To accept this as containing the essential part of the interview between Lincoln and Bateman does not involve our preferring the statement of Herndon to that of Bateman, for we have no definite statement of Bateman. Bateman, under close examination, told Herndon what he remembered that Lincoln told him, and Herndon promised not to tell it without Bateman's permission. Herndon did tell, however, that it was very different from Holland's story, and he published this in Lamon's book in 1872 and Bateman did not deny it. He published the above quoted and additional note in his own book in 1889, while Bateman was living, and Bateman did not protest. We cannot, therefore, be far from the truth if we accept the above and stop there. Unless the notes of Herndon's five interviews with Bateman shall be found and published, this is probably the nearest we shall ever come to knowing what Bateman told Herndon that Lincoln had said to him. If those notes shall be found, they may amplify the conversation but cannot be expected materially to modify it. This is all that it is safe to assume of Lincoln's confession of faith to Bateman. Whoever adds to it the glosses of the Holland biography does it at his own risk. CHAPTER IX THE LAMON BIOGRAPHY WARD HILL LAMON was for many years a close friend of Lincoln.[33] Their relations began in 1847 when Lamon settled at Danville and continued until Lincoln's death. Both there and at Bloomington, Lamon was Lincoln's local associate and so-called partner. When Lincoln voted at the Presidential election of 1860, the men who accompanied him to the polls were William H. Herndon, Ward Hill Lamon, and Col. Elmer Ellsworth. When Lincoln was elected and his political friends had slated Lamon for a foreign mission, Lincoln appointed him Marshal of the District of Columbia that he might have him close at hand. He was a member of the party which accompanied Lincoln to Washington, and when through apparent danger of assassination the route was changed and Lincoln slipped into Washington with a single companion, it was Lamon whom he chose to accompany him. Lamon had charge of the arrangements of Lincoln's trip to Gettysburg, and accompanied Lincoln and was in charge when he visited the battlefield of Antietam. His book of personal "Recollections," edited by his daughter and published in 1895, is full of interest and contains much of permanent value. His _Life of Abraham Lincoln_, published in 1872, is the most bitterly denounced of all the biographies of Lincoln. It involved its author and publisher in heavy financial loss, and the unsold portion of the edition is alleged to have been bought up by friends of Lincoln and quietly destroyed. Lamon intended to have followed this volume, whose subject-matter ended with Lincoln's arrival in Washington in 1861, with a second volume covering Lincoln's life as President, but neither a second volume nor a second edition of the first was ever issued.