If you’ve ever held a penny, memorized the Gettysburg Address in school or visited that big marble memorial, you know President Abraham Lincoln. But you’ve probably never heard of Abraham Lincoln II, the grandson the president never met.
The story begins with Lincoln’s end. On April 14, 1865, the president’s son, Robert Lincoln, visited the White House, fresh from serving in Grant’s army. Robert E. Lee had surrendered days earlier and, with the Civil War winding down, the president was ready to unwind. He invited his eldest son to accompany him to a play that evening.
I’m tired, Robert said. You go.
We all know what happened at Ford’s Theater that night. Robert spent the next 60 years in anguish, believing that if he’d been with his father, Lincoln would have lived.
Robert married three years later, moved to Chicago and began his career. He had three children, including a boy named Abraham Lincoln II.
Nicknamed Jack, he was told he’d have to earn the right to be called by his grandfather’s name.
Jack Lincoln was a nice kid. Intelligent and well-liked, adventurous and athletic.
He was playing with friends once when a baseball shattered a nearby window. All the boys ran off except Jack. The homeowner, a crotchety old man, snatched Jack’s arm. “What is your name?” he demanded.
“Abraham Lincoln, sir,” Jack said with sincerity. The old man was dumbstruck, then retreated into his house.
Jack spent hours with history books open and Civil War maps spread out, studying each military movement in the conflict his namesake had commanded.
He kept interesting rocks in a box labeled, “Collection Illustrating Rounded Pebbles and Sharp Stones. A. Lincoln.”
The signature is telling. That was exactly how his grandfather signed his name. Jack was obsessed with his grandfather’s handwriting until his penmanship eventually became identical to his.
In early 1889, Robert had big news: he’d been appointed ambassador to Britain. The Lincolns were moving to London.
Jack responded like any adolescent. He didn’t want to leave his school and friends and was dead set against it. But ever the dutiful son, he went.
He was studying in Paris that November when he cut his arm. A boil appeared below the armpit. Doctors lanced it. An infection developed and entered his bloodstream. Jack grew seriously ill.
His mother wanted to move him to their London residence. Too risky, doctors warned. A wintry English Channel crossing could become life-threatening if Jack caught the flu.
Jack’s condition steadily worsened, so his parents decided to chance it. They brought their boy home. He arrived safely on Jan. 17, 1890. Robert assembled some of the finest British physicians to attend to his son. For 10 days he seemed to improve. Then he relapsed. In the days before antibiotics there was little doctors could do.
Then pleurisy set in. (Ironically, it was the same disease that had killed Jack’s Uncle Tad two years before Jack’s birth. He was yet another relative Jack never got to meet.)
Jack bore his illness, in his father’s words, “with pluck and determination.” But they weren’t enough.
The end came March 5, after 17 painful weeks. Robert was talking with an embassy staffer when his daughter burst in and shouted, “Go upstairs, quickly!” Robert returned 10 minutes later and said simply, “It’s all over.”
Abraham Lincoln II was dead at age 16.
A nasty argument played out in the press with the British doctors blaming their French counterparts, and vice versa, for the boy’s death.
Jack was buried near his famous grandfather inside the family tomb in Illinois. Forty years later he was moved to Arlington National Cemetery where he now rests beside his parents.
As for Robert, his remaining days were endless torment. Jack had begged him not to move to London. Robert believed if he had had heeded that plea, Jack would have reached adulthood.
Robert Lincoln was haunted the rest of his life by memories of both the father and the son he could not save.
And the rest of us are left to wonder how American history might have been different if a second Abraham Lincoln had made it to manhood.
J. Mark Powell (@JMarkPowell) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a former broadcast journalist and government communicator. His weekly offbeat look at our forgotten past, “Holy Cow! History,” can be read at jmarkpowell.com.
If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read our guidelines on submissions here.
