ree with them, that when you publish the old family notes on
the matter, if, for reasons you state, you do not wish to publish
Jefferson's letters to your father which concern the subject, it will
be sufficient just to say he acted by and under his advice and aid,
and people will accept it, as it is self-evident, because it is
preposterous to hold that Mr. Lemen could have accomplished such
results without some great power behind him. In conclusion, it is my
judgment that your father's anti-slavery labors were the chief factor
leading up to the free state constitution for Illinois.

Now as to your old family notes. They are valuable. In their
respective fields, they embrace by far the most trustworthy history in
our state. They ought to be preserved, but your generous nature will
not permit you to say no; and your friends, as you say, are carrying
them off, and they will all be lost, and presently the vast and
priceless collection will have disappeared, which will be an
unspeakable loss. Like your friends, Dr. B. F. Edwards and J. M.
Smith, I would advise you to make copies of all to keep for use, and
then give Smith the old collection to keep and hold in St. Louis in
his safe, and leave them there for good. This will save you an
infinite amount of worry, as people will not trouble you to see the
mere copies. It would be a good disposition to make of them, and thus
bury that dangerous element in many of the old letters bearing on the
anti-slavery contest of 1818. With some of those interested in that
contest, in fifty years from this time, the publication of these
letters would create trouble between the descendants of many of our
old pioneer families.

There is a danger lurking in many of these old collections where you
would not suspect it. In 1851, when I wrote the first or preliminary
part of the Bethel church history from your old family notes, now
generally referred to as the history of the "Jefferson-Lemen
Anti-Slavery Pact," and part second as the history proper of the
church in the letter which was simply the history from its
organization in 1809 to my pastorate of 1851, I carefully omitted all
mention of the anti-slavery contest which gave the church its origin.
I {p.45} did this so that that part of its history could then be
recorded in the church book, which could not have been done had I
mentioned the anti-slavery contest; because the bitterness of that
period had not yet fully disappeared; and the full h