[30]The original agreement between Jefferson and Mr. Lemen was strictly confidential; on the part of Jefferson, because, had it been known, his opponents would have said {p.34} he sent paid emissaries to Illinois and Indiana to shape matters to his own interests, and the extreme South might have opposed his future preferment, if it were known that he had made an anti-slavery pact with his territorial agents; and it was secret on the part of Mr. Lemen because he never wished Jefferson to give him any help and his singularly independent nature made him feel that he would enjoy a greater liberty of action, or feeling at least, if it were never known that his plans and purposes to some extent were dictated and controlled by another, not even by his great and good friend Jefferson; so the agreement between them was strictly private. [30]And there was another circumstance which finally determined Mr. Lemen to always preserve the secrecy, and that was that some of Mr. Jefferson's opponents shortly before Mr. Lemen's death informed him that he had become an absolute unbeliever, and this so impressed his mind that he wept bitterly for fear, if the fact should ever be known that he had an agreement with Jefferson, that they would say that he was in alliance with an unbeliever in the great life work he had performed, and he exacted a promise from his sons, his brother-in-law, Rev. Benjamin Ogle, and Mr. Biggs, the only persons who then knew of the agreement, that they would never divulge it during his lifetime, a pledge they all religiously kept, and in later years they told no one but the writer and a few other trusted friends who have not, and never will, betray them. But the writer advised them to carefully preserve all the facts and histories we are now writing and to tell some of their families and let them publish them at some future time, as much of the information is of public interest. As to Jefferson's being an absolute unbeliever, his critics were mistaken. He held to the doctrine that the mind and the reason are the only guides we have to judge of the authenticity and credibility of all things, natural and divine, and this appears to have been the chief basis on which Jefferson's critics based their charges against him. But while these harsh criticisms in some measure misled Mr. Lemen he never lost his great love for Jefferson and to the latest day of his life he always mentioned his name with tenderness and affection. I had hoped to complete this history in one chapter, but there appear to be notes and materials enough for another. By oversight the notes of Mr. Lemen's war record were not given me, but he honorably served an enlistment of {p.35} two years under Washington, and returned to his regiment at the siege of Yorktown and served until the surrender of Cornwallis, but did not re-enlist. CHAPTER II.