Alexander Sympson knew Abraham Lincoln when they were small boys in Kentucky and, like Lincoln, moved to Illinois in the 1830's. He arrived in Carthage in early 1844 as contention with the Mormons was peaking. In 1858 he was the most optimistic of local Lincoln enthusiasts during the Senate race and hosted Lincoln in his Carthage home on October 22, 1858, when wagons and carriages streamed into town from all directions and multitudes marched by in a parade said to stretch over three miles long and wind around and through town and around the public square. Sympson was on Lincoln's short list of confidential friends, and Lincoln trusted him with the delicate political task of quietly encouraging local supporters of President James Buchanan in Buchanan's intraparty feud with Stephen Douglas in hopes of splitting the Democratic Party and weakening Douglas, but the strategy failed. Sympson had been new to Carthage in 1844 when Illinois Governor Thomas Ford paraded Joseph and Hyrum Smith as prisoners before assembled militia troops on the courthouse grounds the morning after the Mormon leaders arrived to answer riot charges. Some troops rebelled at the Mormon prisoners being introduced with military dignities, forcing the governor to intervene. Later that day they were released pending trial in the autumn, but Justice of the Peace Robert F. Smith, also militia captain of the Carthage Greys, ordered the Smiths rearrested on new charges of treason. The courthouse was crowded to suffocation when the prisoners were escorted there through menacing crowds the next day, June 26, 1944. Their case was postponed again, so the Smiths were returned to the county jail and were murdered there the next day.