court cases. In 1858 the contest between Stephen A. Douglas and Mr. Lincoln for the Senate brought Mr. Lincoln into national view. Seven debates were arranged between them and I was employed to report them on the Republican side.
There was no one to assist in reporting but a young man named Laraminie from Montreal, who was a skillful reader of shorthand and could transcribe my notes with perfect accuracy. At Quincy, Illinois, where one of the debates was held, he took the train for Chicago, which left before the debate was finished, carrying with him my notes of the earlier part of the debate, and I first saw the work printed in a newspaper. Mr. Lincoln never saw the report of any of the debates. I mention this as it was often charged at that time in the fury of partisan warfare that Mr. Lincoln's speeches were doctored and almost re-written before they were printed; that this was necessary because he was so petty a creature in ability, in thought, in style, in speaking when compared with the matchless Douglas.
[New York Herald, May 29, 1904]
To tell the story of Mr. Hitt's public career with anything like completeness would require columns of space. He first came into the public eye just after he left college. He had learned the system of shorthand then in use and was probably the only stenographer in the West at that time who could take a speech verbatim as it was delivered from the rostrum.
Abraham Lincoln had heard of his rare accomplishment and made a requisition on the young man to report the Lincoln-Douglas debate at Freeport, Illinois. It is chronicled that when the debate was about to begin, Mr. Lincoln lifted his long form from a chair, looked out over the immense audience, and shouted, "Where's Hitt? Is Hitt present?"
The future representative and possible vice-president was far out on the edge of the crowd.
"Here I am, Mr. Lincoln," he cried, "but I can't get through this crowd to the stand". Whereupon strong men lifted the frail, slender young man into the air and passed him along over the heads of the crowd to the platform. Mr. Hitt took complete notes of the speech and afterward transcribed most of them himself. Some of Mr. Lincoln's political enemies, who had brought an indictment of illiteracy against the gaunt Illinois statesman, charged Mr. Hitt with "doctoring" the English of the speech, but he denied that he had taken any liberties}}
