[4CJ]

That sounds like the beginnings of legend-building and the Memory Hole right there.

Lincoln's son destroyed much of Lincoln's unfavourable papers according to Herndon IIRC.

[lentulusgracchus]

Lincoln's son destroyed much of Lincoln's unfavourable papers according to Herndon

What sort of papers would those be? Wheeler-dealer letters about appointments? About screwing the States and courts? About the origins of the War, or his colonization-movement enthusiasms? The illicit cotton trade through the Civil War lines? Voter suppression in New York?

Lincoln post-mortem is such a marble man, it's hard to guess in what area those papers would have been.