Frank Irving Herriott

Frank Irving Herriott questioned familiar political stories by returning to participants and contemporary documents. Memories of the Chicago Convention of 1860 reconstructs the Republican gathering that nominated Abraham Lincoln through interviews with Judge Charles C. Nourse and General Grenville M. Dodge. Both Iowans had taken part in the convention and the negotiations around it. Herriott gathered and shaped their recollections, so his role is best understood as compiler, interviewer, and editor rather than eyewitness narrator. The study appeared in 1920, six decades after the event, and belongs to his wider scholarship on Iowa politics and party organization. Herriott taught at Drake University and frequently examined how political memory becomes accepted history. Memories of the Chicago Convention of 1860 preserves valuable testimony while also reminding readers that recollection is mediated by later questions and elapsed time.