52 "other democratic candidates": John G. Nicolay, notes on a conversation with S. T. Logan, July 6, 1875, Lincoln MSS, LC.

53 the Democrats' support: Thomas, Lincoln's New Salem, pp. 113114.

53 "I ever saw": Herndon's Lincoln, l:181n.

53 "in good earnest": CW, 4:65.

53 "in the legislature": Coleman Smoot to WHH, May 7, 1866, HWC.

53 a memorable one: My account of Lincoln's service in the legislature is drawn almost entirely from Paul Simon's authoritative Lincoln's Preparation for Greatness, but I have also used William E. Baringer's spirited Lincoln's Vandalia.

53 their first term: Simon, Lincoln's Preparation for Greatness, p. 20.

54 Clayborn Elder Bell: Ibid., pp. 22, 27.

54 "troubling the legislature": CW, 1:31.

54 his "national debt": Basler, ed., "James Quay Howard's Notes on Lincoln," ALQ 4 (Dec. 1947): 398. For an informed discussion of Lincoln's troubled finances, see Thomas F. Schwartz, "Lincoln's National Debt" (unpublished paper, 1992), to which I am much indebted.

55 "he was reading": Hidden Lincoln, p. 321.

55 "He studied with n.o.body": CW, 4:65.

55 "would craze himself": Henry McHenry to WHH, May 29, 1865, HWC.

55 returned it to him: James Short to WHH, July 7, 1865, HWC.

55 "and clothing bills": CW, 4:65.

55 She was Ann Rutledge: The Ann Rutledge story is highly controversial. It derives almost exclusively from letters and statements that Herndon collected after Lincoln's death. In a lecture delivered in November 1866, Herndon gave wide publicity to the Lincoln-Rutledge romance, going far beyond his evidence to argue that Ann Rutledge was the only woman Lincoln ever loved and that her death left Lincoln so desolated that "his mind wandered from its throne." Later Herndon went on to speculate that Lincoln's persisting infatuation for Ann explained the unhappiness in his marriage to Mary Todd Lincoln, whom he never loved. For an account of Herndon's lecture and the sources on which it was based, see David Herbert Donald, Lincoln's Herndon (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), chap. 15. Widely echoed by romantic biographers, Herndon's story came under close scrutiny from twentieth-century Lincoln scholars such as Paul M. Angle, and J. G. Randall made a devastating a.n.a.lysis of Herndon's sources in "Sifting the Ann Rutledge Evidence," in his Lincoln the President: Springfield to Gettysburg (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1945), 2:321342. Much of Randall's criticism was justified, for it is clear that Herndon's inferences and speculations about the Lincoln-Rutledge romance were unwarranted. Moreover, Randall showed that the basic facts concerning the affair could not be proved in a court of law, where the firsthand testimony of two independent witnesses would be required. On the other hand, the court of history usually accepts a less rigorous standard of proof; indeed, if Randall's criteria were applied, almost nothing could be unquestionably proved about the first thirty years of Lincoln's life. With these problems in mind, scholars have recently undertaken a reexamination of the Ann Rutledge story. For their findings, from which I have learned a great deal, see John Y. Simon, "Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge," Journal of the Abraham Lincoln a.s.sociation 11 (1990): 1333, and Douglas L. Wilson, "Abraham Lincoln, Ann Rutledge, and the Evidence of Herndon's Informants," Civil War History 36 (Dec. 1990): 301324. For a more general attempt to restore faith in Herndon's credibility, see Douglas L. Wilson, "William H. Herndon and His Lincoln Informants," Journal of the Abraham Lincoln a.s.sociation 14 (Winter 1993): 1534. John Evangelist Walsh, The Shadows Rise: Abraham Lincoln and the Ann Rutledge Legend (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), is a retelling of the Ann Rutledge story, largely on the basis of a reexamination of Herndon's sources.

55 "Heavy set": Mrs. Samuel Hill, statement to WHH, [1866], HWC.

56 "kindness-sympathy": Henry McHenry, statement to WHH, undated, HWC; W. G. Greene to WHH, May 30, 1865, HWC.

56 "him beyond recovery": Herndon's Lincoln, 1:133.

56 to save them: There was, in fact, something odd about McNamar's story, since his father died on Apr. 10, 1833. It is not clear why he was unable to return to New Salem until 1835. Simon, "Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge," p. 23.

56 "an insurmountable bar[r]ier": Jason Duncan to WHH, undated, HWC.

57 "engagement with McNamar": R. B. Rutledge to WHH, Nov. 18, 1866, and Nov. 21, 1866, HWC; James M. Rutledge, statement to William H. Herndon, undated, HWC.

57 "on her Grave": Mrs. E. Abell to WHH, Feb. 15, 1867, HWC.

58 "of her now": Isaac Cogdal, statement to WHH, undated, HWC.

58 "the Democratic party": Frank E. Stevens, "Life of Stephen Arnold Douglas," JISHS 16 (Oct. 1923-Jan. 1924): 295. For the effort to achieve party regularity through a convention system, see Theodore C. Pease, The Frontier State, 18181848 (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1918), chap. 13.