John George Nicolay

We remember John George Nicolay as Abraham Lincoln's private secretary, a role more important than the man himself. In this well-researched life-and-times study, the authors aim to do justice to the man. Despite the facts that Nicolay's most important remarks about Lincoln are well known and that his fiancée of eight years directed that her letters be burned, this book tells us much about its subject. Born in 1832 in Essingen, in what is today Germany, Nicolay arrived in the United States as a young child. A thin, bookish boy in a family oriented to muscular work, he found himself essentially on his own at age fourteen. Through discipline, hard work, self-education, and quiet ambition, he became a journalist, owner of a small-town newspaper in Illinois, lawyer, and the protégé of more prominent men. After helping with the publication of the Lincoln–Stephen A. Douglas debates, Nicolay became secretary to the

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