Clifton H. Moore, DeWitt County’s first resident attorney, built this stately brick home in 1857-58 on an eighty-acre tract purchased from Judge David Davis. The original house was damaged by a windstorm and no longer has the west wing shown earlier. In 1880, Moore bought and moved to another large Clinton home known as “The Homestead.” During the 1858 campaign, Lincoln and Douglas had many speaking engagements beyond their formal debates, and Lincoln gave more than sixty speeches, including one in a grove on the west side of Clinton on September 2, 1858. A Republican grand mass meeting and barbecue picnic there was preceded by a parade of elaborately decorated horse-drawn floats, and despite heavy morning rain an estimated crowd of ten thousand attended. The Central Transcript reported that Moore introduced Lincoln and that Lincoln’s speech was clear and convincing on the usual topics of the time. Lincoln and Horace White, a Chicago Tribune reporter assigned to cover the event, traveled by train from Springfield and had to make an early morning transfer at Decatur. Lincoln barely caught the northbound train, but White was not awakened in time and did not wake until the conductor called “state line” in Indiana. As a result, White did not reach Moore’s country home, where he and Lincoln were overnight guests, until evening; he missed both his newspaper report and his payment, but the three men gained a humorous story to tell. Clinton’s Central Transcript strongly supported the Republican Party and Lincoln’s role in his presidential campaign, including the four speeches he delivered in Clinton between 1856 and 1859. The paper promoted attendance at Clinton’s Lincoln Club and at Wide Awake parades organized before the 1860 election, and its references to Lincoln as an old familiar face who always received a hearty welcome, even as “Old Abe,” suggest friendship between the editor and Lincoln. The editor also recounted that when an old acquaintance apologized for naming his very ugly hound dog “Abe Lincoln,” Lincoln replied, “I don’t care anything about it if the dog don’t.” Lincoln also wrote that he wanted to subscribe to the newspaper and would pay at fall court.