One of the strangest things about writing Abraham Lincoln as a character is that everyone already knows what he looks like. Or at least they think they do. The beard. The black suit. The stovepipe hat. The deeply lined face staring out from Civil War photographs.
That’s not the Abraham Lincoln I’m writing. In Lincoln Seeks Justice for Elijah Lovejoy, Lincoln is twenty-eight years old. He doesn’t have a beard. He’s extraordinarily tall and thin, awkwardly built, and not particularly handsome. His clothes don’t always fit very well. He’s also funny.
He tells stories. He teases his friends. He worries about women. He can talk too much. He doesn’t always know when he’s boring someone. He has a new law practice with John T. Stuart and is trying to make a living. That’s the Lincoln I need when I sit down to write.
Sometimes the hardest part is getting the famous Abraham Lincoln out of the room. I don’t want every sentence he speaks to sound important just because Lincoln said it. I don’t want the other characters staring at him as though a monument has walked through the door.
They know Abe. Joshua Speed knows his friend who moved into the room above his store because he couldn’t afford a bed. John T. Stuart knows his law partner. The other lawyers know the lanky young man they encounter in court. And the women he meets certainly don’t see the face on the five-dollar bill.
At first, it was very challenging and I put off writing the book because of it. It took quite a long time to become accustomed to the voice I was going to use. Now that I have, I really enjoy it. I get to take Abraham Lincoln down from the monument, shave off the beard, put him back in Springfield in 1837–and let him be twenty-eight.
Current Projects
My Book: Continuing revisions of Lincoln Seeks Justice for Elijah Lovejoy, featuring a much younger Abraham Lincoln than the one most of us picture.
Edward Bryant: Continuing preparations for future publication and preservation of stories by my friend Edward Bryant.
Thanks for walking alongside me.
