The following essay discusses John G. Nicolay and his collaborator, John Hay. John George Nicolay and John Milton Hay produced one of the best and most comprehensive histories written in America in the nineteenth century. Nicolay was born in Essingen,...

With Lincoln in the White House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay, 1860-1865. Edited by Michael Burlingame. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. Pp. xxi, 274. $39.95) Wander into the Illinois State Historical Library on a summer day and you...

This slender volume reflects an effort on the part of some Lincoln scholars to reexamine reminiscences gathered by early Lincoln biographers. The work presents interviews conducted by John G. Nicolay, Lincoln's private secretary from 1860 to 1865, primarily during the 1870s in preparation...