SNOPES is wrong about Nicolay as their source for a supposed "forged" Lincoln quote on corporate rule destroying the Republic

 https://ratical.org/corporations/Lincoln.html

What Lincoln Foresaw:

 Corporations Being “Enthroned” After the Civil War and Re-Writing the Laws Defining Their Existence  

by 

Rick Crawford, crawford@cs.ucdavis.edu  

Here is a sobering quote by Abe Lincoln: 

 “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”  

—U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (letter to Col. William F. Elkins) Ref: The Lincoln Encyclopedia: The Spoken and Written Words of A. Lincoln Arranged for Ready Reference, Archer H. Shaw (NY, NY: Macmillan, 1950)  

Some people expressed doubts about its authenticity, given Lincoln’s work as an attorney for railroad corporations! It was an interesting job tracking it down and verifying its authenticity. The first ref I heard for this quote was Jack London’s 1908 Iron Heel. And although the quote indeed appears there (near p. 100), Jack London offered neither context nor source. More recently, David Korten’s book, When Corporations Rule the World (1995, Kumarian Press), sources the quote to Harvey Wasserman (America Born and Reborn, Macmillan, 1983, p. 89-90, 313), who in turn sources it to Paha Sapa Reports, the newspaper of the Black Hills Alliance, Rapid City, South Dakota, 4 March 1982. But given Wasserman’s ties to Howard Zinn, and his status as co-founder (?) of the Liberation News Service, citing that kind of trail is like waving a red flag for the skeptics ;-)  

Fortunately, after some burrowing in the university library, I was able to confirm its authenticity. Here it is, with more surrounding context: 

 “We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. . . . It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.” The passage appears in a letter from Lincoln to (Col.) William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864. 

  For a reliable pedigree, cite p. 40 of The Lincoln Encyclopedia: The Spoken and Written Words of A. Lincoln Arranged for Ready Reference, by Archer H. Shaw (NY, NY: Macmillan, 1950). That traces the quote’s lineage to p. 954 of Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait, (Vol. 2) by Emanuel Hertz (New York: Horace Liveright Inc, 1931).  

Based on about 3 hours of research, it appears Lincoln has been extensively SANITIZED FOR OUR PROTECTION. The Hidden Lincoln; from the Letters and Papers of William H. Herndon, by Emanuel Hertz (New York: Viking Press, 1938), details how Herndon (Lincoln’s lifelong law partner) collected an extensive oral history and aggregated much of Lincoln’s writings into a collection that served as the basis for many “authoritative” books on Lincoln. By all accounts, Herndon was scrupulously honest and plainspoken. 

Hertz quotes Herndon’s characterization of the various “big-name” authors who relied on his collection for primary source materials: “They are aiming, first, to do a superb piece of literary work; second, to make the story WITH THE CLASSES AS AGAINST THE MASSES. [my emphasis added] It will result in delineating the real Lincoln about as well as does a wax figure in the museum.”  

In several books, I found numerous places where Lincoln spoke about Capital and Labor (“Workingmen”). Lincoln re-used his own material frequently, and virtually identical passages appear in several places. Lincoln praises the moral rightness of both Capital and Labor, but this is invariably in the context of a nation where NO MORE THAN ONE MAN IN EIGHT is a Capitalist or a Laborer, ie, where 7/8 of the population are “self-employed” on their own farms and homesteads. This social context of general self-sufficiency would explain how Lincoln could serve for years as a railroad corporation lawyer with (apparently) no qualms, yet pen the “corporations enthroned” passage to Elkins.  

A final Lincoln tidbit, although it pertains to one very specific case: 

 “These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people’s money to settle the quarrel.”  

speech to Illinois legislature, Jan. 1837. See Vol. 1, p. 24 of Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. by Nicolay and Hay (New York: F.D. Tandy Co., 1905)

The Hertz book on Herndon - pdf 

 

 So he's saying they falsely portray Lincoln as "with the classes against the masses."

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/abraham-lincolns-capitalism-prophecy/

and were immediately denounced as a “bold, unflushing forgery” by John Nicolay, Lincoln’s private secretary

 So Snopes is relying on Nicolay as a definitive source to dismiss the quote as fraudulent yet Herndon exposes that Nicolay was not at all a definitive source.

So then even REDDIT did not allow the above Lincoln quote since they sourced SNOPES as debunking the quote.

Amazing how the Interwebs so easily decides what is reality. But all it takes is an extra step of digging to debunk the debunkers!!

But long before this a series of articles began to appear in Century which were ultimately to become Nicolay and Hay's great ten-volume work on Lincoln—certainly intended to be, and widely greeted as, the definitive biography of the Civil War President. Herndon read the articles as they appeared, and his criticism, scattered through his letters to Weik and others, was deadly. "They are aiming,"he says,"first,to do a superb piece of literary work; second, to make the story with the classes as against the masses. It will result in delineating the real Lincoln about as well as does a wax figure in the museum....Nicolay and Hay have suppressed many facts—material facts of Lincoln's life, and among them are Lincoln's genealogy, paternity, the description of Nancy Hanks, old Thomas Lincoln, the Ann Rut-ledge story, Lincoln's religion, Lincoln's spells of morbidity, the facts of Lincoln's misery with Mary Todd, Lincoln's backdown on the night that he and Mary Todd were to be married,etc., etc. I do not say that they did not mention some of these things in around about way, but I do say that the kernel, 'nib,' or point of things has been purposely suppressed. Nicolay and Hay do know the facts fully, as I am informed on good authority....Nicolay and Hay handle things with silken gloves and a camel-hair pencil. They do not write with an iron pen....Some of the finest episodes in Lincoln's young life are omitted or evaded or swallowed up in words....They are writing the Life of Lincoln under the surveillance of Bob Lincoln. Nicolay and Hay, in my opinion, are afraid of Bob. He gives them materials and they in turn play hush. This is my opinion, and is worth no more than an honest opinion."

 p. 15

 SANITIZED FOR OUR PROTECTION. The Hidden Lincoln; from the Letters and Papers of William H. Herndon, by Emanuel Hertz (New York: Viking Press, 1938),

 Helen Nicolay, the daughter of John Nicolay, one of Lincoln's White House secretaries, said her father worked to refute this error.

 http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.com/lincoln/speeches/sfaq.htm

So her father was a Brown-No$er and so she is not a solid source either...

In addition, I searched the Lincoln archives at The Humanities Text Intitiative, a unit of the University of Michigan, for the quote and they have it in an appendix as "spurious."

 http://www.swans.com/library/art9/letter21.html

Quite AMazing that Nicolay got to re-write Lincoln's history...

What of this book by Hertz on the Sanitation?

This letter is a forgery made by a man named Joseph Cosy. The Lincoln biographer Emanuel Hertz was taken by this con-man.

 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1956/02/25/yrs-truly-a-lincoln

Really?

 It doesn't mention Cosey as forging that specific letter...

Lincoln Forgeries Joseph Cosey Excerpts from newspapers and other sources From the files of the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection

 STILL no mention of the Lincoln letter on corporations!

So no it was not Cosey!

http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/the-lawyers/william-herndon/

 So it was NOT titled, "Sanitized for Our Protection" - 

Just "The Hidden Lincoln"

Herndon on Lincoln: Letters. By William H. Herndon. Edited by Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis. Knox College Lincoln Studies Center Series. (Urbana and other cities: University of Illinois Press, 2016. Pp. xxviii, 371. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-252-03981-2.)

After Abraham Lincoln's death, his former law partner, William H. Herndon, became convinced of his "duty to state to all Peoples my ideas of Lincoln and my knowledge of the facts of his life so far as I know them" (p, 190). Herndon interviewed many of Lincoln's contemporaries in Illinois, essentially conducting an oral history project. Herndon's notes and letters have become a valuable resource for scholars, as this collection forms most of what we know about Lincoln's early years.

This is the third Herndon-related book edited by Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, codirectors of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College, and published by the University of Illinois Press. They previously published the essential documentary collection, Herndon 's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln (Urbana, 1998); later, they published a splendid edition of Herndon's Lincoln (Urbana, 2006). Wilson and Davis are planning a second volume of Herndon on Lincoln, which will collect Herndon's lectures about Lincoln.

This volume is not a complete edition of Herndon's letters. Herndon was an indefatigable correspondent, and this collection includes only those portions of letters that concern Lincoln. That choice is understandable as Herndon's importance is tied to his association with Lincoln. At one point Herndon warns his collaborator in amassing his Lincoln archive, Jesse W. Weik, "You must expect some repetition," and, at times, Herndon proves himself correct (p. 187). Despite the repetition, the letters are quite enjoyable to read.

The book provides many benefits for Lincoln scholars, including making these valuable materials much more accessible. Herndon's handwriting is extremely difficult to decipher, and Wilson and Davis have done a great service in transcribing these letters. This collection is much more complete and more accurate than its feeble predecessor, Emmanuel Hertz's The Hidden Lincoln, from the Letters and Papers of William H. …