who had at first claimed to be a lawyer. He had
been an aspirant for various offices, among them that of governor
of the State, but with little success. A few days before the August
election of 1837 an anonymous hand-bill was scattered about the
streets. It was an attack on General Adams, charging him with having
acquired the title to a ten-acre lot of ground near the town by the
deliberate forgery of the name of Joseph Anderson, of Fulton County,
Illinois, to an assignment of a judgment. Anderson had died, and the
widow, upon going to Springfield to dispose of the land, was surprised
to find that it was claimed by General Adams, and she employed Stuart
and Lincoln to look into the matter. The hand-bill, which went into
all of the details at great length, concluded as follows: "I have
only made these statements because I am known by many to be one of
the individuals against whom the charge of forging the assignment and
slipping it into the general's papers has been made; and because our
silence might be construed into a confession of the truth. I shall not
subscribe my name; but hereby authorize the editor of the 'Journal' to
give it up to any one who may call for it.".

After the election, at which General Adams had been elected, the
hand-bill was reproduced in the "Sangamo Journal," with a card signed
by the editor, in which he said: "To save any further remarks on
this subject, I now state that A. Lincoln, Esq., is the author of
the hand-bill in question." The same issue of the paper contained a
lengthy communication from General Adams, denying the charge of fraud.

The controversy was continued for several weeks. General Adams used,
mostly, the columns of the "Springfield Republican," filling six
columns of a single issue. He charged that the assault upon him was
the result of a conspiracy between "a knot of lawyers, doctors, and
others," who wished to ruin his reputation. Lincoln's answers to Adams
are most emphatic. In one case, quoting several of his assertions,
he pronounced them "all as false as hell, as all this community must
know." Adams's replies were always voluminous. "Such is the turn which
things have lately taken," wrote Lincoln, "that when General Adams
writes a book I am expected to write a commentary on it." Replying to
Adams's denunciation of the lawyers, he said: "He attempted to impose
himself upon the community as a lawyer, and he actually carried the
attempt so far as to induce a man who was