Lincoln writes to editor of Chicago "Journal": "I was absent, from before the commencement, till after the close of the late session of the legislature, and . . . the fact of such a speech having been delivered never came to my knowledge, till I saw a notice of your article, in the Illinois Journal. . . . Had the intention of any whig to deliver such a speech been known to me, I should . . . have endeavored to prevent it." Abraham Lincoln to the Editor of the Chicago Journal, 21 November 1849, CW, 2:68.