Ignorance of the law is no defense. How did Abraham Lincoln learn this fact?

[David Lockmiller]

(04-24-2020 12:04 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  “You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day, -- that by honest work I had earned a dollar. The world seemed wider and fairer before me. I was a more hopeful and confident being from that time.”

Note: This work is a conglomerate of two versions of the same story: The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln, Six Months at the White House, by F. B. Carpenter, (1879), chap. XXXII, pages 96-98; Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, by Distinguished Men of His Time, Allen Thorndike Rice, collector and editor, chap. XIV (William D. Kelley), pages 279-80.

The version by William Kelley ended with the following words which for me have a distinctly different meaning: "The world seemed wider and fairer before me; I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time."

Does anyone know when and by whom the original story was first published?

Six Months at the White House version was published in 1879 by F. B. Carpenter and no claim is made that this is a first-hand account. And, Kelley who in the 1888 publication describes the occasion as "one evening when a few gentlemen, among whom was Mr. Seward . . . ." does not mention himself as one of the participants.