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 under the charge of murder
to entrust the defence of his life to his hands, and finally took his
money and got him hanged. Is this the man that is to raise a breeze
in his favor by abusing lawyers? ... If he is not a lawyer, he _is_
a liar; for he proclaimed himself a lawyer, and got a man hanged by
depending on him." Lincoln concluded: "Farewell, General. I will see