Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Forging Lincoln

If we leave out the fraudulent Lincoln we are left with an incomplete image of the memory of Lincoln. It matters far less that Lincoln never said “you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all the people all the time,” than it matters that people believe that he did (this quote is also attributed to P.T. Barnum on occasion). Likewise, the public wants to believe that Lincoln loved Ann Rutledge and wants to know the details. Carl Sandburg, who believed that Lincoln uttered the quote about fooling people, also played a prominent role in promoting the fictional aspects of the relationship in his huge seller, The Prairie Years (1926).

Sometimes the forging of the Lincoln memory involves actual forgery. Sandburg was unfortunately involved with the Wilma Minor affair which resulted in a big embarrassment for Atlantic Monthly. Sandburg initially believed that Wilma Minor had turned up lost Lincoln love letters to and from Rutledge because Sandburg wanted to believe in love and refused to use a critical eye toward the letters. It was only after the Lincoln scholar Paul Angle exposed Minor’s Lincoln letters as nothing more than a hoax that Sandburg changed his mind.

While there was monetary compensation for Minor’s fraud, she seems to have been driven by a want of fame. Other forgers of the Lincoln memory were after fortune. Producing Lincoln letters was a potential source of riches but trying to forge the Lincoln signature was an easier way to try to make money.

Lincoln memorabilia hunting started even before he became President. Henry Rankin, who studied in the Lincoln and Herndon Law Offices in Springfield, asked Lincoln for an autograph in 1858.

It is this signature, either A. Lincoln or Abraham Lincoln that is so prized by collectors and worth so much. Even in Lincoln’s Collected Works it is possible to find notes under entries such as this one from an endorsement: “close and signature have been cut off but copied below in pencil, presumably by the autograph collector.”

It was therefore very tempting for con artists to try their hand at Lincoln’s signature and affix it to items of dubious provenance in order to make some quick cash off of unsuspecting admirers of the 16th President. The impetus for this interest in any kind of Lincoln memorabilia was the assassination of Lincoln which made him into a national martyr. Examples of Lincoln mementos range from the macabre (a sliver of a bloody pillow case slip) to the mundane (Lincoln’s hairbrush-although this item is very improbable since Lincoln’s hair was rarely in order). There a few Lincoln forgers who became infamous such as Charles Weisberg, aka, The Baron; Henry Woodhouse, and the team of Harry Sickles and Eugene Field II. Their handiwork can still be found today. One item, a book of 19th century sheet music, which was part of Sickles and Field’s very large and lucrative counterfeiting operation appeared on PBS’ History Detectives (which uses the great Elvis Costello song above for a theme song).

The Sickles and Field scam in the 1930s involved Mary Todd Lincoln’s former coachman, William P. Brown and a Muskegon County Michigan notary public, Frank Thatcher. Sickles and Field had Brown autograph 19th century books and maps. Thatcher’s role was to attest that Brown’s signature was genuine and attach his notary seal. After acquiring this semblance of legitimacy, Lincoln’s signature, either Abraham Lincoln or A. Lincoln was added by Sickles. Thus, on the face of it, any of these particular items appeared to be Lincoln’s former possessions. Brown was most likely unaware of the intentions of the men as a newspaper article noting that he had been the last person alive employed by the Lincoln’s had appeared in 1931 and brought him public attention as a result. Similarly, Thatcher only thought he was certifying the authenticity of Brown’s signature. Sickles and Field also created forgeries utilizing the signature of famous personages such as Mark Twain and Theodore Roosevelt, among others. Unlike the aforementioned forger Charles Weisberg who was arrested and died in prison, Sickles and Field never even drew a formal charge for their fraudulent products.

One could be cynical about the people who were fleeced by Sickles and Field or other forgers and say with Dave Hannum (not P.T. Barnum who was sued by Hannum over the authenticity of the Cardiff Giant), “There’s a sucker born every minute.” It is however more important to ask what the commodification of the Lincoln memory says about Americans despite the fact that forgeries and replicas mistaken for the genuine article are in existence. What does the inclusion of forgeries in private collections and Lincoln libraries tell us about the forging of the Lincoln memory? The continued existence of private Lincoln memorabilia collections along with Lincoln letters fetching six figures on the auction block suggest that Lincoln artifacts retain a strong interest to this day. It is also surprising to me that there is an apparent dearth of fraudulent Lincoln productions showing up from time to time in light of how much Lincoln items sell for.