Subject: [HM] A supposed Lincoln quotation (was: "President Garfield's Proof")
From: William C Waterhouse (wcw@math.psu.edu)
Date: Wed Feb 09 2000 - 16:45:54 EST
On Wed, 26 Jan 2000, "Herbert E. Kasube" <hkasube@hilltop.bradley.edu>
gave a good secondary source for a quotation given by Pat Touhey:
>
> " ...you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what
> 'demonstrate' means; and I left my situation in Springfield, went
> home to my father's house and stayed there till I could give any
> proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out
> what 'demonstrate' means, and went back to my law studies."
> - Abraham Lincoln
>
It is included in Bill Dunham's The Mathematical Universe
(page 95).
That was enough for me to track it down. Dunham took it from a book
called _The Face of Lincoln_, by James Mellon; that book reproduces
many pictures of Lincoln with writings by and about him. This
one (p. 67) comes from an account (published 1864) of a train ride
that Lincoln supposedly shared with the author in 1860. The author
was John P. Gulliver, a Connecticut minister and later president of
Knox College.
Unfortunately, despite the seemingly good attestation, the account
is worthless. The standard book _Recollected Words of Abraham
Lincoln_, by Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher,
introduces the account by calling it "an excellent early example
of pretended reminiscence at work constructing the Lincoln myth."
Its final note is this:
"In a devastating critique of this article, Herndon pointed out
a number of factual errors. For instance, Lincoln never was a
law clerk and never visited his parents for any extended
period of time."
William C. Waterhouse
Penn State
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