What he was had nothing to do with the fact that he quoted something that he believed Lincoln said, unless you are arguing he was deliberately trying to push something he knew was wrong."
There is no suggestion from London as to where he got the alleged Lincoln quote.
My guess is that, wherever the quote originated, it was "too good not to be true" and too close to London's own views for him to seriously question its provenance.
So, London need not have invented the quote himself to have not looked carefully into its source.
DiogenesLamp: "His book proves the quote is at least as old as 1908.
I think you are saying it can be shown to be from 1883.
The first time I mentioned it in this thread said it came from a letter to Elkins in 1864.
I would think the Elkins thing could be verified as true or not, but I don't know."
The alleged letter to Col. William F. Elkins was supposedly dated Nov. 21, 1864, but I've found nothing to confirm it ever actually existed, or if it did, that it was genuinely from Lincoln and not a forgery inserted by, for example, Jesse Weik in 1888.
Indeed, I can't find any confirmation that the Elkins letter existed before it was mentioned by Jack London in 1908.
Again:
- Rick Crawford found the quote in Emanuel Hertz's 1931 book: “Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait”.
Crawford implies but does not state that Hertz sourced the quote from Lincoln's lawyer, William Herndon's (coauthored with Jesse Weik), "Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (History & Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln", but I searched two volumes and it's not there. - Rich Buhler also sources the quote to Emanuel Hertz's 1931 book: “Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait”.
But Buhler also reports that "author David Korten, for example, attributed the same quote to Harvey Wasserman in his 1995 book “When Corporations Rule the World.”
Wasserman in turn sourced: Paha Sapa Reports, the newspaper of the Black Hills Alliance, Rapid City, South Dakota, 4 March 1982 -- a dead end.
Wasserman is noted for leading protests against nuclear power plants.Buhler then goes back to quoting Crawford as implying the original source is Herndon & Weik's biography of Lincoln.
And again, that's a dead end, nothing confirmable. - This brings us back to David Mikkelson, who says that none of the authors who repeated the Elkin's letter ever verified its source and that the alleged letter was denounced as a "bold, unflushing forgery" by John Nicolay, Lincoln's private secretary, when it first appeared around 1888.
But I can't confirm any of that, including Mikkelson's claim that there was an actual letter which Lincoln's secretary Nicolay denounced as forgery around 1888. - So, if Mikkelson's claim is true: that the Elkin letter was denounced as a forgery around 1888, then at least we know there was a letter extant -- whether real or forged -- around 1888.
However, you, DiogenesLamp, described Mikkelson's words as "liberal lying sacks of sh*t, and you automatically lose the argument if you cite those liars," so I feel almost compelled to discount Mikkelson's report of an extant letter in 1888 as necessarily, "lying sacks of sh*t" that I must not cite.George Orwell circa 1942:
- That means Jack London's 1908 book quote is the earliest source I can confirm and everything earlier must be written off as mere speculations.
Jack London was a self-described Socialist who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Oakland as a Socialist in 1901 -- he got 245 votes!
George Orwell -- who should know -- described London as a fascist.
London was also a racist who used the term "The Yellow Peril" as the title of a 1904 published essay.
And of course, you understand enough political theory to know that the technical term for combining fascism with racism is "National Socialism" or Nazi, for short -- Jack London.
Bottom line: to me the alleged Lincoln quote sounds more like Karl Marx or Jack London than the back-woods "Rail-splitter" & railroad lawyer, Abraham Lincoln.
DiogenesLamp: "And you have to denigrate his law partner as an "alcoholic"?
Well clearly he can't get basic facts about Lincoln right because he was an "alcoholic."
It's a wonder General Grant was so effective."
It's important because of this:
William Herndon circa 1888:
"Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, the result of their collaborations, appeared in a three-volume edition published by Belford, Clarke & Company in 1889.[24][25][26]It's been suggested that Herndon's alcoholism prevented him from closely supervising Weik's work and that Weik may not have recognized the Elkins letter's forgery.
The majority of the actual writing was done by Weik, who received full credit as co-author."
DiogenesLamp: "Why would you think that quote makes Lincoln look bad?
I actually think it makes him look good.
He realized what was happening and warned people about it.
Look at how these modern version of the corporate crony capitalists collusion cartels are playing out."
Sure, and so did many other "progressives", socialists and proto-fascists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- such alleged words from the great Lincoln were music to their ears.
The only problem is there's no confirming evidence that Lincoln himself entertained such ideas in November of 1864, or any other time.