Forgery was easy, so was pilfering of documents in those days, so little attention did clerks give to their old papers, so glad were they to get rid of them. There was frequently no objection to a student carrying off anything that interested him. One of the most important documents in the controversy over the legitimacy of Lincoln’s mother is now to be found in the Barton collection which the University of Chicago bought. Mr. Barton probably asked permission to take it home for examination, a common enough practice in Illinois as well as in Kentucky, and forgot to return it. Probably most of the legal documents in the private Lincoln collections have been stolen. The original thief would have been horrified to have that harsh word applied to him. He simply put it into his pocket with or without permission, saying, “I’ll just take this along.”
But while I did get together some three hundred pieces I came nowhere near turning up all the letters and speeches then at large. I was under a time limit. Since I ended my search scores of items, some of value, have been published in one or another collection. I shall be surprised if, as time goes on, there does not turn up every now and then a genuine letter, though now more than ever caution must be taken in accepting a new piece. The forging of historical documents has become a lucrative trade.
From the beginning I did my best to reconstruct the physical surroundings of Lincoln’s homes and activities. I was particularly interested in the setting of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which I followed in their order; but it was not until I reached Galesburg, Illinois, where on October 7, 1858, the fifth debate was staged, that I found the stirring and picturesque material I sought in order to picture the scene of a debate. I was delighted that it should have been the fifth debate, which I have always considered the most important of the series, for it was in that that Lincoln brought his argument down to what to him was the crux of the whole matter, that is, that slavery was wrong and must be kept back or it would spread over the whole country.
The debate had taken place on the campus of Knox College on the east front of its historic Old Main, one of the most beautiful college buildings of that period in the Middle West.