Abraham Lincoln quarterly. [Vol. 5, no. 3]

IS THE CABIN AUTHENTIC?

139

Four years previously, Dennett had given a $5,000 note to
Crear as a personal subscription to The Christian and Missionary Alliance. While in California in 1897, Dennett had
also receivedmorethan$3,ooo cash froma wealthy California
reformer to bring to Crear in New York for the Alliance. The
managers of the Alliance, believing Dennett to be a very
substantial business man, let him keep this donation as a
loan and accepted another Dennett note in lieu of the money.
Attachments and executions on Dennett holdings in New
York City in 1898 and the early months of 1899 brought
Dennett to grief. When his well-known place on Fourteenth
Street was attached, he was in sore straits. In an effort to protect the Alliance on the two notes totaling over $8,000, Dennett conveyed the Lincoln farm to Crear.21 Succeeding events
indicate that Crear was merely trying to help an old friend
by being party to a pretended sale. The Dennett-Bigham
correspondence shows that after the transfer of title to Crear,
Dennett paid taxes on the farm, received small checks for
part of the tenant's corn crops, and continued his incessant
effort to sell the farm. Bigham continued to supervise the
farm as manager.
With the adjournment of Congress early in 1899, Dennett
wrote Bigham that he was penniless, and in December advised Bigham that he had again been to Washington, this
time with the idea of selling the farm to the Government as
a home for veterans of the Spanish-American War. "If Senator Deboe has any sort of push about him," Dennett commented, "he will see his opportunity for doing himself a big
piece of popularity in urging this thing night and day-but
if he will not push this thing, I will undertake to see McKinley myself." 22
Dennett visited Washington twice more in February,
21 The two notes are now in a file in the Larue County Clerk's office.
2 Bankruptcy File, Dennett to Bigham, December 22, 1899.