Here's an article I did on a Lincoln statue in Rosamond, Illinois, which is southeast of Springfield.

LINCOLN STATUE IN ROSAMOND CEMETERY IS HIGHLY REGARDED
By Tom Emery

Memorials to Abraham Lincoln dot the Illinois landscape, and are found in the largest of cities and the smallest of towns. One of the most out-of-the-way landmarks is the Lincoln statue in the Rosamond Cemetery in southeastern Christian County.

Commissioned in 1903, the full-length statue, entitled Lincoln the Orator, is highly regarded among critics and is one of the few depictions of Lincoln to show him with an outstretched arm, gesturing for effect.

The village of Rosamond was founded by settlers from the Northeast in 1856 and was possibly named for wild roses that bloom in spring and early summer. The spelling of the settlement was originally “Rosemond,” though the name of the post office was changed to its present spelling in 1923.

Residents founded the Rosamond Cemetery Association to administer the local burial place, Rosamond Grove Cemetery. That same year, the association was the recipient of the statue, a gift of Capt. John Kitchell, an area businessman and philanthropist who had enlisted in the 9th Illinois Infantry at the outbreak of the Civil War.

Kitchell was in the audience at the Great Western Depot in Springfield on Feb. 11, 1861, when President-elect Lincoln delivered his farewell address to the city as he departed for his inauguration.

To create the statue, Kitchell hired sculptor Charles Mulligan, whose other Lincoln credits include The Rail Splitter in Chicago’s Garfield Park. The Irish-born Mulligan came to America with his family at age six in 1872 and began his career by working with modeling clay dug from the Illinois-and-Michigan Canal.

Mulligan subsequently was a stonecutter at Pullman, near Chicago, and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago under Lorado Taft, the state’s most accomplished sculptor. Mulligan later succeeded his mentor as head of the department of sculpture at the Institute.

During construction of the buildings for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, Taft appointed Mulligan as foreman of the shop where international sculptors created their works for the fair. Mulligan died in 1916.

At Rosamond, Mulligan created an eighteen-foot image of Lincoln, including a massive granite block that serves as the base, on which a portion of the Gettysburg Address is engraved. The statue is reportedly the only depiction of the sixteenth President with a raised hand, to imitate a gesture to a crowd. Lincoln wears a knee-length coat, reflective of dress of the era, in the statue.

Critics of the period charged that Lincoln would not have gestured during an address such as his famous oration in Gettysburg. Kitchell, however, declared that he saw Lincoln use similar gestures during at least three speeches.

The statue was unveiled and dedicated on Oct. 29, 1903 in front of a crowd of some 2,000 onlookers, including a parade of sixty carriages and a band from nearby Pana. Kitchell took the opportunity to defend his decision to include Lincoln’s extended right hand and declared his hope that “here may come youth to gather inspiration and fresh incitement to noble deeds and purposes, and that here, too, they may meditate on the achievements of the past.”

There was plenty of support for Kitchell’s decision on the hand. During the dedication, a letter was read from a former Army captain in Topeka, Kan, who stated that “I do not believe that Lincoln in all his life ever made such a gesture (but) I think, nevertheless, there is one time when he ought to have done so, and that was at Gettysburg. If he did not lift it then, it is no crime for us to lift it for him.”

Lincoln’s son Robert Todd, the only one of the President’s four children to survive to adulthood, carefully watched many depictions of his father in art and sculpture as part of his lifelong effort to properly preserve his legacy. In several cases, Robert made public spectacles of what he deemed were poor likenesses of his father, creating national controversies.

He apparently approved of the Rosamond work. In a letter to Kitchell, Robert wrote that “the statue of my father stands out splendidly in the surroundings and is manifestly full of life.”

In the keynote address of the event, Benson Wood of Effingham, a former Congressman and mayor of that town, said that “anarchy, socialism, and lawlessness would never be tolerated under the shadow of the magnificent statue.”

The statue has stood the test of time, and remains a remarkable contribution to Lincoln art. In 1929, the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society declared the statue was “little know, yet interesting and valuable in many ways as the celebrated Lincoln” statues of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Gutzon Borglum, and Daniel Chester French.

The Journal also lauded the quiet setting of the cemetery, a “seclusion, with its sense of removal from the world (which) gives to the place a great sense of peace.”

The statue was rededicated in 1933 and remains accessible to the public. Kitchell and his wife, Mary, are buried nearby.

Also on the site is a small cannon, dubbed the “Mary Lincoln” in honor of the President’s wife. The gun was commissioned by the Republican Club of Rosamond in 1860 and escorted to Springfield, where it was first fired at a Republican political rally.

Here's an article I did a couple of years ago on Mary Owens, the often-overlooked romantic interest of Lincoln's New Salem era.

MARY OWENS WAS LINCOLN’S FIRST PROVEN LOVE
Overshadowed by Legend of Ann Rutledge
By Tom Emery

The legendary romance of Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge has endured the years, though no proof exists of any relationship. In the case of Mary Owens, however, there is little doubt.

Owens was the first proven love interest in Lincoln’s life and is documented in four existing letters, including three he wrote to her. By contrast, there are no existing letters between Lincoln and Rutledge, and scholars debate whether he ever mentioned her name.

Born Sept. 29, 1808 in Green County, Ky., Mary referred to her father, a planter, as a “gentleman of considerable means.” She was, in turn, described by her son as “polished in her manners, pleasing in her address,” and the recipient of “a good education.”

Owens met Lincoln in 1833 while visiting her sister, Mrs. Bennett Abell, in New Salem. Three years later, Mrs. Abell journeyed to Kentucky on a return visit. Before leaving, she playfully told Lincoln that she would bring Mary back to New Salem if he promised to marry her. Lincoln agreed, possibly in jest.

Dr. Wayne Temple, a nationally renowned Lincoln scholar from Springfield, Ill. who recently retired as Deputy Director of the Illinois State Archives, believes that Lincoln was “tricked into the situation.

“Mrs. Abell drew Lincoln into that, and I think he was joking around with her,” said Temple. “He was a man who didn’t really want to get married. He was actually afraid to be married, worried that he could not support a wife, much less himself.”

Mary returned to New Salem in November 1836 and stayed for a year and a half. Some sort of romance ensued between the two, though Lincoln was absent for much of the time. A state representative, he attended the general assembly in Vandalia in December, then moved to Springfield on April 15, 1837.

Lincoln’s letters to Mary indicate an uneasy courtship. From Vandalia on Dec. 13, 1836, he chided her for not writing more, describing his “mortification of looking in the post office for your letter and not finding it.” Much of the rest of the letter discussed politics, an interest which they shared.

Three weeks after moving to Springfield, Lincoln seemed eager to end the affair. He wrote Mary that she “would not be satisfied” with living in Springfield, adding if she “cast her lot” with him, she “would have to be poor without hiding your poverty.” Still, Lincoln urged Mary write back, for any letter “would be a good deal of company to me in this busy wilderness.”

On Aug. 16, 1837, Lincoln was compelled to write Mary on the same day he visited her, admitting that he thought of her “more than usual” and that he could “not see you…with entire indifference.” But, since he “wanted in all cases to do right, and most particularly so…with women,” he gave her another chance to break up.

Lincoln wrote that she could “drop the subject, dismiss your thoughts (if you ever had any) from me forever, and leave this letter unanswered, without calling forth one accusing murmur from me…If it suits you best not to answer this – farewell – a long life and merry one attend you.”

“I don’t think the relationship was that serious on Lincoln’s part,” said Temple. “He always seemed to be trying to get out of it.”

That fall, Lincoln proposed marriage, but Mary declined. He wrote of the failed romance to Mrs. Orville Browning, whose husband served in the U.S. Senate during the Lincoln presidency.

Though photos show Owens as fairly attractive, Lincoln wrote that upon Mary’s return in 1836, she had a “want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general…nothing could have commenced at the size of infancy and reached her present bulk in less than thirty-five or forty years.” Mary was 28 at the time.

After much deliberation, he “mustered my resolution and made the proposal (of marriage) to her direct; but shocking to relate, she answered ‘No.’” Lincoln added “I was mortified…in a hundred different ways…I, for the first time, began to suspect I was really a little in love with her.”

Many Lincoln scholars consider this letter, written on April Fools Day, 1838, to be more humorous than factual. “I think Lincoln was half-joking,” remarked Temple. “It was sort of like, ‘here’s why I wanted to get out of it, because Mary was so ugly.’ In reality, she was not that bad-looking.”

Owens eventually left New Salem, married in 1841, had five children, and later lived in Weston, Mo. At least two of her sons fought for the Confederacy. Widowed in 1862, she died on July 4, 1877. Lincoln, meanwhile, met Mary Todd in 1839 and married her three years later.

In 1866, Lincoln’s former law partner, William Herndon, wrote Owens while researching a book and series of lectures on the fallen President. She related a story of riding with Lincoln and a group of friends when they approached “a bad branch” of water, and the “other gentlemen were very officious in seeing that they partners got over safely.” Lincoln, meanwhile, rode on, “never looking back to see how I got along.”

Owens added that his “training had been different” from hers, “hence there was not that congeniality which would otherwise have existed.”

Many scholars credit Herndon with the rise of the Ann Rutledge legend, but his interview with Owens is one of the strongest arguments against any such relationship. Though Herndon claimed Lincoln was madly in love with Rutledge and despondent over her death, the future President was involved with Owens only a year later. Owens said that Lincoln never mentioned Rutledge’s name.

Years later, Owens apparently had no regrets. She told Herndon that “Lincoln was deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman’s happiness.”

Here's an article I did last year on Mentor Graham, Lincoln's so-called teacher from his New Salem days.


RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LINCOLN, MENTOR GRAHAM WAS COMPLICATED
By Tom Emery

Mentor Graham is popularly known as the teacher of Abraham Lincoln through the New Salem years. But their relationship was much more complex than simply that of teacher and student.

In later years, Graham became an adversary of Lincoln on the legal circuit, and voted against his former student in the 1846 Congressional race. He was also the cousin of one of Lincoln’s past love interests, who urged Graham to vote against his former pupil in the 1864 Presidential race.

William Mentor Graham was born in 1800 and raised in Green County, Ky. He was educated in Hardin County, which today is just north of Hodgenville, the birthplace of the sixteenth President. Hodgenville is now part of Larue County, which was cut from parts of Hardin.

In a letter to William Herndon, Lincoln’s third law partner and controversial biographer, on July 15, 1865, Graham claimed to have seen Lincoln and his father, Thomas, working in the fields near Hodgenville. The future President would have been just a small boy, as the family moved to Indiana in 1816, when Lincoln was seven. Graham, though, added that he did not speak with the Lincolns.

In 1826, Graham moved to Illinois and settled a mile west of New Salem, where he became the local teacher. In a May 29, 1865 letter to Herndon, Graham wrote that Lincoln, then 24, lived with him for sixth months beginning in February 1833. Graham asserted that he taught Lincoln “the rules of surveying.”

Since there were no grammar books in New Salem, Graham sent Lincoln to obtain a copy of Samuel Kirkham’s English Rules of Grammar, a top handbook of the time, from a man six miles away.

Graham later proudly claimed “I think I may say that he was my scholar and I was his teacher.” He also wrote that “no one ever surpassed (Lincoln) in rapidly, quickly, and well acquiring the rudiments and rules of English grammar.”

However, Graham’s recollections are viewed as suspect by some Lincoln scholars, and others believe Graham may have exaggerated his relationship with the future President. In his 1982 Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia, Mark Neely writes that “Graham’s statements, made over 30 years after the events, are riddled with errors.”

Neely, though, adds that “Lincoln did study grammar and surveying about the time Graham mentioned” and that Lincoln “may well have sought and obtained” Graham’s help.

Graham is credited with helping Lincoln write his platform for his first run for a seat in the Illinois House in 1832. In the platform, printed in the Sangamo Journal on March 15, 1832, Lincoln pledged to improve navigation on the Sangamon River while supporting usury laws and universal education.

It proved of little help, as Lincoln ran eighth in a field of thirteen in voting that August, though he did collect 277 of 300 votes cast in the New Salem precinct. Four men were elected, including Lincoln’s future law partner, John Todd Stuart, who ran second, and the Rev. Peter Cartwright. Lincoln rebounded in 1834, winning the first of four straight terms in the legislature.

Lincoln and Graham also served as local clerks for at least two elections, for Sangamon County sheriff in May 1834 and for Congressional representative that October.

In the 1840s, however, the relationship of Lincoln and Graham took some unusual turns. While riding the legal circuit, Lincoln argued cases in Menard County, and went against Graham on at least two occasions.

In at least one case, Lincoln resorted to harsh, if necessary, measures. On Nov. 8, 1841, Lincoln requested that the court issue an attachment for Graham for contempt for failing to appear as a witness.

On Nov. 4, 1845, Lincoln represented Nancy Green as plaintiff against Graham in an unpaid debt. Graham admitted to the debt, which amounted to $112.23, including a note and interest.

The two men also veered politically, as Graham, a Democrat, voted for James K. Polk in the 1844 Presidential election. Two years later, Graham voted for Lincoln’s opponent, Cartwright, in the 1846 Congressional race. Lincoln, however, prevailed in the election.

But Graham was a staunch Unionist through the Civil War, a position not shared by family members. One was his cousin, Mary Owens Vineyard, with whom Lincoln was romantically involved for several months in 1836-37. Vineyard later lived in Weston, Mo. and saw at least two of her sons join the Confederacy.

In later recollections, Graham remembered that Vineyard said she would “never…call me cousin again” if he voted for Lincoln in the 1864 Presidential re-election. Unswayed, Graham still voted for Lincoln.

Graham may have taught Vineyard in her early years in Kentucky, and is believed to have been a teacher to Ann Rutledge, the legendary, if unproven, love interest of Lincoln.

He taught in an array of rural schools in Illinois until 1879 before moving to Blunt, in central South Dakota, in 1883. Graham died there in 1886.

Today, Graham’s burial site adjacent to Illinois Route 97 south of Petersburg is commemorated by an Illinois State Historical Society marker, while his home in Blunt is also a historical attraction.

During a special program at Surratt House yesterday, members from New Jersey arrived and handed me a copy of an undated, unsourced article from a Pennsylvania newspaper relative to "Lincoln's Schuylkill Cousins." For those with a bend towards Lincoln genealogy - especially Ed Steers - you may be familiar with these "cousins."

They are descended through Lincoln's great-great grandfather, Mordecai, and his daughter, Mary, who was born in New Jersey, but grew up in a stone house that still stands on the east bank of the Schuylkill River in Exeter Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania. She married Francis Yarnall, a surveyor, in 1741, and in a few years, the couple moved to North Manheim Township and built a mill. They later moved on to Taylorsville in Barry Township, where most of their descendants still live under the name Yarnall or Yarnell.

It's a lengthy article, but rather amusing in that, while they know their kinship to our famous President, they seldom mention it or own up to it. One family member commented on the fact that Mordecai owned a slave named Jack and another pointed out that one of Mordecai's sons married a cousin of Daniel Boone.

There is a book on the subject that mentions a tie even to Mary Todd. It seems that the first court proceeding in Schuylkill County was held in 1812, with the first judge, Robert Porter, being a grand-uncle of Mary Todd. He presided over the first trial, and the first defendant was Amos Yarnall, who was convicted of assault and battery and ordered to pay court expenses and a fine of fifty cents.

Both Mary Lincoln Yarnall and her husband, Francis, lie in unmarked graves in the Reed's Cemetery (sometimes called "Bickel's") on private land near Taylorsville. The stones that once marked their graves were washed away by flooding from the nearby Mahanoy River years ago, but supposedly some of the elderly residents in the area can point out the approximate location.

I found this interesting article on dating the Hodgenville Lincoln cabins:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/did-abraham...leep-here/

I was at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library on the day when the owner of Lincoln's informal letter to Andrew McCormick donated it, and I was allowed to see this original manuscript with other ALPL staff members present in the main reading room (thanks to Ian Hunt). This was Friday, January 5th.

While this note had been published several decades before, in the 1970s, it's always welcome to see the original now in a public collection. The donor was the great-great-grandson of McCormick, one of the members of the "Long Nine." I didn't talk to him, but he came into the reading room to look at some related documents written by his ancestor while I was there.

The note, which was written during a legislative session in the House of Representatives in Springfield's Old State Capitol, was penned by Lincoln, folded, addressed "Andrew McCormick--present" and then presumably handed to a page to be taken over to McCormick's seat where he then read it and responded. It is unknown whether his response survives.

The manuscript is not dated. It is merely signed "Lincoln" (not A. Lincoln)

It's a fascinating example, I think, of a different side of Lincoln apart from the graceful, diplomatic language that he is so frequently known for. This note is tough, to the point, and yet at some parts pleading. Lincoln uses phrases such as "What!" written in larger letters, "Surely! Surely!" and also "ready to cut our throats"

Ian Hunt said "this will definitely go on display in the Treasures Gallery at the Museum."

Now this was donated on a Friday, and that day I spoke to Dr. Cornelius, Lincoln Curator, about it. When I came into the library the following Monday, Dr. Cornelius mentioned to me something really significant: since possessing the original, it is now thought to have been written earlier than was previously supposed (recall this note is undated).

It was thought to have been written in 1841, but the new theory is that it was in fact written in 1839 which changes what we understand about Lincoln the politician and his thought process. Very interesting!

Many thanks to Scott for sending a .pdf file of the Gibson W. Harris' articles in the Woman's Home Companion (1903-1904). Harris was a young law clerk in the Lincoln-Herndon office 1845-1847.

CLICK HERE

I found the articles fascinating. Here are just a few of Harris' recollections and observations that I thought were interesting:

"Mr. Lincoln's mind was logical to the last degree, but his heart was more a woman's than a man’s."

"As a frequent visitor I was made welcome at the Lincoln home, and on two different occasions, at the instance of Mr. Lincoln, he being unable to attend, I became Mrs. Lincoln's escort to a ball, where I danced with her. I always found her most pleasant-mannered. She was a bright, witty and accomplished young woman, naturally fond of fun and frolic, but very staid and proper when it was in order to be so."

"In walking his step was such that his foot came down flat on the ground. I can see him now, in memory, as he daily appeared on the streets of Springfield, his arms slowly swinging, his head and body bent slightly forward, his whole aspect that of a man in deep thought, from which, however, he was easily roused, never failing to make hearty acknowledgment of a salutation, whether from friend or stranger. He was slow, or more properly, deliberate, in his movements. I cannot recall ever having seen him walk briskly, much less run, though his long limbs carried him over the ground with more speed than one was apt to realize at first."

"Mr. Lincoln showed great consideration for his wife, which I noticed the more, perhaps, because, for some reason, Mr. Herndon cherished a strong dislike for her, and of this fact made no secret to the office clerk. She was unusually timid and nervous during a thunder-storm, and whenever one threatened, her husband made it a point to leave whatever he was engaged upon, if it was a possible thing, and go home, to stay with her until it passed over."

"I believe it literally true that by his counsel more cases were settled without trial than through litigation. He never asked a fee for bringing about such a termination, and when I took the liberty once of saying it would be no more than fair for him to make some charge, he laughed good-naturedly, and said, “They won’t care to pay me; they don’t think I have earned a fee unless I take the case into court and make a speech or two."

"He read but little at the office, and I have never imagined there was much burning of the midnight oil at his home. The truth is, unless I am greatly mistaken, Abraham Lincoln never studied hard at any period of his life. He did not need to study hard. With him a single reading was sufficient to afford a clear insight into any ordinary subject. It almost seemed as if, in a previous existence, he had acquired a knowledge of things, and in this life needed only to refresh his memory, now by reading and now by colloquy with others."

"Mr. Lincoln sometimes told at the office the sayings or doings of his children. One such account I remember as well as if I had heard it last week. He came in. an hour or so after dinner, smiling beyond even his wont, and said he was lying down at home, having left his boots in the second-story hallway, when all at once he heard a tremendous clatter on the stairs. He jumped up. hurried to the head of the stairs, and looking down, saw Bob (Robert Todd Lincoln! aged three) getting up on all fours from the floor of the hallway below, unhurt but sadly bewildered. "The youngster had got into my boots," he said, "and in trying to walk around in them had fallen down-stairs. You ought to have seen him. Gibson—he looked so comical with the boot-legs reaching clear up to his little body."

"When telling a story, he had a mannerism peculiarly his own. If he was seated in a chair or on a dry-goods box (it was generally one or the other), his feet would be planted fiat upon the floor or ground, until near the story’s end, at which juncture his eyes would begin to sparkle and his right leg be seen to raise slowly; suddenly, at the instant the climax was reached, the right leg would be thrown across the left, back would go his head, and lie would laugh as unrestrainedly as any of his auditors. There was never any straining for effect; the heartiness and spontaneity of it all delightfully enhanced the story’s effectiveness."

"In his intercourse with others his simplicity and unaffectedness were most engaging. I never heard him use an oath or make a vulgar remark, and never knew of his doing an improper thing. He was the purest man, both in speech and action—I make the statement deliberately—of all the men I have known on intimate terms. He made one feel that it was good to be with him."

"In one of Miss Tarbell's Lincoln articles, published a few years ago in a current magazine, I noticed a portrait of Lincoln with the statement annexed that it was from a daguerreotype, but giving the reader to understand that it could not be ascertained when and by whom the likeness was taken. Later, the same portrait appeared in the Century Magazine, but still unidentified. I feel confident I am not mistaken in recognizing the portrait as the work of my friend Shephard, before whose camera I know Mr Lincoln sat once or oftener. The claim repeatedly made for it of being the earliest portrait of Abraham Lincoln remains, as far as I know, an undisputed fact."

Webpage reporting my research on the question of whether Mr. Lincoln practiced law in the Christian Church of his First Namesake Town: http://findinglincolnillinois.com/questi...hurch.html

Reading Information Aloud to Yourself Improves Memory
Neuroscience News - DECEMBER 1, 2017

A recent Waterloo study found that speaking text aloud helps to get words into long-term memory. Dubbed the “production effect,” the study determined that it is the dual action of speaking and hearing oneself that has the most beneficial impact on memory.

“This study confirms that learning and memory benefit from active involvement,” said Colin M. MacLeod, a professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at Waterloo, who co-authored the study with the lead author, post-doctoral fellow Noah Forrin. “When we add an active measure or a production element to a word, that word becomes more distinct in long-term memory, and hence more memorable.”

Lincoln’s Rhetoric
By Douglas L. Wilson

Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association
Volume 34, Issue 1, Winter 2013, pp. 1-17
Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0034.103

Much to Herndon’s annoyance, it was Lincoln’s regular practice to do his office reading aloud, which he justified by saying that both hearing and seeing what he read enabled him to remember it better.[32] To get inside the distinctiveness and effectiveness of his rhetoric, we must come to terms with the sound and rhythm of Lincoln’s compositions.

Lincoln seems to have had an early and long-standing attachment to the sounds of words. Learning to read in “blab” schools, where all the students read aloud (and at the same time), may have been instrumental in starting him in this direction. If true, this would suggest that it was perhaps as fundamental as his early fascination with crafting letters, words, and phrases. Working with words may well have been an aural experience from the beginning that became ingrained in his thought process. These are speculations, to be sure, but there is abundant evidence that Lincoln had long made a practice of reading his writings aloud to test them. One of his law students remembered him saying as early as 1845, “I write by ear. When I have got my thoughts on paper, I read it aloud, and if it sounds all right I just let it pass.”[33]

He certainly punctuated by ear, much to the chagrin of John Defrees, who fought a losing battle trying to purge the excessive commas from the state papers Lincoln sent to the government printing office.[34] As president it was still his custom, according to one of his secretaries, “to read his manuscript over aloud, ‘to see how it sounded, as he could hardly judge of a thing by merely reading it.’”[35] The suggestion common to these and other recollections is that he couldn’t pass on the acceptability of what he had composed until he had heard it uttered aloud. In addition, we have evidence that he read virtually every one of his major presidential writings to a confidant before release or delivery.[36]

31. Roy P. Basler, “Abraham Lincoln’s Rhetoric,” American Literature 11, no. 2 (May 1939): 176.
32. Ibid., citing William H. Herndon’s October 21, 1885, letter to Jesse W. Weik.
33. Gibson William Harris, “My Recollections of Abraham Lincoln,” Woman’s Home Companion (January 1904), 13. I am indebted to Michael Burlingame for calling my attention to this recollected remark.
34. See Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword, 86–90.
35. William O. Stoddard, Inside the White House in War Times: Memoirs and Reports of Lincoln’s Secretary, ed. Michael Burlingame (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 172.
36. See Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword, 180–81.

In December, Christie's is auctioning off this 1858 letter while preparing to debate Stephen Douglas. Did the debates between Douglas and Lincoln help break apart the Democratic Party in 1860 as the description claims? I know, contrary to what it says, Lincoln would've won the Electoral College vote even if the Democrats hadn't split.

http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/books...tails.aspx