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

[Stephen Goranson]

PS. If the Lincoln conversation is accurately reported by "E. K.," then it may be referring to the mission to Jefferson Davis, a July, 1864 mission that Lincoln and Gilmore discussed at length. They did not expect to it to lead to a settlement, but rather to elicit a statement from Davis showing that he would not settle--hence informing "the people" about the prospect of "disunion."


PPS

Coincidence that Yoni Applebaum, who provided a scan of the first publication of the E.K.- reported conversation with Lincoln, writes for The Atlantic [Boston], the same journal in which Gilmore reported on the mission in September 1864.


Stephen


PPPS I'm not on Twitter. If anyone who is (or has his email address) thinks he'd be interested in the proposed identity of E. K., let him know.
________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2017 8:07 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: [ADS-L] Who was "E.K.," the claimed interviewer of Lincoln in July, 1864?

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]

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