July 14th, 2011
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/14/2011
HERNDON, William Henry (1818-1891) was Lincoln’s law partner, but is most remembered as Lincoln’s biographer. In 1837 William Herndon became a clerk in a store in Springfield owned by Joshua Speed. It was here that he met Abraham Lincoln. They both lived and slept with Speed in a room above the store. From 1842 to 1844 Herndon studied law in the firm of Logan and Lincoln. Herndon was admitted the bar in Springfield shortly thereafter and in 1844 joined Lincoln as his law partner. Herndon remained in Springfield most of the time, whereas Lincoln was on the circuit a good portion of his time. Herndon attended primarily to legal research in their office but also rode the circuit in Menard County. It was a strange relationship, but they worked well together and divided all their fees equally between one another. When Lincoln left for his inauguration as president, he asked Herndon to leave their partnership sign on the building until his return. Following Lincoln’s assassination, Herndon subsequently had two law partners, Charles Zane and Alfred Orendorff. During the 1870s his practice and income fell off as he was overtaken by intemperance. During the years immediately following the death of Lincoln, Herndon devoted his time, in great part, to the memory of his departed friend. He traveled to Kentucky, Indiana, and rural Illinois, visited those who knew Lincoln and recorded their reminiscences. By the 1870s, he was in financial straights and to get along sold some of his notes on Lincoln to Ward Hill Lamon for his Life of Abraham Lincoln. He received $2000 and a promissory note for an additional $2000 from Lamon. By 1881 Herndon gave up drinking and concentrated again on a Lincoln biography. Now an old man, he invited Jesse Weik to join him in this project. The two finally completed the biography in 1889 in three volumes, Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life. In 1887 in Letters from Herndon by Emanuel Hertz, Herndon is quoted, “I have been much abused for telling the truth about Lincoln; and this I shall continue to do. Lincoln will rise in the estimation of mankind the higher, the more thoroughly he is known because that estimate will be formed from facts truthfully and courageously told. When public opinion is thus formed, it never changes; it rests on fact – on eternal verities…I say, in short, in terms of contradiction, if you please, that Mr. Lincoln was a perfect and an imperfect man, a strong man and a weak one; but take him all in all, he was one of the best, wisest, greatest, and ablest men in all the ages.” Autograph Document Signed “W.H. Herndon” 1pp. quarto, May 16, 1853, being a legal document signed before Judge Thomas Moffett, pertaining to the settlement of an estate. Fold separation repairs, else very good condition.
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