William
Herndon was born in Kentucky in 1818. His family moved
to Springfield, Illinois in 1823. After studying at Illinois College,
in Jacksonville (1836-37) he returned to Springfield where he worked
as a clerk in a store.
Herndon began studying law in 1841 and three years later was admitted
to the bar. Later that year Herndon formed a partnership with Abraham
Lincoln. A member of the Whig Party,
Herndon later claimed that he was instrumental in changing Lincoln's
views on slavery.
In 1856 Herndon and Lincoln joined the Republican
Party. The following year, William Bissell, Illinois's governor,
appointed Herndon as a state bank commissioner and he held this post
for the next eight years.
A Radical Republican, Herndon felt so
passionately about slavery that he openly argued that "the only
way to right ourselves is through bloody revolution". On the
outbreak of the American Civil War he
was a staunch supporter of the Union Army.
He though Abraham Lincoln moved too slowly
against slavery and was privately critical of his dismissal of Major
General John C. Fremont.
After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln,
Herndon delivered a series of lectures on the former president. He
claimed that Lincoln "read less and thought more than any man
in America". Herndon was critical of Lincoln's political ambition
and raised doubts about his religious beliefs. However, the most controversial
of his comments was that Ann Rutledge and not Mary
Todd Lincoln was the love of his life. Mrs. Lincoln responded
by commenting: "This is the return for all my husband's kindness
to this miserable man! Out of pity he took him into his office, when
he was almost a hopeless inebriate and he was only a drudge, in the
place."
Herndon was a fierce critic of Andrew Johnson
and dismissed his claim that he was following Lincoln's policies as
a "willful and premeditated lie". He supported Ulysses
S. Grant in 1868 but in 1872, like many Radical
Republicans, supported Horace Greeley.
Herndon's book, Herndon's Lincoln: The True
Story of a Great Life was published in 1899. The book has
been criticised for its author's misunderstanding of Lincoln's political
and economic views. However, it is an important source of information
on Lincoln's personal life between 1837 to 1860. William Herndon died
in 1891.
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