James Lemen, Sr., also became the father and leader of the noted "Lemen Family Preachers," consisting of himself and six stalwart sons, all but one of whom were regularly ordained Baptist ministers. The eldest son, Robert, although never ordained, was quite as active and efficient in the cause as any of the family. This remarkable family eventually became the nucleus of a group of anti-slavery Baptist churches in Illinois which had a very important influence upon the issue of that question in the State. Rev. James Lemen, Jr., who is said to have been the second American boy born in the Illinois country, succeeded to his father's position of leadership in the anti-slavery movement of the times, and served as the representative of St. Clair county in the Territorial Legislature, the Constitutional Convention, and the State Senate. The younger James Lemen was on terms of intimacy with Abraham Lincoln at Springfield, and {p.09} his cousin, Ward Lamon, was Lincoln's early associate in the law, and also his first biographer. Various representatives of the family in later generations have attained success as farmers, physicians, teachers, ministers, and lawyers throughout southern Illinois and other sections of the country.[4] The elder James Lemen was himself an interesting character, and, entirely apart from his relations with Jefferson, he is a significant factor in early Illinois history. His fight for free versus slave labor in Illinois and the Northwest derives a peculiar interest, however, from its association with the great name of Jefferson. The principles for which the latter stood--but not necessarily his policies--have a present-day interest for us greater than those of his contemporaries, because those principles are the "live issues" of our own times. Jefferson is to that extent our contemporary, and hence his name lends a living interest to otherwise obscure persons and remote events. The problem of free labor versus slave labor we have with us still, and in a much more complex and widespread form than in Jefferson's day. According to the current tradition, a warm personal friendship sprang up between Jefferson and young Lemen, who was seventeen years the junior of his distinguished patron and friend. In a letter to Robert, brother of James Lemen, attributed to Jefferson, he writes: "Among all my friends who are near, he is still a little nearer. I discovered his worth when he was but a child, and I freely confess that in some of my most important achievements his example, wish, and advice, though then but a very young man, largely influenced my action." In a sketch of the relations of the two men by Dr. John M. Peck we are told that "after Jefferson became President of the United States, he retained all of his early affection for Mr. Lemen"; and upon the occasion of a visit of a mutual friend to the President, in 1808, "he inquired after him with all the fondness of a father."[5]