Note ii-33 — Chapter II · TRUTH IN LAW

This account of the incident is based chiefly on statements made by District Attorney Ward Hill Lamon, himself (Lamon, 322), and by Judge David Davis, who probably referred to the affair in a story which he recalled, with unimportant variations, many years later, for the entertainment of Ratcliffe Hicks, a contributor to the Century Magazine of February, 1894, p. 638. Henry C. Whitney, it should be added, writing after Lamon but before Hicks, contradicted the former’s narrative in almost every important particular. A careful reading, however, of Whitney’s book (at pages 130-32 and 534), leads to the conclusion that the error lies with him rather than with Lamon and Davis; for he obviously confused the Patterson trial, in his memory, with another Champaign County case.