ABOUT THIS BOOK

William Osborn Stoddard, Lincoln’s “third secretary” who worked alongside John G. Nicolay and John Hay in the White House from 1861 to 1865, completed his autobiography in 1907, one of more than one hundred books he wrote. An abridged version was published by his son in 1955 as “Lincoln’s Third Secretary: The Memoirs of William O. Stoddard.” In this new, edited version, Lincoln’s White House Secretary: The Adventurous Life of William O. Stoddard, Harold Holzer provides an introduction, afterword, and annotations and includes comments by Stoddard’s granddaughter, Eleanor Stoddard. The elegantly written volume gives readers a window into the politics, life, and culture of the mid-nineteenth century.

Stoddard’s bracing writing, eye for detail, and ear for conversation bring a novelistic excitement to a story of childhood observations, young friendships, hardscrabble frontier farming, early hints of the slavery crisis, the workings of the Lincoln administration, and the strange course of war and reunion in the southwest. More than a clerk, Stoddard was an adventurous explorer of American life, a farmer, editor, soldier, and politician.

Enhanced by seventeen illustrations, this narrative sympathetically draws the reader into the life and times of Lincoln’s third secretary, adding to our understanding of the events and the larger-than-life figures that shaped history.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Harold Holzer is the senior vice president for external affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among the country’s leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War era, Holzer is the author, coauthor, or editor of twenty-six books—including The Lincoln Image, The Lincoln Family Album, and Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech that Made Abraham Lincoln President. He is a cochair of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

REVIEWS

“This autobiography combines the fascinating details of social history with the drama of high politics. Lincoln’s White House Secretary richly chronicles the interesting life of a jack-of-all-trades who witnessed Lincoln’s greatness, documented the tumultuous events of our national ordeal, and played a small, yet fascinating, role in those events.”—Joseph Fornieri, author of Abraham Lincoln’s Political Faith

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents
List of Illustrations 00
Acknowledgments 00
Introduction 00
1. The Stoddard Family Tree 00
2. Childhood in Rochester 00
3. Boyhood in Homer 00
4. The Old Garret and Other Wonders 00
5. In the Village 00
6. The River 00
7. The Hill and the Woods 00
8. The Academy and the Shop 00
9. Syracuse: The Young City 00
10. The Onodaga Street House 00
11. Hoyt¿s School 00
12. The Bookstore 00
13. The New Garret 00
14. The Church 00
15. The Jerry Rescue Riot 00
16. Miscellaneous 00
17. Going to College 00
18. College Days 00
19. Junior Year 00
20. Grand Prairie 00
21. Log Cabin Home 00
22. Prairie Life 00
23. Prairie Winter 00
24. Frontier Journalism 00
25. Forward 00
26. Suppers, Characters, and Incidents 00
27. Lincoln and a New Beginning 00
28. War 00
29. A New Life in Washington 00
30. The War City 00
31. Guns and Things at the White House 00
32. A Very Busy Year 00
33. Wartime Enterprises 00
34. About Mr. Lincoln 00
35. The Long Winter of 1862 00
36. Forward March! 00
37. On Assignment by the President 00
38. Year of Decision, 1864 00
39. Notes from the Southwest, and the Death of Lincoln 00
Afterword: Picturing Lincoln 00
Post Impressions by Eleanor Stoddard 00 
Notes 00
Index 00