut College (where he was eventually named the May Buckley Sadowski Professor Emeritus of History), he began researching a new work on Lincoln. Although he had come across new material while researching Schurz, it was limited. Burlingame was under the same impression many historians were and that was there wasn’t much new information available about Lincoln. His book, therefore, would be based on previously published works, but written from a psychohistorical perspective—a perspective that, as Burlingame noted, “applies psychological insights into the study of the past.”
What began as a study of previously published works resulted in the discovery of a treasure trove of long-buried historical documents. This happened when he visited Brown University’s archives to conduct “some original source, unpublished material research.” The college library in Providence, Rhode Island was only an hour from New London. Burlingame was aware that John Hay, who had been one of Lincoln’s personal secretaries, had donated his work to Brown.
The Lincoln Treasure
Burlingame figured that if all of this unused information was available, perhaps there was other source material. He ventured to the library’s card catalog (a “pre-Google” method of research, Burlingame joked) and opened the “L” drawer.“Some of the cards read ‘Interview with Orville Browning,’” Burlingame said. “I know the published sources and this doesn’t show up. The next card was another interview, and another interview. I said, ‘Holy mackerel! All these interviews with people who knew Lincoln. No scholars have used this stuff. This is amazing.’”
What was perhaps more amazing, or rather disappointing, was the reason why these interviews had gone unused. When he asked the librarian why, the response, if not somewhat humorous, was quite indicative of the modern historiographical industry.
“‘Well, Providence, Rhode Island is a little off the beaten path for a Lincoln scholar,'” he recalled being told. “‘Also, if you want to get ahead in the history departments these days, it’s best not to study dead white males. And Lincoln was a dead white male.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I knew that.’
“They said, ‘You know you should try homosexuality among 19th-century pirates or something like that,’” he said with a laugh. “I said, ‘Well, I’ve got tenure and I’m gonna do what I want.’”
Burlingame did what he wanted and what resulted was the 1994 psychobiography “The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln.” It proved something about Lincoln, and about those “dead white males” in general. It proved there was plenty of new information still available, if one was willing to dig and detour “off the beaten path.”
‘A Kind of Obligation’
Burlingame had moved far from the ruts. He had found acres of new ground. He admitted he had never anticipated being a Lincoln specialist. He had planned to write psychobiographies of other historical figures. But after uncovering so much fresh material on arguably the nation’s greatest leader, he said he “felt a kind of obligation” to Lincoln, and all those “congressmen, senators, diplomats, generals, and cabinet members” who knew him.“It is really tedious work to compile these documents and make sure they are accurately transcribed and to annotate them fairly well and see them into print, but I thought that was a useful function,” he said.
From Research to Relationship
As the 20th century was nearing its end, Burlingame knew that Lincoln’s 200th birthday was fast approaching. He asked around “to see if any leading lights of the historical profession” were planning a “cradle-to-grave detailed biography.” Nothing was in the works. Burlingame decided he would take on the project, which resulted in his two-volume, 2,000-page “Abraham Lincoln: A Life,” published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
This feeling of obligation toward America’s good and great man has been about more than publishing volumes. Indeed, it has enabled historians and the average reader alike to view Lincoln through new lenses. But for Burlingame, the obligation has resulted in a relationship. He does, as McPherson acknowledged, know Lincoln better than anyone. It is the depth of that relationship that has done more than place Burlingame in the upper echelons of Civil War and Lincoln scholars. It has changed his life.
“It’s been a joy working with Lincoln. To have him in your life is a source of pleasure,” he said. “All those people I know who work on guys like Mao, Stalin, and Hitler, they always seemed to be, well, depressed, [laughs] and I feel invigorated and enlightened and joyful to be able to share Lincoln’s life in the way I have been doing the past 40 years.”
Why Study Lincoln?
Toward the end of our conversation, I referenced a quote by Sir Martin Gilbert, who, until his death in 2015, was the official biographer of Winston Churchill. Gilbert stated, “‘Why study Churchill?,’ I am often asked. ‘Surely he has nothing to say to us today?’ Yet in my own work, as I open file after file of Churchill’s archive, from his entry into Government in 1905 to his retirement in 1955 ... I am continually surprised by the truth of his assertions, the modernity of his thought, the originality of his mind, the constructiveness of his proposals, his humanity, and, most remarkable of all, his foresight.” From that reference, I asked him a similar question: Why study Lincoln?Upon reflection of Gilbert’s statement, he responded, “I have had very similar feelings about Lincoln: as a great writer, a great statesman, a great exponent of democracy, a great exponent of liberal values, and of racial egalitarianism. Also, his character and wisdom was the North’s secret ingredient in the Civil War, I believe. The South might easily have won if a man like Jefferson Davis had been president of the North, and a man like Lincoln had been president of the South.
“What I find inspiring is not only the standard admiration for his public services, but also he is a personal inspiration for people, and not just people who have been born into abject poverty, which he certainly was. Everybody born on the frontier was poor, but his family was particularly poor. But there was also the psychological poverty. His mother dies when he is 9. He has a very unsympathetic father. His baby brother dies in infancy. His older sister dies when Lincoln is an adolescent. His foster grandparents died at the same time his mother did. He grew up without any formal education. He went through depression. He had a midlife crisis. He had a troubled marriage. He lost two of his four children before they reached adulthood. He had an awful lot to deal with, yet he proved to be a psychologically mature, whole, and effective adult. So there’s inspiration, not just if you were born in a ghetto or a barrio or in poverty in Appalachia, but also if you were born into psychological malnutrition and poverty. Lincoln can be an inspiration to them. That’s another reason to study Lincoln, I think.”
