[Ads-l] Who was "E.K., " the claimed interviewer of Lincoln in July, 1864?

[Stephen Goranson]

Well, there's Elizabeth Keckley, a friend of Mrs. Lincoln, but I provisionally--of course, more research needed, and has this been suggested before?--suggest "Edmund Kirke," pen name of James Roberts Gilmore (1822-1903), an author born in Boston. He was granted permission by Lincoln to speak with Jefferson Davis about a possible settlement, something urged by, among others, Horace Greeley. Gilmore/Kirke wrote about the mission on July 22, 1864 in the Boston Transcript and in The Atlantic Monthly in September 1864 (Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life [2008] v. 2,pp. 672-3). But the Boston Daily Journal, April 17, 1865 quotation* does not appear in Gilmore/Keckley's Personal recollections of Abraham Lincoln and the civil war (Boston: L.C. Page and company, 1898).


Stephen Goranson

http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/


  *   *
  *   (via Garson O'Toole via Yoni Applebaum):
  *   [Begin excerpt]
"I have faith in the people. They will not consent to disunion. The
danger is, that they are misled. Let them know the truth and the
country is safe."
[End except]

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org