Washington Whirlwind #3: Lincoln's Platform

 

Washington Whirlwind #3: Lincoln's Platform by Becky Brown

Purple for Mary Lincoln's favorite color, set with black & white for ours.

Lincoln's political platform was enough of a threat to the South

 that several states seceded before he was even inaugurated in March, 1861. 

President Buchanan tipping his hat beside Lincoln on

the way to Lincoln's inauguration from Harper's, March 16, 1861.

But we aren't here to talk politics---rather parenting. The Lincolns may have argued noisily and held different opinions on many things but parenting was not one of them. The official Lincoln Platform was, “Let the children have a good time,” according to Mary Federico in her introduction to the recent edition of Julia Taft Bayne's Tad Lincoln's Father. Federico describes them as “doting parents” of bad boys.

An idealized Lincoln family, Willie with his mother and Robert

and Tad next to their father

Julia agreed, remembering that Tad and Willy were "never accustomed to restraint.” Lincoln's secretaries John Hay and John Nicolay had little patience with the "mischievous" boys who had the run of the White House. Secretarial assistant William Stoddard recalled an episode in their offices, one of which overnight...

"Assumed a suddenly disastrous look...The green cloth cover of the broad table was ink-stained and work-worn, last evening, but it was whole. It is by no means a unit, now. Tad and Willie Lincoln have been here, and they are the happy owners of brand-new pocket-knives. They are sharp knives, too, that will cut outline maps of the seat of war, or of anything else, upon green cloth table-covers.”

Thomas "Tad" Lincoln and indulgent father 

Lincoln's Platform by Jeanne Arnieri

William Wallace Lincoln

Willie Lincoln, older by three years and often characterized as "sweet," followed his younger brother into the rascality explored by the Lincoln and Taft boys. Certainly those Tafts were not raised by an indulgent mother and Mary Cook Taft probably knew little of what went on at the Lincoln home. Tad was the brains of the bunch.

John Hay in later years recalled Tad, as a "chartered libertine...idolized by both his father and mother...He had a very bad opinion of books and no opinion of discipline...The President took infinite comfort in the child's rude health, fresh fun, and uncontrollable boisterousness." 

John Hay (1838-1905) when he began working as a Lincoln secretary.

Lincoln's Platform by Denniele Bohannon

The Block

We have at least 3 published versions of "Lincoln's Platform." BlockBase

shows the simplest as published in Carrie Hall's 1935 book.(BlockBase 1646a)

Oh for heaven's sake! I forgot the pattern. Here it is! Thanks Rina.

 Lincoln's Platform by Becky Collis