To evade or conceal a cardinal fact relative to Abraham Lincoln is not only a moral wrong, but a reflection upon his character and a violation of his memory. The nature of his origin is primarily indispensable to an intelligent, not to say full, conception of his character.
- Genesis of Lincoln, James H. Cathey

Readers who are native to Western North Carolina have probably heard the traditional story that Abraham Lincoln was the illegitimate son of a prominent Swain County farmer named Abraham Enloe. Certainly, as a child, I heard the tale of how a pregnant servant named Nancy Hanks was secretly conveyed from the Enloe farm on the banks of the Oconaluftee to Kentucky, where she subsequently married a shiftless fellow named Tom Lincoln. I often heard passionate avowals of the story’s truth from local residents who invariably concluded, “If you doubt the truth of it, go look at them Enloes!” My grandfather assured me that they were tall, lanky and solemn with big ears and prominent noses - just like Abraham Lincoln.

When I was a student at Western Carolina College (now WCU), I once had the dubious distinction of appearing in one of a series of one-acts which had been written by students of Dr. Frederick Koch at the University of North Carolina. Our drama instructor, Josephina Niggli, felt that it might do us fledgling thespians a world of good to learn something about the connection between folklore and theatre. Koch had encouraged his students to write plays that dealt with the folklore/history of their region. Out of the hundreds of plays performed by the Carolina Playmakers, there was one called “Leavin’s” that was based on the traditional tale about Lincoln’s origin. I portrayed Abraham Enloe and appeared on stage in a tattered undershirt and a ripped pair of pants decorated with safety-pins and held up by a piece of rope (My student director said that was the way mountain people dressed.) As I remember it, sweet little Nancy Hanks clutched her sleeping infant to her bosom and looked at me, the unacknowledged daddy, adoringly. My wife, Mrs. Enloe, stood about and glowered, occasionally delivering ominous lines like, “Thet wagon’s a-waitin’, so ye best be a-gettin’ on it. Tom Lincoln done come fer ye.” The dialogue wasn’t exactly Tennessee Williams, I’m afraid. I remember my line to Nancy just before she left for Kentucky. I always had trouble saying it. “Yore eyes is purty, Nancy. Lak sand in a brook.” Then, we gave each other a soulful look and she was gone. I delivered my final line while “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” played softly in the background. As I watched Nancy depart, I intoned prophetically:

“Wherefore she said unto Abraham, cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Issac. And the thing was very grievous in Abraham’s sight because of his son. And God said unto Abraham, let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad and because of the bondwoman .... of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed.”

Now, don’t that just break you out in goosebumps! This story of the parallel between Lincoln’s illegitimate birth and Nancy’s subsequent flight to Kentucky and the Biblical Hagar and her son, banished to the wilderness, has been the basis of many a sermon in Western North Carolina!

In 1887, young James Cathey told his teacher, Robert Madison, that he had been gathering stories from people who believed that Lincoln’s father was undoubtedly Abraham Enloe. Madison suggested that Cathey set about the business of converting all of his sources into written testimonials that he could publish. Cathey proved to be a dedicated and persistent researcher. By 1899, he had published Genesis of Lincoln, and the book quickly went through two editions. Encouraged by hundreds of letters from readers throughout the United States, Cathey continued to enlarge his book. By 1939, Genesis of Lincoln was in its fourth edition and Cathey’s supportive documentation had significantly increased.

Reading Genesis of Lincoln after the lapse of a century may elicit conflicting responses in a modern reader’s mind. Essentially, the book’s supportive documentation is powerful. I would even venture to say that there is little doubt that Cathey’s contention is true. Certainly, the massive compilation of testimonials and photographs is sufficient to convince most readers. Cathey publishes an astonishing number of letters from Enloe’s contemporaries, including neighbors and descendants who repeat the traditional story with minor variations. The photographs clearly establish the remarkable physical resemblance of Wesley Enloe - Abraham Enloe’s son - to Abraham Lincoln. Comparative postures suggest that the two men could easily be sons of the same sire.

The only significant flaw in Genesis of Lincoln is stylistic. Although Cathey clearly has a remarkable command of language, his argument suffers from excessive enthusiasm. In fact, readers may find that they are convinced of argument despite the author’s effusive style. Writing in the florid, figurative language of his time (he would later become a senator, a journalist and an orator), the author occasionally abandons his basic premise and engages in numerous raptures of adoration. At one point, he notes that 6,000 years of human history had culminated in the creation of three significant figures: Jesus Christ, Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln. Even assuming that there may be some basis for this conclusion, neither it nor the numerous pages devoted to eulogies of the moral and ethical lives of Lincoln’s contemporaries have any substantial relationship to the book’s basic premise.

In addition, the author’s flowery evocations to Lincoln are occasionally marred by unfortunate metaphors that indicate that Cathey was very much a product of his time: the Cherokees are paternalistically referred to as “children of the forest” and black children are called “little ebonites” who gather about Abraham Enloe’s knees on Sunday so that he may give them a “tansy-dram” - a teaspoon of sugar that was deposited in each mouth when the children stuck out “their big under lips.”

At times Cathey’s eloquence borders on parody. Consider this sentence from the author’s interview with an Enloe descendant: “There was a twinkle of humor about the eye (then blind), and a bubble of homely mirth burst ever and anon in the stream of his conversation.” There is also considerable extraneous material relating to humorous anecdotes about historic figures of the region (Felix Walker and W. H. Thomas), including oft-repeated traditional tales of the Cherokees (Yonaguskah).

In a sense, these digressions are understandable. Although each of the book’s testimonials advance Cathey’s argument, the material is repetitious. The unrelenting nature of the proof does not allow for distraction or radical or conflicting views. The author’s frequent summations are poetic and imaginative, but they also give the impression that he is pounding away at his singular point like an overly zealous carpenter who continues to drive a nail long after it has vanished into the wood. His numerous distracting trips into the region’s history and folklore appear to be attempts to decorate his singular thesis - in other words, make it interesting.

In conclusion, Genesis of Lincoln, regardless of its stylistic eccentricities, is a remarkable work. Cathey presents impressive evidence that Lincoln’s illegitimate birth was a well-known fact in Western North Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois and Washington. Further, the author presents impressive evidence that the true nature of Lincoln’s parentage was suppressed by his biographers and “people in high places” who felt that the truth would be damaging to both Lincoln’s reputation and long-range objectives of his political party. It is also evident that in the final analysis, it was a deception that Lincoln endorsed - not because he was ashamed of his origins, but because he was concerned about his mother’s reputation.

James H. Cathey’s Genesis of Lincoln, long out of print, has recently been re-issued by Crown Rights Book Company and is available in a $13 paperback. Originals of the first edition are hard to come by. A computer search on ABE indicated the existence of one copy, which was priced at $75. However, it is not a rare book in western North Carolina. Public libraries and private homes still contain a significant number of copies. Certainly, it is a book that is worth salvaging. Despite stylistic and publication flaws, including numerous misspellings and other publication errors, it remains a remarkable example of dedicated research on a topic that has been woefully neglected in the history of this region.

A second and equally rare publication, Abraham Lincoln, a North Carolinian was published by Dr. J. C. Coggins of Swannanoa in 1928. Coggins uses much of Cathey’s research but arrives at slightly different conclusions. The conclusions of Judge Felix Alley in Random Thoughts and the Musings of a Mountaineer are especially interesting!

I want to express my sincere appreciation to George Frizzell and the Special Collections staff at Hunter Library, WCU. I got my copy of Genesis of Lincoln at the Jackson County Public Library.

 

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