In the years following his violent death, Abraham Lincoln became the most revered president in US history. But as time passed, what happened to the real story behind the myth? Lincoln's friend, William Herndon, wanted to leave an accurate and personal record. He spent 30 years documenting the most confidential memories of Lincoln's closest friends and family. But for more than a century, these recollections were buried in a disorganized and near illegible collection of papers in the Library of Congress. Now, William Herndon's documents are surfacing for the time, and what they reveal is a portrait of Lincoln as an Earthy, fallible, and often troubled man.