I know Lincoln better than he knows himself. I know this seems a little strong, but I risk the assertion. Lincoln is a man of heart aye, as gentle as a woman's and as tender but he has a will strong as iron. He therefore loves all mankind, hates slavery and every form of despotism. Put these together love for the slave, and a determination, a will, that justice, strong and unyielding, shall be done when he has the right to act and you can form your own conclusion. Lincoln will fail here, namely, if a question of political economy if any question comes up which is doubtful, questionable, which no man can demonstrate, then his friends can rule him; but when on Justice, Right, Liberty, the Government, the Constitution, and the Union, then you may all stand aside: he will rule then, and no man can move him no set of men can do it. There is no failure here. This is Lincoln, and you mark my prediction. You and I must keep the people right; God will keep Lincoln right.-W. H. HERNDON IN LETTER TO HON. HENRY WILSON, DECEMBER 21, 1860.

CHAPTER I

The Junior Partner

"Lincoln & Herndon so read the old law shingle which hung in the bare stairway opposite the Court House Square, in Springfield. It had hung there for many years, inviting the passerby, when the senior member of the firm was suddenly called from his dingy back office to a task the greatest ever committed to human hands, leaving Herndon to pursue the practice alone. The junior partner was not unwilling to have it so, being devoid of an itch for office, and having devoted years of tireless and self-effacing labor in behalf of his friend and chief, who was also the embodiment of the principles nearest to his own heart. They parted, and a great war rolled between them, but that did not sever the tie which time and sorrow and devotion to a mighty cause had woven. Though one was taken and the other left, the old shingle still hung in the stairway, at the request of Lincoln, until death dissolved the partnership.

So far little has been written about Herndon, and some have spoken of him in a tone as supercilious as it is unjust. This is unfortunate, as though he were worthy of notice only by virtue of accident, whereas one can hardly know Lincoln without knowing his partner, his loyal friend, his indefatigable fellow-worker. It was a notable partnership, more for its political than for its legal activity, but it will appear more notable when the service of the junior partner is known. Neither man was a learned lawyer, as that phrase is now used, but both were honest, able, and just, and each in his own key was truly and impressively eloquent when expounding or defending the fundamental rights of man. If we may not say that Herndon was a genius, he was at least a man of exceptional ability, and it is believed that when the

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LINCOLN AND HERNDON

spirit and details of his service to Lincoln are known, he will be held in lasting and grateful memory.

Those who attempt, as historians, to recall the men of former times, must be just, and so far W. H. Herndon has not had his due. The present study is no apotheosis of him, but a portrayal of the man as he was, in private habit and public capacity, with particular reference to his service to Lincoln as friend and adviser, and later as biographer. No effort is made to enter into the purely technical aspects of their professional career. That has been done by another. Besides many reminiscences, one entire volume has been devoted to that special theme, and the details need not be repeated. Our concern here is with the personal and political side of their partnership, their mutual confidence and inspiration, their influence upon each other, and the manner in which they settled by anticipation, in a country law office, the problem which later was to shake the minds of reflecting men and rend the nation. To this end some account must be given of Mr. Herndon, his antecedents, his environment, his personal history, and the qualities of his mind.

1

I

Herndon genealogy, if we cared to follow it, would take us far back and is perhaps part legendary. Among the names inscribed on the roll of Battle Abbey, as having come with William the Conqueror, is that of Heriview, the ancestor of the Herons, as they were afterwards calledof whom is said to have followed King Richard in his crusade. One branch of the family assumed the suffix "don," and the name so written means "Bird of the Hills." The first of the family known, authentically, to have settled in this coun

one

1 Lincoln the Lawyer, by F. T. Hill (1906)—a book well conceived and admirable in many ways, but not free from error, nor exempt from grave injustice to Mr. Herndon. More than once the author is guilty of thinly disguised disrespect to Mr. Herndon, hardly crediting him with any ability as a lawyer at all. Nor is he justified in saying that Herndon was "unfortunately not the most reliable of chroniclers.'' This is to err, as so many have done who did not know the man.

try was William Herndon, who patented lands in St. Stephens parish, New Kent County, Virginia, as early as 1654, and who three years later married Catherine Digges, a daughter of the Governor of the Colony. This Herndon is a very real figure, a man of substance and quality, and was the foresire of a large family to be found in various parts of the South.

But we need go no further back than 1795, when Archer G. Herndon was born in Culpeper County, Virginia, and whose family moved to Green County, Kentucky, when he was about ten years of age. In 1816 this sturdy, keenminded, rollicking youth married Rebecca Johnson, a young widow whose maiden name was Day, and their first child, William Henry, was born at Greensburg, Kentucky, December 28, 1818 three months after Nancy Hanks Lincoln died in a lonely log cabin in the wilderness of Indiana. Two years later Archer Herndon moved with his wife and babe to Troy, Madison County, Illinois, where one child was born to them. The following year, 1821, they came to Sangamon County, arriving in a cart drawn by one mule, and settled on what is now German Prairie, five miles northeast of Springfield. This was nine years before Thomas Lincoln left his cabin in Indiana and came to Illinois - the land of " full-grown men,' as the word means.

Archer Herndon and Thomas Lincoln were typical of the men who settled southern Illinois; and it was the southern part of the State that shaped the early history and laws of the commonwealth. Even as late as 1836 Chicago was a village of less than half a thousand folk huddled about a fort, and the northern counties were sparsely populated. Illinois was a Free State, by ordinance of Congress - with the exception of a few French families, who were allowed by special enactment to retain their slaves and, strangely enough, it was for this very reason that its early settlers, though of Southern origin, chose it for a home. And so it remained, despite the effort made in 1822-3, to change it to a Slave State Archer Herndon taking an active part on the side of slavery. The prevailing sentiment was of a peculiar color.