Lincoln Legal Briefs

              A Quarterly Newsletter of The Lincoln Legal Papers
A Documentary History of the Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln, 1836-1861
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January — March 2007 Number 81
“New” Image of an “Old” Lincoln Document
Associate Director Stars in Documentary Film
A few documents included in The Law Practice
of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary
Edition, published in 2000, were typed transcriptions
from the Emanuel Hertz Collection at Lincoln
College Museum in Lincoln, Illinois. Hertz was a
Lincoln scholar, who published The Hidden Lincoln
in 1938. He typed transcriptions of Lincoln
documents he uncovered in his research and later
donated his papers to the college’s library.
The Hertz transcriptions included in the
electronic edition stood in for original documents
that the project was unable to locate during its fifteen-year
search to locate and photocopy Lincoln legal
documents. A transcription of a declaration written
by Lincoln was among them. In that transcription,
the names of the parties at suit were misspelled, but
without a facsimile of the original documents, editors
had to include it.
Associate Director John Lupton recently
appeared in a documentary film about Lincoln’s
law practice. “A. Lincoln: Attorney at
Law” was released late last year. Craig
Lindvahl, a music teacher and
documentary filmmaker from
Effingham, Illinois, produced and
directed the thirty-minute program. The
film has appeared on public television
and received several Emmy
nominations.
Lupton is one of four scholars
who appeared in the documentary to
discuss various aspects of Lincoln’s
legal career, most notably Lincoln’s life
on the Eighth Judicial Circuit. It also
features Rhode Island Chief Justice
In February, Assistant Editor Susan Krause,
during a scanning trip in the western United States,
obtained a digital image of the original document.
The declaration had been filed in the case of VonPhul
& McGill v. Garrett. The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints now owns the original document,
and curators at their library in Salt Lake City, Utah,
provided a digital image of the document without
charge.
The case was a suit for assumpsit in the
Sangamon County Circuit Court in 1837. Lincoln rep-resented
the plaintiffs, partners in a St. Louis com-pany.
The defendant had failed to pay a debt, and the
firm was asking for $250 in damages.
This new digital image of an old Lincoln
document is a superior facsimile of the original
document.
Frank J. Williams, noted Lincoln scholar Harold
Holzer, and editor of the U. S. Grant papers, John Y.
Simon.
Lindvahl, a Taylorville,
Illinois, native, also produced a
second documentary regarding the
erection of the John McClarey statue
entitled “Lincoln’s Last Stop” in
Taylorville. The statue immortalizes
the story in which Lincoln called for
a “writ of quietus” to silence the pigs
rooting around underneath the
Christian County courthouse. Lupton,
along with the other Lincoln scholars,
was also featured in the second
documentary.
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