At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings
Edited by Michael Burlingame
(January 2009 Civil War News)

Appendices, notes, index, 294 pp., 2000, 2006 reprint. Southern Illinois University Press, 1915 University Press Dr., Carbondale, IL 62901-6806, $22.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Blake A. Magner
Blake A. Magner is the Book Review Editor of Civil War News. He makes his living as an editor, writer, cartographer and photographer of Civil War history. He is author of At Peace With Honor: The Civil War Burials of Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Review:
With the coming of the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth readers have a large menu of books on the 16th president. What makes At Lincoln’s Side interesting is not only the look we get inside the Executive Mansion but what we learn about some of the people who surrounded Lincoln.

The volume begins with a brief Introduction that covers Hay’s White House years and his later life, discussing both the letters and his reminiscences of the Civil War contained in the second section; Selected Writings.

The section on Hay’s correspondence contains letters that he wrote to the likes of John G. Nicolay and others that include personal as well as official letters he wrote on behalf of the president.

Hay believed that “real History is told in private letters” which a look at the contents of these letters proves true. The section is divided into correspondence by war years.

The second section with Hay’s postwar writings includes a letter to William H. Herndon telling of Lincoln’s life as president, a piece on daily life in the White House, an obituary of Tad Lincoln and “The Heroic Age in Washington,” a lecture Hay delivered in 1870. Also included are biographical sketches of Elmer E. Ellsworth and Edward D. Baker.

The Appendices written by Burlingame include a discussion of the authorship of the Bixby letter, a letter written to the Widow Bixby who purportedly lost her five sons during the war. Was Lincoln or Hay the actual penner of the letter? A second appendix discusses the honesty of Mary Todd Lincoln, which ends with the First Lady supposedly stealing the White House blind when she left.

Modern readers and historians obtain information about the past by reading the words of the participants. Hay’s recollections greatly add to our knowledge of President Lincoln and the President’s House during the Civil War.

Professor Burlingame has once again done a superb job of editing and adding to our knowledge of the 16th president. I highly recommend this volume.