Henry Clay Whitney

Henry Clay Whitney (23 February 1831 – 27 February 1905) was an American lawyer who was a close friend of President Abraham Lincoln, and later a biographer of the president.

Life Henry Clay Whitney was born on 23 February 1831 in Detroit, Maine, son of Alfred Metcalf Whitney of Chicago. He received a classical education at Augusta College, Kentucky and at Farmer's College, Ohio, and then studied law at the Cincinnati and Chicago law schools. He also published an account of his time with Lincoln in Life on the Circuit with Lincoln in 1892. He published a version of "Lincoln's Lost Speech" in McClure's Magazine in 1896. The speech was made at the Illinois State Republican Convention at Bloomington, Illinois on May 29, 1856, and was said to have been Lincoln's finest. Whitney claimed his version was based on notes he had made while the speech was being delivered, but its accuracy has been questioned due to the 40-year delay before publication, as well as "upon the unexplained omission of so choice an item in Life on the Circuit ... as well as its dissonance with Lincoln's known utterances and with a contemporary report in the Alton Courier". Whitney has been described as "an unscrupulous reporter", willing to stretch the facts to make his point. Benjamin Thomas, another biographer of Lincoln, wrote: "Never a man to underestimate his own powers, Whitney was held at a somewhat lower valuation by his colleagues".