Professor as Sleuth

THE MYSTERY OF "A PUBLIC MAN" (256 pp.)--Frank Maloy Anderson--University of Minnesofa ($3.75).

In 1879, when the North American Review published extracts of The Diary of a Public Man, the book immediately became an important historical source. It purported to be a diary kept during the winter of 1860-61, in Washington. The story of Douglas' behavior at Lincoln's inaugural (Lincoln had no place to lay his hat, fidgeted with it, until Douglas stepped forward and took it from him) is one of the many familiar stories that come from this famous diary. James Ford Rhodes, Carl Sandburg, Ida Tarbell and other Lincoln biographers accepted the book as genuine ; only the biographer of Charles Sumner doubted its authenticity.

Thirty-five years ago, Frank Maloy Anderson, professor of history at the University of Minnesota and later at Dartmouth, set out to identify the anonymous diarist. This week he published his findings. He had at last located his man, and had come to a surprising and historically important conclusion about the diary itself.

The Tall Man. To find his man, Professor Anderson worked by a patient process of elimination. The late Allen Johnson, editor of the Dictionary of American Biography, had decided on internal evidence that the diarist must have been 1) a New Englander, 2) a former Whig, 3) a Republican in 1860-61, 4) a Senator. Anderson eventually decided that Johnson might be wrong on any or all counts.

He then drew his own composite picture of the unknown diarist--a tall man, an important individual, friendly with Seward, Sumner, Douglas and lesser figures such asr William Aspinwall and James Orr, a man of the world, with a good knowledge of the French language, a strong Unionist with many Southern friends, a man with many business interests and a wide acquaintance in New York City, and--above all--a man who had been in New York City on Feb. 20, 1861, and in Washington on some 20 days between Dec. 28, 1860 and March 15, 1861.

The Night of Feb. 19. His first serious suspect was Henry Sanford, for whom Sanford, Fla. was named. Sanford was a wealthy diplomat who made a practice of holding small dinners for important political figures in Washington. When Professor Anderson found the Sanford papers in the Connecticut Historical Society, he thought that his search was over; then he found letters proving that Sanford had been in Washington on Feb. 19 and 20.

Anderson also followed Amos Kendall, Andrew Jackson's ghostwriter and Postmaster General. Kendall usually stayed at the Astor House when he was in New York, a clue which sent Anderson on a futile search for the hotel register. He did learn, however, that in 1861 all hotel guests were reported in the Daily Transcript. The Yale library had a file--but the Feb. 19 issue was missing. In the New York Historical Society, Professor Anderson found the missing issue, which listed a J. Kendall among the Astor House guests. He thought J. Kendall might be a misprint for A. Kendall. Then he found that on one day when the "Public Man" reported himself in Washington, Amos Kendall had been in New York.

Bitterly disappointed, he turned to Henry Wikoff, an unsavory fellow expelled from Yale, who was hired by Lord Palmerston to influence the French and American press. Wikoff kidnaped a ward of the manager of Baring Bros. Bank in London, tried to persuade her to marry him. She agreed, then had him arrested. (He wrote a book--My Courtship and Its Consequences--which became a bestseller.) But Wikoff was eliminated, along with John Hay, Editor Allen Thorndike Rice of the North American Review and several others.

At this point, Professor Anderson decided that The Diary of a Public Man must be fiction, partially based on facts. On this hypothesis, identification of the author was easy. All the evidence pointed to Sam Ward, a wealthy New Yorker, a wit, world traveler and adventurer, brother of Julia Ward Howe (Battle Hymn of the Republic), a close friend of Longfellow's and the husband of Heiress Emily Astor.

The Mystery of "A Public Man" is amusing as a description of the trials & errors of an academic detective. It also unmasks some historical fairy tales. The diary has been one of the sources of the stories of Lincoln's homespun humor. This book shows that many of them were no more valid than the legends about Calvin Coolidge.

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