.

To the Public:

It is well known to most of you, that there is existing at this time
considerable excitement in regard to Gen. Adams's titles to certain
tracts of land, and the manner in which he acquired them. As I
understand, the Gen. charges that the whole has been gotten up by a knot
of lawyers to injure his election; and as I am one of the knot to which
he refers, and as I happen to be in possession of facts connected with
the matter, I will, in as brief a manner as possible, make a statement
of them, together with the means by which I arrived at the knowledge of
them.

Sometime in May or June last, a widow woman, by the name of Anderson,
and her son, who resides in Fulton county, came to Springfield, for
the purpose as they said of selling a ten acre lot of ground lying near
town, which they claimed as the property of the deceased husband and
father.

When they reached town they found the land was claimed by Gen. Adams.
John T. Stuart and myself were employed to look into the matter, and if
it was thought we could do so with any prospect of success, to commence
a suit for the land. I went immediately to the recorder's office to
examine Adams's title, and found that the land had been entered by one
Dixon, deeded by Dixon to Thomas, by Thomas to one Miller, and by Miller
to Gen. Adams. The oldest of these three deeds was about ten or eleven
years old, and the latest more than five, all recorded at the same
time, and that within less than one year. This I thought a suspicious
circumstance, and I was thereby induced to examine the deeds very
closely, with a view to the discovery of some defect by which to
overturn the title, being almost convinced then it was founded in fraud.
I discovered that in the deed from Thomas to Miller, although Miller's
name stood in a sort of marginal note on the record book, it was nowhere
in the deed itself. I told the fact to Talbott, the recorder, and
proposed to him that he should go to Gen. Adams's and get the original
deed, and compare it with the record, and thereby ascertain whether
the defect was in the original or there was merely an error in the
recording. As Talbott afterwards told me, he went to the General's, but
not finding him at home, got the deed from his son, which, when compared
with the record, proved what we had discovered was merely an error of
the recorder. After Mr. Talbott corrected the record, he brought the
original to our office, as I then thought and t