William Henry Herndon

Lecture delivered in Springfield, Ill., 12 Dec. 1873, in response to an 1872 lecture delivered by the Rev. James A. Reed, concerning the life and religious sentiments of Abraham Lincoln; Herndon's lecture was originally printed in Illinois State Register, 13 Dec. 1873.

"Delivered extemporaneously and printed from the stenographic report; revised by the preacher." -- from footnote.

After Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865, William H. Herndon began work on a brief, "subjective" biography of his former law partner, but his research turned up such unexpected and often startling information that it became a lifelong obsession. The biography finally published in 1889, Herndon's Lincoln, was a collaboration with Jesse W. Weik in which Herndon provided the materials and Weik did almost all the writing. For this reason, and because so much of what Herndon had to say about Lincoln was not included in the biography, David Donald has observed, "To understand Herndon's own rather peculiar approach to Lincoln biography, one must go back to his letters." An exhaustive collection of what Herndon was told by others about Lincoln was published by Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis in Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln . In this new volume, Wilson and Davis have produced a comprehensive edition of what Herndon himself wrote about Lincoln in his own letters. Because of Herndon's close association with Lincoln, his intimate acquaintance with his partner's legal and political careers, and because he sought out informants who knew Lincoln and preserved information that might otherwise have been lost, his letters have become an indispensable resource for Lincoln biography. Unfiltered by a collaborator and rendered in Herndon's own distinctive voice, these letters constitute a matchless trove of primary source material. Herndon on Lincoln: Letters is a must for libraries, research institutions, and students of a towering American figure and his times.

A reprint with slight changes in the text of the lecture delivered by Herndon in the Old Sangamon County Court House, November, 1866, which started tales of the Ann Rutledge romance.

Herndon drew upon a long personal association with Lincoln as well as an excellent collection of materials for this biography, which covers Lincoln’s entire life