Carl Sandburg and Lincoln

[RJNorton]

Bill, Rob Wick and I have talked in the past about the unreliability of Emanuel Hertz. But the story is in Hertz' Lincoln Talks on p. 89. The source given is "Told by Ezra M. Prince to James S. Ewing."

Do you have that book?

I do not know anything about Ezra M. Prince. I checked Herndon's Informants and drew a blank. Same with the Fehrenbachers' Recollected Words.

I also checked Zall's book, and it has the knife story mentioned above, but not this one.

Possibly if we could track Prince down we could get to the bottom of this regarding an actual source.

However, I did find where Ewing apparently told the story here.