The Jefferson Lemen Compact - Was it True

[maharba]

In investigating the Jefferson-Lemen Compact, I do not believe 'it turns upon' any article of furniture Lincoln rested on. I only brought out that particular small item on the sofa, to save folks from expending much energy on the topic. As I said, the existence of a sofa doesn't prove Lincoln visited Lemen several times...and thus and so...the rest of the Compact must be valid, etc. I have no access or ability to a scanner, the article says practically nothing more. I looked at the buyer McMackin
and there is or was something like a bed and breakfast apparently had some family antiques, etc. Maybe the sofa ended up there, who knows. McMackin as I remember was a Federal soldier contemporary with Lemen and Lincoln. To follow out an hypothetical chain of logic: McMackin may have known both and that the sofa was indeed what Rev Lemen said, and so bought and kept and his family donated it. Or...even though McMackin lived in and through that time...he may have been simple minded...and so was easily deceived by the preacher to buy a worthless old sofa and keep it for 50 years. I don't know, and I base no substantive conclusions in my investigation on that side-topic. Roger, you keep coming back to: the Lemens are not listed in such and such, Herndon never bothered to interview them, etc. All I can say would be speculation: the Lemen's were an early influential family, they had chosen (in politics) to only go so far and no more. They were 'exhausted politically' by Lincoln's time, and really of not much future use to him. The old man James Lemen probably could have been the first Illinois senator, if he had pressed just a little. But he was likely infirm and towards the end of his life, and felt it. They also seemed too preachy to me for what I calculate as Lincoln's taste. Herndon was more of a dogmatic, strident atheist. Maybe that helped to cut out the Lemens from any consideration of a Herndon interview too?