Lucky Diarist

LINCOLN AND THE CIVIL WAR IN THE DIARIES OF JOHN HAY--Edited by Tyler Dennett--Dodd, Mead ($4).

Few men have watched more dramatic history in the making than John Hay. At 22 this spirited, sharp-eyed son of an Illinois doctor became assistant to Abraham Lincoln's wartime private secretary, John G. Nicolay. An adept in handling cranks and job-hunters, a shrewd political observer, personable, sympathetic, young Hay quickly rose in Lincoln's esteem, went everywhere in wartime Washington, missed little. He shared a room in the White House with his good friend Nicolay, held many a nightshirt conversation with the "Ancient," or the "Tycoon," as he nicknamed Lincoln.

On April 18, six days after Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter, young Hay started a diary, hastily scrawled late at night, the most immature and most vivid writing he ever did. Much of the present selection was omitted from the privately printed edition of Hay's letters and diary published by his widow in 1908.

Mainly concerned with the news behind the political and military front, Hay took note, however, of many a minor picturesque happening, such as the visit of a temperance delegation, "looking blue & thin in the keen autumnal air," or the tantrums of Mrs. Lincoln ("The Hell-cat is getting more Hell-cattical day by day."). Except where it touches Lincoln, the main note of his diary is one of caustic or amused astonishment, particularly toward Generals McClellan ("the little Napoleon . . . afraid either to fight or run") and Benjamin Butler ("His ignorance of war leads him constantly to require impossibilities from his subordinates and to fear impossibilities from the enemy").

Hay's astonishment at Lincoln amounted to awe. On the day his diary opens, Lincoln "quietly grinned" when he was told of a plot to murder him. When told of the generals' ambition to set up a military dictatorship, Lincoln was reminded of Jim Jett's brother: "Jim used to say that his brother was the damndest scoundrel that ever lived, but in the infinite mercy of Providence he was also the damndest fool."

The night Lincoln came bursting into Hay's room in his nightshirt, roaring with laughter over a caricature of himself, marks a kind of high point in Hay's astonishment. It also suggests the reason why Hay, like every other man who knew Lincoln intimately, spent the rest of his life collecting material about him. "What a man it is!" Hay exclaims. "Occupied all day with matters of vast moment, deeply anxious about the fate of the greatest army of the world, with his own fame & future hanging on the events of the passing hour, he yet has such a wealth of simple bonhommie & good fellowship that he gets out of bed & perambulates the house in his shirt to find us that we may share with him the fun of one of poor Hood's queer little conceits."

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