According to the University of Michigan, Abraham Lincoln wrote three autobiographies that still exist today. The longest was written in the 3rd person for the Chicago Press & Tribune.
In 1860, the pro-Lincoln Chicago Press merged with the pro-Lincoln Tribune. It became the Chicago Press & Tribune, now known simply as Chicago Tribune. The paper was rabidly pro-Lincoln and credited with playing a large role in getting him elected.
John L. Scripps was a lead staffer at the Chicago Press & Tribune and former editor of the Chicago Press. There is a surviving letter from Abraham Lincoln to Scripps dated 1858, thanking him for his flattering coverage.
In 1860, Scripps asked Lincoln for an autobiography to publish in the new Press & Tribune.
The Chicago Press & Tribune then published a 3rd person autobiography written by Abraham Lincoln himself. It contains a major detail that is shockingly absent from all modern accounts of Lincoln.
When he was nineteen, still residing in Indiana, he made his first trip upon a flatboat to New Orleans. He was a hired hand merely, and he and a son of the owner, without other assistance, made the trip. The nature of part of the “cargo-load,” as it was called, made it necessary for them to linger and trade along the sugar-coast; and one night they were attacked by seven negroes with intent to kill and rob them. They were hurt some in the mêlée, but succeeded in driving the negroes from the boat, and then “cut cable,” “weighed anchor,” and left.
