He Had Rare Lights: A Biography of William Wallace Lincoln

"Willie has rare lights...rare lights!" Abraham Lincoln said to his secretary John Hay November 4, 1861 after the publication of Willie's poem "Lines on the Death of Colonel Baker' in the Washington Newspaper National Republican. The short life of William Wallace Lincoln has been given little attention in the biographies of his father, or in other writings on the Lincoln family. In 1850, in the Lincoln home in Springfield, Illinois, there came, just four days before Christmas on December 21...