Lamon, Ward Hill
b. January 6, 1828, in Frederick County, Maryland; d. May 7, 1893, in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Lamon moved to Danville,
Illinois, in 1837 and became a lawyer before 1850. He rode the Eighth Judicial Circuit, serving for a time
as state’s attorney, and was Lincoln’s associate in many Vermilion County cases. From 1852 to 1856, he and Lincoln maintained
a
working arrangement. Lamon campaigned for Lincoln both in the 1854 and 1858 Senate campaign and 1860 presidential contest.
He
accompanied Lincoln on his inaugural journey to Washington as Lincoln’s bodyguard. President Lincoln appointed Lamon as Marshal
of
the District of Columbia in April of 1861. After Lincoln’s assassination, Lamon escorted his body back to Springfield, Illinois.
He held his post as marshal until June 1865 when he resigned to practice law in the firm of Hovey and Black. Chauncey Black
was
the ghostwriter for Lamon’s Life of Abraham Lincoln: From His Birth to His Inauguration as President.
David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 278; John J. Duff, A.
Lincoln: Prairie Lawyer (New York: Bramhall House, 1960), 211-15; John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds.,
American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 13:86-87; Allen Johnson, ed.,
Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s & Sons, 1964), 5:2:562-63; Ward Hill
Lamon and Chauncey Black, The Life of Abraham Lincoln: From his Birth to his Inauguration as President (Boston:
J.R. Osgood and Co., 1872); Mark E. Neely Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw Hill, 1982),
177-78; Clint Clay Tilton, “Lincoln and Lamon: Partners and Friends,” Transactions of the Illinois State Historical
Society, 1931, 175-228; Albert A. Woldman, Lawyer Lincoln (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1936), 338. Illustration courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, IL.