Abraham Lincoln passed through Mattoon on January 30, 1861, during his last visit to Coles County, a personal trip from Springfield to Charleston that took more than eight hours by rail. Henry C. Whitney, who accompanied him part of the way, recalled Lincoln leaving Springfield in a faded hat, a very short coat, and carrying a worn carpetbag. In Mattoon, editor W. P. Harding reported that Lincoln arrived on the evening train from Chicago, stayed briefly at the Essex House, then continued by freight train to Charleston, while a large crowd gathered on the platform and warmly greeted him as an old friend. The Essex House, located near the rail crossing, served as both a hotel and depot for the Illinois Central Railroad and the Terre Haute and Alton Railroad, and remained a community rail depot until 1918. Mattoon itself had grown up around the rail junction after railroad construction reached the site in 1855. The town also figured in the Lincoln-Douglas campaign of 1858, when Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas arrived there on September 17 to prepare for the next day's debate in Charleston, with Douglas headquartered at the Essex House and Lincoln at the Pennsylvania House. That evening they met supporters and planned parades into Charleston, and Lincoln spent the night at the Pennsylvania House, where Jasper Miller later recalled that Lincoln shook hands with a line of boys and told the barefoot Miller, “Young man, I wish I could go barefooted.”