Now I'll have to pick up a copy of that book to see what was said about it.
Now I'll have to pick up a copy of that book to see what was said about it.
Isn’t that the same book that got dropped by its publisher (Thomas Nelson) because they had lost confidence in its historical accuracy?
I found an early debunking of the Jefferson-Lemen SCAM, based on forged documents, by the Abraham Lincoln Association in 1930, nearly a century ago. This was caused by the Leben use of a forged document attributed to Lincoln, and some other forged documents.
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DECEMBER, 1930
Bulletin [Vol. 21, No. 1]
Abraham Lincoln Association (Springfield, Ill.)
https://name.umdl.umich.eduu/0524890.0021.001
Abraham Lincoln Association Serials
Use Statement
Where applicable, subject to copyright. Other restrictions on distribution may apply. lease go to http/www.umdl.umich.edu/ for more information
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DECEMBER, 1930
Bulletin of the Abraham Lincoln Association
Bulletin No. 21
Springfield, Illinois
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN LIBRARY
-Monaghan No.
-Fish No.
-Oakleaf No.
-Other. W-1930-43
DR. A. G. CHIONE
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[...]
Four Spurious Lincoln Letters
To ATTEMPT to describe all the spurious Lincoln letters in circulation would be to set a goal impossible of attainment. Even if it were possible, it would hardly be worth the effort. The individual collector soon learns that the letter he thought such a bargain is a forgery, while the ease with which spurious documents publicly labelled genuine can be discredited was clearly demonstrated when the Atlantic Monthly published its ill-fated Lincoln series two years ago.
On the other hand, when spurious letters are incorporated in a collection of Lincoln's writings, and are widely used by virtue of the authentication thus given them, the matter assumes a different aspect. The original letter is not available, and most editors have not thought it advisable even to indicate its location. Moreover, few readers have time to run down documents of suspicious character. As a result, doubts subside before the mere fact that the editor, presumed to know more about the subject than the reader, saw fit to include the suspected document in his collection.
There are several items of doubtful genuineness in the standard editions of Lincoln's writings, but at the present time a convincing demonstration of unreliability is impossible. In Gilbert A. Tracy's Uncollected Letters of Abraham Lincoln, however, are four letters clearly spurious. There may be others, in this volume or elsewhere, but about these four there can be no doubt.
The first letter is dated Cincinnati, December 24, 1849, and is addressed to "Peter Hitchcock, Esq., Judge &c at Columbus." The writer requests that the case of "Lewis Logan and Steamboat Chipper," then before the Supreme Court of Ohio, be set for a hearing at Columbus on Friday, December 28. The letter is of no significance other than indicating that Lincoln's legal reputation had extended beyond the limits of his own state at a much earlier date than is supposed to have been the case. The Ohio Reports show that instead of Steamboat Chipper vs. Lewis Logan, the correct style of this case was The Steamboat Clipper vs. Linus Logan; that it had come up from the Superior Court of Cincinnati on a writ of error; that it was decided by the
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BULLETIN of the Abraham Lincoln Association
Supreme Court of Ohio at the December term, 1849; and that Coffin & Mitchell and Gholson & Miner represented the plaintiff in error, while T. D. Lincoln appeared for the defendant in error. Nowhere is there mention of Abraham Lincoln. The writer's obvious familiarity with admiralty practice, and the fact that Timothy D. Lincoln of Cincinnati was a famous admiralty lawyer, indicate that the letter was written by T. D. Lincoln, and erroneously attributed to Abraham Lincoln.
Fortunately, the records of the Supreme Court of Illinois prove beyond doubt that this letter could not have been written by Abraham Lincoln. On the morning of Wednesday, December 26, 1849, Wright vs. McNeely, one of the six cases he tried before the court at this term, came on for a hearing. Stephen T. Logan, who with Lincoln represented the plaintiff, opened the argument. Brown & Yates, representing the defendant in error, took up the afternoon. Thursday morning-December 27—"came again the parties herein and the argument of this cause was concluded and submitted by Lincoln for plaintiff in error and the court not being fully advised of and concerning the same took time to consider thereof."
The lack of transportation facilities in the Middle West in the winter of 1849-50 was such as to make it utterly impossible for Lincoln to have been in Cincinnati on December 24th, in Springfield on the 26th and 27th, and in Columbus on Friday, the 28th, as the writer of this letter clearly intended to be. Obviously, Abraham Lincoln was not its author.
The second spurious letter in the Tracy volume is addressed to Rev. James Lemen, and dated Springfield, Illinois, March 2, 1857. It is a somewhat incoherent eulogy of James Lemen's father, the Rev. James Lemen, Sr., for his anti-slavery activities in Illinois. Joseph Bowler Lemen, the son of the addressee, first published this letter, along with several other documents of historical interest, in the Belleville Advocate during the spring of 1908. In 1915 Willard C. McNaul incorporated it with other Lemen material in his brochure, The Jefferson-Lemen Compact, published by the Chicago Historical Society. This is the source from which Mr. Tracy took it.
The Lemen letter has never been free from suspicion. The involved style in which it was written bears no resemblance to Lincoln's prose. Moreover, the other Lemen papers, particularly those relating to the alleged agreement between James Lemen, Sr. and Thomas Jefferson for the propagation of abolition doctrines in Illinois, have never been accepted without reservation, and the suspicion attached to them has naturally extended to the Lincoln letter.
In the belief that the original of the letter from Lincoln to Lemen, or even a copy, might furnish important evidence of genuineness or falsity, an earnest attempt has been made to locate the Lemen family papers, of which this letter is said to have been a part. Joseph Bowler Lemen, in a statement dated O'Fallon, Illinois, January 10, 1911, gave the following account of the collection: "In 1857, to save the old 'Lemen Family Notes' from loss by careless but persistent borrowers, Dr. B. F. Edwards, of St. Louis, and Rev. J. M. Peck, ad-
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BULLETIN Of the Abraham' Lincoln Association
vised Rev. James Lemen, Jr., to make copies of all and then give the original stock to a friend whom they named to keep as his own in a safe vault in St. Louis, if he would pay all storage charges. But at that time he only gave the most important ones to Rev. J. M. Peck to place temporarily in a safe at St. Louis where he sometimes kept his own papers; though some years later he acted on their advice and making copies of all letters and papers of any value, gave the whole original stock to the party mentioned (we do not recall his name, but it is among our papers) and he placed them in the safe. Shortly after this their holder died, and they passed into the hands of others who removed them to another safe somewhere in St. Louis; but having no further title in the papers, and having copies of all for use, the family lost all traces of the papers and the parties holding them, and have only heard from them two or three times in more than 40 years."
Writing in 1915, Willard C. McNaul had this to say of the supposed copies: "The transcripts of the collection, made by James Lemen, Jr., came into the hands of his son, Joseph Bowler Lemen, who is responsible for the publication of various portions of the story, including some of the letters entire. Even these copies, however, are not accessible at the present time, except that of the Lemen Diary, as located by the present writer. Joseph Lemen's account of the fate of the elusive documents is given in full at the end of this publication. He there states that every paper of any value was copied and preserved, but even these copies were dissipated to a large extent. He also claims that all the facts contained in these documents have been published in one form or another, 'except a very few, including Rev. James Lemen's interviews with Lincoln, as written up by Mr. Lemen on ten pages of legal cap paper.' This Joseph B. Lemen is now far advanced in years, has long been a recluse, and has the reputation of being 'peculiar.' In a personal interview with him, the present writer could elicit no further facts regarding the where-abouts of the 'Lemen Family Notes.' "
Investigation developed the fact that Joseph Bowler Lemen, who in 1911 claimed to have copies of the Lemen papers in his possession, died a number of years ago without direct descendants. Correspondence with various relatives led nowhere, until finally, in a letter dated O'Fallon, Illinois, June 22, 1928, Mr. Oscar Lemen stated that some years before his death Joseph Bowler Lemen sent his papers to Dr. Ed. Lemen of Upper Alton, his nephew. Mr. Oscar Lemen also said that Dr. Ed. Lemen was survived by a son and daughter, and that the son had been killed in an automobile accident. Communication with the daughter, Mrs. D. A. Wycoff, was established through her husband, who stated in a letter dated March 8, 1930, that "she has never heard of the letter from Abraham Lincoln to Reverend James Lemen, nor has she any records of the Lemen family."
Beyond the suspicious character of the text of the Lincoln letter, and the mysterious disappearance of the collection of which it was a part, one further fact is pertinent. Two weeks before the Lincoln letter was published in the Belleville Advocate, Joseph Bowler Lemen furnished that paper a copy of a lengthy communication supposedly
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BULLETIN of the Abraham Lincoln Association
written by Stephen A. Douglas to James Lemen, Jr. The letter was dated Springfield, Illinois, March 10, 1857, and bore the following undated postscript: "I wrote this letter in Springfield, but by an oversight neglected to mail it there. But if you write me in a fortnight, direct to Springfield, as I expect to be there then." However, the Journal of the Senate of the United States for 1856-57 shows that on March 10, 1857, the Senate was in session and that Stephen A. Douglas voted in the one roll call of the day. The Douglas letter is a forgery.
In the opinion of the writer of this paper, the deficiencies of the letter from Lincoln to Lemen cannot be satisfactorily explained.
In 1909 Judd Stewart of New Jersey, one of the first collectors of Lincolniana, published a pamphlet entitled Some Lincoln Correspondence with Southern Leaders before the Outbreak of the Civil War, from the Collection of Judd Stewart. Among the letters there printed was one from Lincoln to John J. Crittenden, dated Springfield, Illinois, December 22, 1859, and one from Lincoln to Alexander H. Stephens, dated Springfield, Illinois, January 19, 186o. Both letters, Mr. Stewart stated, were printed from copies rather than from the originals, but their authenticity was established by a certificate from Stephens himself.
Close students of Lincoln's writings have long doubted the genuineness of these letters, basing their suspicions on the variance of the content from Lincoln's known views, on the noticeable absence of his clarity of style, and on the presence of a truculence out of keeping with his character. Doubts, however, collided at once with Stephen's signed authentication, and generally relapsed to a state of passive distrust.
It remained for Mr. Worthington C. Ford, then Editor of the Massachusetts Historical Society, to attack the problem in earnest. Aroused by what he described as the "false note" in these letters, Mr. Ford commenced an investigation which resulted in definite proof that both were spurious. It is unnecessary here to present more than the briefest summary of his findings, which were fully set forth in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for May-June, 1928.
The argument starts with the certificate of genuineness given by Stephens, now in the Henry E. Huntington Library. This document, dated Executive Department, Atlanta, Georgia, January 19, 1883 and signed Alexander H. Stephens, is addressed to Col. Henry Whitney Cleveland, and certifies that the copy of Lincoln's letter of January 19, 1860, is an exact transcript of the original. The writer further certified "That I requested you not to include this correspondence nor my diary written when a prisoner in Fort Warren, Boston Harbor, in 1865, in your 'Life, Letters and Speeches' or Biography of myself, because I intended to treat the matter fully and fairly as I did in 'The War between the States.' Also that I did authorize the use in both books of the Springfield, Ills., A. L. of November 30, 1860, of my copy reply of Ga. 14 Deer. 1860, of his rejoinder of Deer. 22, 1860, and also of my longer sur-rejoinder of which you made printed and not facsimile copy. The originals are yours to use as thought best."
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Mr. Ford points out that the four letters mentioned in the next to the last sentence of this certificate were used in Henry Cleveland's Alexander H. Stephens, published in 1866, and that they are indubitably genuine. Stephens himself, in his Constitutional View of the War published four years later, prints this correspondence a second time. Twelve years later Richard Malcolm Johnston and William Hand Browne published their Life of Alexander H. Stephens. Once again the four genuine letters were used.
In the case of each of these books, the authors had free access to the original manuscripts. Cleveland stated that "during the late summer (of 1866) he had free access to all his [Stephens'] papers, with no restrictions upon their use, save in questions as to their present interest to the reader, or of propriety and good taste." Commenting on the Lincoln correspondence in his own book, Stephens asserted that "It was given to the public for the first time in Mr. Cleveland's book. . . . . This is the whole of the correspondence the Professor [Norton, a fictitious name] inquired about." Richard Malcolm Johnston was the law partner of Stephens' brother, and was in correspondence with Alexander H. Stephens for a number of years before he and Browne published their biography.
Is it possible that three independent resorts to the original material should fail to bring to light the Lincoln letter of January 19, 1860? Is it possible that Stephens should three times fail to remember its very existence?
The only credible answer to these questions is confirmed by the Crittenden papers in the Library of Congress. The letter of December 22, 1859 from Lincoln to Crittenden is not among them, nor is there anything to show that any letters passed between Crittenden and Stephens or Crittenden and Lincoln either in 1859 or 1860.
The author of the first biography of Alexander H. Stephens was Henry Cleveland. Stephens' certificate, however, was addressed to Henry Whitney Cleveland, an individual concerning whom no legitimate record seems to exist. But the name of Henry Whitney Cleveland, fictitious or real, is well known at the Henry E. Huntington Library, which acquired the Judd Stewart collection a number of years ago. Mr. R. B. Haselden, Keeper of the Manuscripts, has written that in addition to the certificate from Stephens to Henry Whitney Cleveland, clearly a forgery, the Henry E. Huntington Library has letters from Stephens to Cleveland dated January 10, 1873 and February 22, 1879; from Crittenden to Stephens, January 13, 1860; from Grant to Longstreet, June 14, 1883; and that all these are spurious. In addition, the library has a forged copy of the genuine letter of November 30, 1860 from Lincoln to Stephens, together with two forged marriage licenses of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks and a forged statement regarding Jesse Head signed E. B. Head. These documents Mr. Haselden also attributes to Henry Whitney Cleveland.
The letter from Lincoln to Stephens, dated January 19, 1860, was covered by the certificate of Henry Whitney Cleveland, and is therefore a forgery. The same certificate covered the letter of December 22, 1859, supposedly written by Lincoln to Crittenden. This letter also is spurious.
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