Editing John Hay (section)

==Literary career==
===Early works===
Hay wrote some poetry while at Brown University, and more during the Civil War.{{sfn|Gale|p=54}} In 1865, early in his Paris stay, Hay penned "Sunrise in the Place de la Concorde", a poem attacking [[Napoleon III]] for his reinstitution of the monarchy, depicting the Emperor as having been entrusted with the child Democracy by [[Liberty (goddess)|Liberty]], and strangling it with his own hands.{{sfn|Kushner & Sherrill|pp=45–46}} In "A Triumph of Order", set in the breakup of the [[Paris Commune]], a boy promises soldiers that he will return from an errand to be executed with his fellow rebels. Much to their surprise, he keeps his word and shouts to them to "blaze away" as "The [[Chassepot]]s tore the stout young heart,/And saved Society."{{sfn|Gale|p=60}}

In poetry, he sought the revolutionary outcome for other nations that he believed had come to a successful conclusion in the United States. His 1871 poem, "The Prayer of the Romans", recites Italian history up to that time, with the ''[[Risorgimento]]'' in progress: liberty cannot be truly present until "crosier and crown pass away", when there will be "One freedom, one faith without fetters,/One republic in Italy free!"{{sfn|Gale|p=61}} His stay in Vienna yielded "The Curse of Hungary", in which Hay foresees the end of the [[Austro-Hungarian Empire]].{{sfn|Gale|pp=60–61}} After Hay's death in 1905, [[William Dean Howells]] suggested that the Europe-themed poems expressed "(now, perhaps, old-fashioned) American sympathy for all the oppressed."{{sfn|Howells|p=348}} ''Castilian Days'', souvenir of Hay's time in Madrid, is a collection of seventeen essays about Spanish history and customs, first published in 1871, although several of the individual chapters appeared in ''[[The Atlantic]]'' in 1870. It went through eight editions in Hay's lifetime. The Spanish are depicted as afflicted by the "triple curse of crown, crozier<!-- Yes, I know he spells it both "crosier" and "crozier". -->, and saber"—most kings and ecclesiastics are presented as useless—and Hay pins his hope in the republican movement in Spain.{{sfn|Gale|pp=68–79}} Gale deems ''Castilian Days'' "a remarkable, if biased, book of essays about Spanish civilization".{{sfn|Gale|p=80}}

{{quote box | align = right | width = 22em | salign = left
| quote = <poem>
And this was all the religion he had—
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To treat his engine well,
&nbsp;&nbsp;Never be passed on the river
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And mind the pilot's bell.
And if ever the ''Prairie Belle'' took fire,—
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A hundred times he swore,
&nbsp;&nbsp;He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till the last soul got ashore.
</poem>
| source = John Hay, "Jim Bludso" (1871){{sfn|Stevenson & Stevenson|p=23}}
}}

''[[Pike County Ballads]]'', a grouping of six poems published (with other Hay poetry) as a book in 1871,{{sfn|Kushner & Sherrill|p=49}} brought him great success. Written in the dialect of Pike County, Illinois, where Hay went to school as a child, they are approximately contemporaneous with pioneering poems in similar dialect by [[Bret Harte]] and there has been debate as to which came first.{{sfn|Gale|pp=54–55}} The poem that brought the greatest immediate reaction was "Jim Bludso", about a boatman who is "no saint" with one wife in Mississippi and another in Illinois.{{sfn|Gale|p=55}} Yet, when his steamboat catches fire, "He saw his duty, a dead-sure thing,—/And went for it, ther and then."{{sfn|Kushner & Sherrill|p=50}} Jim holds the burning steamboat against the riverbank until the last passenger gets ashore, at the cost of his life. Hay's narrator states that, "And Christ ain't a-going to be too hard/On a man that died for men." Hay's poem offended some clergymen, but was widely reprinted and even included in anthologies of verse.{{sfn|Gale|pp=55–56}}

===''The Bread-Winners''===
{{main|The Bread-Winners}}
[[File:The Bread-Winners, a Social Study (1883) - Cover.jpg|thumb|First edition cover of ''The Bread-Winners'' (1883)]]
''The Bread-Winners'', one of the first novels to take an anti-labor perspective, was published anonymously in 1883 (published editions did not bear Hay's name until 1916) and he may have tried to disguise his writing style.{{sfn|Gale|p=87}} The book examines two conflicts: between capital and labor, and between the ''nouveau riche'' and old money. In writing it, Hay was influenced by the labor unrest of the 1870s, that affected him personally, as corporations belonging to Stone, his father-in-law, were among those struck,{{sfn|Jaher|p=71}} at a time when Hay had been left in charge in Stone's absence. According to historian Scott Dalrymple, "in response, Hay proceeded to write an indictment of organized labor so scathing, so vehement, that he dared not attach his name to it."{{sfn|Dalrymple|p=134}}

The major character is Arthur Farnham, a wealthy Civil War veteran, likely based on Hay.{{sfn|Gale|pp=87–91}} Farnham, who inherited money, is without much influence in municipal politics, as his [[ticket (politics)|ticket]] is defeated in elections, symbolic of the decreasing influence of America's old-money patricians.{{sfn|Jaher|pp=86–87}} The villain is Andrew Jackson Offitt (true name [[Ananias and Sapphira|Ananias]] Offitt), who leads the Bread-winners, a labor organization that begins a violent general strike. Peace is restored by a group of veterans led by Farnham, and, at the end, he appears likely to marry Alice Belding, a woman of his own class.{{sfn|Gale|pp=87–91}}

Although unusual among the many books inspired by the labor unrest of the late 1870s in taking the perspective of the wealthy, it was the most successful of them, and was a sensation, gaining many favorable reviews.{{sfn|Jaher|p=73}} It was also attacked as an anti-labor polemic with an upper-class bias.{{sfn|Sloane|p=276}} There were many guesses as to authorship, with the supposed authors ranging from Hay's friend Henry Adams to New York Governor Grover Cleveland, and the speculation fueled sales.{{sfn|Dalrymple|p=134}}

===Lincoln biography===
{{main|Abraham Lincoln: A History}}
Early in his presidency, Hay and Nicolay requested and received permission from Lincoln to write his biography.{{sfn|Kushner & Sherrill|p=28}} By 1872, Hay was "convinced that we ought to be at work on our 'Lincoln.' I don't think the time for publication has come, but the time for preparation is slipping away."{{sfn|Zeitz 2014b}} Robert Lincoln in 1874 formally agreed to let Hay and Nicolay use his father's papers; by 1875, they were engaged in research. Hay and Nicolay enjoyed exclusive access to Lincoln's papers, which were not opened to other researchers until 1947. They gathered documents written by others, as well as many of the Civil War books already being published. They at rare times relied on memory, such as Nicolay's recollection of the moment at the 1860 Republican convention when Lincoln was nominated, but for much of the rest relied on research.{{sfn|Zeitz 2014b}}

Hay began his part of the writing in 1876;{{sfn|Gale|p=95}} the work was interrupted by illnesses of Hay, Nicolay, or family members,{{sfn|Zeitz 2014b}} or by Hay's writing of ''The Bread-Winners''.{{sfn|Gale|p=95}} By 1885, Hay had completed the chapters on Lincoln's early life,{{sfn|Taliaferro|p=235}} and they were submitted to Robert Lincoln for approval.{{sfn|Zeitz 2014a|p=256}} Sale of the serialization rights to ''[[The Century Magazine|The Century]]'' magazine, edited by Hay's friend Richard Gilder, helped give the pair the impetus to bring what had become a massive project to an end.{{sfn|Zeitz 2014a|pp=266–67}}

The published work, ''Abraham Lincoln: A History'', alternates parts in which Lincoln is at center with discussions of contextual matters, such as legislative events or battles.{{sfn|Gale|p=99}} The first serial installment, published in November 1886, received positive reviews.{{sfn|Taliaferro|p=250}} When the ten-volume set emerged in 1890, it was not sold in bookstores, but instead door-to-door, then a common practice. Despite a price of $50, and the fact that a good part of the work had been serialized, five thousand copies were quickly sold.{{sfn|Taliaferro|pp=261–62}} The books helped forge the modern view of Lincoln as great war leader, against competing narratives that gave more credit to subordinates such as Seward. According to historian Joshua Zeitz, "it is easy to forget how widely underrated Lincoln the president and Lincoln the man were at the time of his death and how successful Hay and Nicolay were in elevating his place in the nation's collective historical memory."{{sfn|Zeitz 2014b}}