The Jefferson Lemen Compact - Was it True

[maharba]

I am looking at the Jefferson-Lemen Compact.

Here what it was claimed to be, its validity is disputed keep in mind.

James Lemen 1760-1823 was a Virginia preacher who was anti slavery.
Supposedly he was a friend of Thomas Jefferson, and supposedly Jefferson asked Lemen to move west into Illinois/Indiana territory and to work with his church and influences to render Illinois eventually a non-slave State. The Rev James Lemen and several families did move out to Illinois, and they were strong anti-slavery lobbyists, and Illinois eventually became nonslave.

Later, supposedly as Lincoln was forming his politics and opinions growing
up in Illinois, Lincoln came to know the Lemen history of antislavery
agitation within their church and Illinois politics. There is a (bogus or real?) letter which Lincoln sent and in which he commends members of the Lemen family for their work. The Lemen family then (and now, I am guessing) are proud of the early historic work of the Lemen family in Illinois. And there are published, family accounts --mentioning Thomas Jefferson and Lincoln.

But, the experts say otherwise. That the Jefferson Lemen Compact never
really existed, Lincoln never really did write such a letter, later either.
The net has several articles on this, an interesting article at Wikipedia.

I wonder what other readers have concluded in their study of Jefferson
and Lincoln. Was the Reverend James Lemen assigned by Thomas
Jefferson and to use his Church functions to become involved in the politics of Illinois? Was the preacher just making this all up? This is another topic seldom or never seen, even in graduate history texts. While it is easy to quickly scan the experts dismissals of the Lemen claims, yet this Christian family went to a tremendous amount of sustained work for many decades to help secure Illinois as a non-slavery state. It doesn't make sense for me to conclude that Lemen was delusional or would need to lie?