a letter to James Lemen, Jr., is credited with
full knowledge of the "Jefferson-Lemen Anti-Slavery Compact" and a
high estimate of its significance in the history of the slavery
contest in Illinois and the Northwest Territory. "This matter assumes
a phase of personal interest with me," he says, "and I find myself,
politically, in the good company of Jefferson and your father. With
them everything turned on whether the people of the Territory wanted
slavery or not, ... and that appears to me to be the correct
doctrine."[28] Lincoln, too, in a letter to the younger James Lemen,
is quoted as having a personal knowledge of the facts and great
respect for the senior Lemen in the conflict for a free state in
Illinois. "Both your father and Lovejoy," he remarks, "were pioneer
leaders in the cause of freedom, and it has always been difficult for
me to see why your father, who was a resolute, uncompromising, and
aggressive leader, who boldly proclaimed his purpose to make both the
Territory and the State free, never aroused nor encountered any of
that mob violence which, both in St. Louis and in Alton, confronted
and pursued Lovejoy."[29] Of the latter he says: "His letters, among
your old family notes, were of more interest to me than even those of
Thomas Jefferson to your father."

Jefferson's connection with Lemen's anti-slavery mission in Illinois
was never made public, apparently, until the facts were published by
Mr. Joseph B. Lemen, of the third generation, in the later years of
his life, in connection with the centennary anniversaries of the
events involved. However, the "compact" was a matter of family
tradition, based upon a collection of letters and notes handed down
from father to son. Jefferson's reasons for keeping the matter secret,
as Dr. Peck explains, were, first, to prevent giving the impression
that he was seeking his own interests in the territories, and, second,
to avoid arousing the opposition of his southern friends who desired
the extension of slavery. Lemen, on the other hand, did not wish to
have it thought that his actions were controlled by political
considerations, or subject {p.23} to the will of another. Moreover,
when he learned that Jefferson was regarded as "an unbeliever," he is
said to have wept bitterly lest it should be thought that, in his work
for the church and humanity, he had been influenced by an "infidel";
and, sometime before his death, he exacted a promise of his sons and
the few