[7]. The first authorized sketch of Lincoln’s life was written by the late John L. Scripps of the Chicago “Tribune,” who went to Springfield at Mr. Lincoln’s request, and by him was furnished the data for a campaign biography. In a letter written to Mr. Herndon after the death of Lincoln, which Herndon turned over to me, Scripps relates that in writing his book he stated that Lincoln as a youth read Plutarch’s “Lives.” This he did simply because, as a rule, almost every boy in the West in the early days did read Plutarch. When the advance sheets of the book reached Mr. Lincoln, he sent for the author and said, gravely: “That paragraph wherein you state that I read Plutarch’s ‘Lives’ was not true when you wrote it, for up to that moment in my life I had never seen that early contribution to human history; but I want your book, even if it is nothing more than a campaign sketch, to be faithful to the facts; and in order that that statement might be literally true, I secured the book a few days ago, and have sent for you to tell you I have just read it through.”—Jesse W. Weik.
[8]. From an unpublished MS. by A. Hoosier.
[9]. Preserved in “Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works.” Edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay. Volume I., page 639. The Century Company.
[10]. Interview with Mr. T. W. S. Kidd of Springfield, Illinois, editor of “The Morning Monitor.”
[11]. It still happens frequently in the mountain districts of Tennessee that the funeral services are not held until months after the burial. A gentleman who has lived much in the South tells of a man marrying a second wife at a decent interval after the death of his first, but still before the funeral of the first had taken place.
[12]. Letter to —— Johnston, April 18, 1846. “Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works.” Edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay. Volume I., pages 86, 87. The Century Co.
[13]. 1830–1831. “The winter of the deep snow” is the date which is the starting point in all calculations of time for the early settlers of Illinois, and the circumstance from which the old settlers of Sangamon County receive the name by which they are generally known, “Snow-birds.”
[14]. This story of Kirkpatrick’s unfair treatment of Lincoln we owe to the courtesy of Colonel Clark E. Carr of Galesburg, Illinois, to whom it was told several times by Greene himself.
[15]. William Cullen Bryant, who was in Illinois in 1832, at the time of the Black Hawk War, used to tell of meeting in his travels in the State a company of Illinois volunteers, commanded by a “raw youth” of “quaint and pleasant” speech, who, he learned afterwards, was Abraham Lincoln. As Lincoln’s captaincy ended on May 27th, and Mr. Bryant did not reach Illinois until June 12th, and as he never came nearer than fifty miles to the Rapids of the Illinois, where the body of rangers to which Lincoln belonged was encamped, it is evident that the “raw youth” could not have been Lincoln, much as one would like to believe that it was.
[16]. See “Wisconsin Historical Collections,” Volume X., for Major Anderson’s reminiscences of the Black Hawk War.