HEROES: Nancy Hanks’s Son

Last week a judge of North Carolina’s Superior Court handed down his considered opinion that Abraham Lincoln was the illegitimate son of South Carolina’s fire-breathing State’s-righter John C. Calhoun.

Since the day Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency, amateur historians of North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains have tried to prove that he was illegitimate. The Calhoun theory was not new. When it was first advanced, in 1911, it was soon shown that the Nancy Hanks in the case eventually became a respectable Mrs. South. But there still remained: 1) at least 20 other Nancy Hankses, each of whom is claimed to have borne Abe Lincoln; 2) nine alleged fathers. In the course of a rambling book (Random Thoughts and the Musings of a Mountaineer—Rowan Printing Co., Salisbury, N.C.; $2.50), Judge Felix E. Alley announced that he has found the right Nancy Hanks.

His story: the real Nancy Hanks, the natural daughter of a well-born Virginia planter, was a pretty barmaid at her Aunt Ann’s tavern at Craytonville, S.C. Calhoun, who was just beginning law practice, stopped there often on his way home from court. When Nancy was discovered pregnant, Calhoun quickly admitted his guilt and gave her $500 to leave the State. For a second $500 he arranged to have a trader’s hired hand take her home with him. The hired hand was husky, hard-drinking Tom Lincoln. When the trader’s wife objected to having an unmarried expectant mother under her roof, the trader gave Tom $15, a mare and a mule, to take Nancy away and marry her. After a brawl over the fee, the marriage was performed on June 12, 1806. Judge Alley is not positive of Abe’s birthplace or the date. He strongly suspects the child saw the marriage ceremony.

Though professional historians pay no heed to such tales, Alley and his cohorts can point to some circumstantial facts: Lincoln was moody and silent when questioned about his birth; his own word is the sole authority for his accepted birth date, Feb. 12, 1809; because it acknowledged but did not deny rumors of bastardy, the first edition of Herndon’s biography was suppressed.

Final proof of the falseness (or truth) of such North Carolina musings may not be far off. In the Library of Congress are Abraham Lincoln’s private papers. By the will of his son, Robert Todd Lincoln, their seal may be broken in 1947.