A final evidence that Bateman saw no way to remedy the situation by telling the public exactly what occurred in his interview with Lincoln in 1860, is found in the fact that while he was President of Knox College he had occasion to prepare and deliver there and elsewhere a carefully written lecture on "Abraham Lincoln." Every generation of Knox College students heard, at least once, that famous oration. That lecture contains little else than Bateman's own personal reminiscences, and is an interesting and valuable document. For our present purpose it is chiefly valuable in this, that it contains not one word about the interview which had forever associated the name of Newton Bateman with that of Abraham Lincoln. The fact that Bateman felt compelled to omit it altogether from that oft-repeated lecture on Lincoln is a sufficient reason why no one else should ever use it. Precisely what did Bateman tell Herndon that he had told to Holland, which led Herndon to tell the public that Holland misrepresented Bateman? We do not know precisely. What became of Herndon's carefully cherished notes of his five interviews with Bateman is not known,[32] but we are not left wholly to conjecture. Though Herndon was forbidden to tell what Bateman told to him, he came as near to it as he could do without open violation of his pledge of secrecy. In his own _Life of Lincoln_, published in 1889, he inserted a footnote in which he said: "One of what Lincoln regarded as the remarkable features of his canvass for President was the attitude of some of his neighbors in Springfield. A poll of the voters had been made in a little book and given to him. On running over the names he found that the greater part of the clergy of the city--in fact all but three--were against him. This depressed him somewhat, and he called in Dr. Newton Bateman, who as Superintendent of Public Instruction occupied the room adjoining his own in the State House, and whom he habitually addressed as 'Mr. Schoolmaster.' He commented bitterly on the attitude of the preachers and many of their followers, who, pretending to be believers in the Bible and God-fearing Christians, yet by their votes demonstrated that they cared not whether slavery was voted up or down. 'God cares and humanity cares,' he reflected, 'and if they do not they surely have not read their Bible aright.'"--HERNDON: _Life of Lincoln_, III, 466-67.