"Honest Abe": A Study in Integrity Based on the Early Life of Abraham Lincoln
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Title: "Honest Abe": A Study in Integrity Based on the Early Life of Abraham Lincoln
Author: Alonzo Rothschild
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "HONEST ABE": A STUDY IN INTEGRITY BASED ON THE EARLY LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN ***
Books by Alonzo Rothschild
PUBLISHED BY
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
“HONEST ABE.” A Study in Integrity based on the Early Life of
Abraham Lincoln.
LINCOLN, MASTER OF MEN. Illustrated.
“HONEST ABE”
[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN
From a woodcut by T. Johnson after a daguerreotype owned by Mr. Robert
T. Lincoln]
“HONEST ABE”
A STUDY IN INTEGRITY
BASED ON THE EARLY LIFE OF
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
BY
ALONZO ROTHSCHILD
AUTHOR OF “LINCOLN, MASTER OF MEN”
[Illustration: colophon]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1917
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY META ROTHSCHILD
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published September 1917_
IN MEMORY
OF
“DEAREST”
KATHERINE ROTHSCHILD
TO WHOM THE AUTHOR
OWES NOT LESS THAN
LINCOLN OWED HIS
“ANGEL MOTHER”
THIS BOOK IS
AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED
CONTENTS
I. PINCHING TIMES 1
II. TRUTH IN LAW 41
III. PROFESSIONAL ETHICS 79
IV. DOLLARS AND CENTS 130
V. HONESTY IN POLITICS 195
ALONZO ROTHSCHILD 283
_Memoir by John Rothschild_
A LIST OF BOOKS CITED 307
NOTES 321
INDEX 361
ILLUSTRATIONS
ABRAHAM LINCOLN _Frontispiece_
From a woodcut by T. Johnson in the _Century Magazine_
for February, 1897, after a daguerreotype owned by Mr.
Robert T. Lincoln. It is not known when or where the
daguerreotype was taken, but it seems probable that it was
made either at St. Louis or at Washington when Lincoln
was in Congress, December, 1847,-March, 1849
_Alonzo Rothschild_ 285
From a photograph by Marceau, Boston
“HONEST ABE”
CHAPTER I
PINCHING TIMES
He who seeks to understand the character and achievement of Abraham
Lincoln must begin with a study of the man’s honesty. At the base of his
nature, in the tap-root and very fiber of his being, pulsed a fidelity
to truth, whether of thought or of deed, peculiar to itself. So
thoroughgoing was this characteristic that it seems to have begun in him
where in other men it generally leaves off. Politicians without number
have yielded a work-a-day obedience to the rules of honor, but there is
record of no other public leader in recent times who, among the
vicissitudes of a trying career, has endeavored to balance actions and
principles with such painstaking nicety. To trace these efforts from
Lincoln’s early years is to pass with him, pace for pace, over part of
the road that led to distinction. As we go we shall have to take account
of happenings, little as well as big; for every man is the sum of all
his parts, and in no other way may we hope to comprehend how the esteem
that began with a few rustic neighbors grew until it filled the heart of
a nation.
To what extent, if any, Lincoln inherited his uprightness of mind from
remote ancestors will probably never be known. The bare lines of the
genealogical chart afford no clues to the characters of the men and
women whose names appear there. If any of the threads spun out of their
several lives met and twined in the broad strand of blue that enriched
his, there is no way of identifying the spinners. Less obscure, though
perhaps of only passing interest, is what may be gleaned under this head
about two of Lincoln’s nearer relations. His father’s brothers, Mordecai
and Josiah, appear to have enjoyed general respect on account of their
probity. “They were excellent men,” said one who claimed to know them
intimately, “plain, moderately educated, candid in their manners and
intercourse, and looked upon as honorable as any men I have ever heard
of.”[i-1] Their younger brother Thomas, however, cannot be so readily
portrayed. He has, like his illustrious son, been, in turn, depreciated
and idealized to such a degree that the inquirer, who would reach safe
conclusions in respect to him, must tread warily through a maze of
contradictions.
Rejecting the praise as well as the blame of hearsay historians, and
following the testimony of those only who knew the man, we learn
from one that he was “honest”; from another that he “was regarded
as a very honest man”; and still another found him “always
truthful--conscientious.”[i-2] To these tributes must be added what one
who was doubly connected with Thomas Lincoln had to say about him:--
“I’m just tired of hearing Grandfather Lincoln abused,” said Mrs.
Dowling, the daughter of Dennis Hanks and Matilda Johnson, speaking to
an attentive listener, not many years ago. “Everybody runs him down.”
Then, going on to free her mind woman-fashion, she continued:--
“Uncle Abe got his honesty, and his clear notions of living, and his
kind heart from his father. Maybe the Hanks family was smarter, but some
of them couldn’t hold a candle to Grandfather Lincoln when it came to
morals. I’ve heard Grandfather Lincoln say, many a time, that he was
kind and loving, and kept his word, and always paid his way, and never
turned a dog from his door.”[i-3]
These qualities, so admirable in Thomas, were not lacking, it should be
mentioned, in that particular member of “the Hanks family,” his cousin
Nancy, with whom he mated.[i-4] She is said to have brought to the rude
Kentucky cabin, in which they began their married life, a sweetness of
spirit and a firmness of character that nicely supplemented his rugged
integrity. Yet here again traditions are more plentiful than facts, and
the repute of the little family, in those early days, so far as it
affords a point of departure for the study of Abraham Lincoln’s
straightforwardness, rests, in a manner, on the word of one neighbor,--a
man of standing, however,--according to whom “they were poor,” but “they
were true.”[i-5]
The poverty of the frontier, it has been said, is no poverty; but the
Lincolns were poor almost to a proverb. Their condition appears to have
been extreme, even for the primitive Kentucky settlement at
Elizabethtown where they made their first home. The young husband was a
carpenter by trade, but his new neighbors, with the self-reliance of
pioneers, managed to do for themselves most of the work wherewith he had
hoped to support his family. Its needs grew with the birth of a little
daughter, but not its resources, which he presently sought to eke out by
farming. The hut in Elizabethtown was abandoned for another hut and a
piece of tillable land that Thomas had bought,--presumably on
credit,--about fourteen miles away, near the Big South Fork of Nolin
Creek.[i-6] There, in the following winter, was born the boy who became
known to fame as Abraham Lincoln. He must have felt at an early age the
tooth of the “stinted living” in those “pinching times,” to which,
during later life, he once sadly referred; for his father did not
prosper with the hoe, any more than he had with the hammer. After a few
unfruitful years on Nolin Creek, Thomas relinquished the place for a
better farm, in the Knob Creek region, about fifteen miles distant,
acquired like its predecessor on easy terms. Yet the fortunes of the
family did not mend. Its luckless head “was always lookin’,” as Cousin
Dennis said, “fur the land o’ Canaan.” To his pioneer’s vision the There
ever seemed fairer than the Here. So removal followed removal,--now in
Kentucky, then into Indiana, and again into Illinois,--until, to borrow
one of Abraham’s little stories, the chickens, if there were any, might
have lain on their backs and crossed their legs to be tied, whenever
they saw the wagon sheets brought out.[i-7]
Thomas Lincoln’s futile shifts need not be set forth at length
here,[i-8] but certain aspects of his inability to get on in the world
have a peculiar significance. He responded with ready good nature to
calls upon his time or his hospitality; and though he appears to have
understood many things, he never learned how to turn his dealings with
the little world around him to his own account. The few business
ventures, in which he is said to have engaged, reveal how woefully he
was lacking in what has been called “money sense.” A typical instance,
related by his son many years after the event, may have suggested to the
narrator that there were at least two members of the Lincoln family who
had each a blind side in the direction of the almighty dollar. Here is
the story substantially as Abraham related it:--
“Father often told me of the trick that was played upon him by a ‘pair
of sharpers.’ It was the year before we moved from Kentucky to Indiana
that father concluded to take a load of pork down to New Orleans. He had
a considerable amount of his own, and he bargained with the relations
and neighbors for their pork, so that altogether he had quite a load. He
took the pork to the Ohio River on a clumsily constructed flat-boat of
his own make. Almost as soon as he pushed out into the river a couple of
sleek fellows bargained with him for his cargo, and promised to meet him
in New Orleans where they arranged to pay him the price agreed upon. He
eagerly accepted the offer, transferred the cargo to the strangers, and
drifted down the river, his head filled with visions of wealth and
delight. He thought that he was going to accomplish what he had set out
to do, without labor or inconvenience. Father waited about New Orleans
for several days, but failed to meet his whilom friends. At last it
dawned upon him that he had been sold, and all that he could do was to
come back home and face the music.”[i-9]
Consoling himself after such mishaps with the indolent philosophy of
“Luck is ag’in’ me,” and “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,” Thomas
would return to his sporadic farming, or to what he liked better--his
rod and his gun. For there is a tradition that this unthrifty
fellow--honest and well-meaning though he was--had a distaste for manual
labor. When work had to be done he did it, after a fashion, nor did he
spare the boy who was growing up at his side; but further than that he
apparently did not go. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the father ever
found, along their limited horizon, the path which might have led either
him or his son to business success. They certainly did not enter upon
it. Yet if Thomas Lincoln failed to teach Abraham how to put money in
their purse, let it be remembered, to his lasting credit, that he did
show him how an empty sack might--despite a time-honored adage to the
contrary--stand upright.
Noteworthy as was the father’s influence on the boy’s character, that of
the mother appears to have been of deeper consequence. Lincoln’s
earliest recollections of her, as he recalled in later years, pictured
his sister and himself seated at her feet eagerly listening to the
books that she read or the tales that she told. The poor lady succumbed
early to the hardships of the Indiana backwoods; and the few facts that
are known concerning her brief life set forth but a meager story.[i-10]
If “the world knows nothing of its greatest men,” may this not be so, in
a measure, because it knows nothing of their mothers? The deficiency, as
far as Nancy Hanks is concerned, was supplied, for all time, in perhaps
the most pithy yet comprehensive tribute that a distinguished son ever
uttered to the memory of a parent. Looking down over his career from the
last eminence, and tracing it all back again to the frail, sweet-faced
woman whose life had flickered out before his wondering gaze, in the
cabin home of his boyhood, Lincoln once said, with moist eyes: “All that
I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”[i-11]
When she passed on, the lad, it is true, was not quite eleven years old;
nevertheless her teachings, during that first plastic period, had
evidently left their sterling impress in his nature.
Nor did the home influence for right living stop there. After an
interval of about a year, Thomas sought another mate. Leaving the little
ones to manage the household on Little Pigeon Creek as best they might,
he retraced his steps to Elizabethtown and offered himself in marriage
to Mrs. Sarah Bush Johnston. She is said to have refused him, in their
younger days, for Daniel Johnston, who, by a coincidence, had left her a
widow with as many children as waited for her visitor at home.[i-12] On
this occasion the lady listened more favorably to his proposal, yet she
pointed out an obstacle, saying: “Tommy Lincoln, I have no objection to
marrying you, but I cannot do it right off, for I owe several little
debts which must first be paid.” To which he replied: “Give me a list of
your debts.”
They amounted to about twelve dollars--not so mean a sum in those days
of small things as present standards might indicate. At any rate, within
a few hours our suitor had paid them, and had married the fair debtor.
The settlement of these little accounts was, in a way, the central
incident of their short courtship.[i-13] It puts one in mind of the good
repute enjoyed by the Lincolns, from the beginning, in Elizabethtown. If
the neighbor, who declared Thomas and his first wife to have been poor
but true, had seen him and his second wife set out for home in a
four-horse wagon loaded with her wealth of household belongings,--to say
nothing of the three blooming Johnston children,--there might have been
some hesitation about repeating the word “poor”; but in the face of
those receipted bills, there would probably have been no desire to
modify the word “true.”[i-14]
Sally Bush was a worthy successor to Nancy Hanks. A woman of strong
personality and high ideals, this stepmother--to use a designation that
she ennobled--is credited by not a few writers with exerting the larger
influence in the moulding of Abraham Lincoln’s character. They have gone
so far, some of them, as to assert that Lincoln himself, recognizing
this to be so, had her in mind and not her predecessor, when he uttered
that grateful acknowledgment to his “angel mother.”[i-15] This view is
hardly sustained by the language of the tribute, or by the facts; yet
Abraham apparently missed no opportunity for expressing in deeds, as
well as in words, what--to use his own phrases--he owed the “noble
woman” who had been “a good and kind mother”[i-16] to an orphaned boy.
Perhaps, after all, the controversy concerning the two women, if
controversy it may be called, is fairly disposed of by what Mr. Lincoln
told one of his acquaintances, Governor William Pickering, who some
years later thus restated their conversation. “Once when Lincoln
referred to the fact that he owed much to his mother, I asked, ‘Which
mother, Mr. Lincoln, your own or your stepmother?’ To which Mr. Lincoln
replied,--‘Don’t ask me that question, for I mean both, as it was mother
all my life, except that desolate period between the time mother died
and father brought mother into the home again. Both were as one mother.
Hence I simply say, mother.’”[i-17]
With one or the other of these conscientious women at his side, Abraham
Lincoln reached maturity. Almost every good man has had a good mother.
Here was one who had two. It is not surprising, therefore, that his
sense of right and wrong, after a few minor lapses, became developed to
uncommon acuteness at an early age, nor should it be accounted a miracle
that from the unsightly stumpage of a frontier clearing, emerged this
blossom which grew, with time, into the finest flower of
nineteenth-century honor.
Lincoln was brought up on the breast of things. The rugged actualities
of life in a new country, rather than the literature about life, entered
into his training; and when we name those colleges to which the world’s
great lights have severally owed their education, this man must be
credited to the most venerable, though perhaps least honored, among them
all,--the academy of hard knocks. Let us not infer, however, that the
back settlements in which he spent his youth were wholly beyond the
field of letters. Attending “A B C schools by littles,” as the
autobiography expresses it, and learning betimes how to read, the lad
lost no opportunity to borrow or acquire the few books within his reach.
Under the stimulation of first one mother, then the other, every volume
that he could lay hold of for fifty miles around was eagerly studied.
What this shifting library comprised will doubtless never be fully
known. It is said to have included--besides certain elementary
school-books[i-18]--the Bible, Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Æsop’s
“Fables,” the “Arabian Nights,” Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe,” Weems’s “Life
of Washington,” Ramsay’s “Life of Washington,” a history of the United
States, Weems’s “Life of Marion,” the “Speeches of Henry Clay,” with
which was probably incorporated a “Memoir” of the statesman, the “Life
of Benjamin Franklin,” Riley’s “Narrative of the Loss of the Brig
Commerce,” a few of Cooper’s “Leather Stocking Tales,” and the Revised
Laws of Indiana, with which were bound, besides other documents, the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United
States.[i-19] Some of these works, if not all of them, left an ethical
glow in the boy’s heart. Thoughtfully absorbing the light that streamed
from their pages, he caught glimpses here and there of a kinship that
linked the everyday doings in his commonplace world with the ideals in
his books.
A mishap to one of the borrowed volumes put these budding ideas of
rectitude to the test. While in Abraham’s keeping, a “Life of
Washington”[i-20] that belonged to a neighbor, Josiah Crawford by name,
was badly soaked one night during a rainstorm, which beat through the
chinks of the Little Pigeon Creek cabin. Carrying the damaged book back
to its owner, the boy acknowledged himself answerable for its
condition;--but how was he to pay the seventy-five cents which Crawford
demanded in settlement? Money was as scarce as literature at that time
with young Lincoln, so he agreed to work out the claim in the farmer’s
corn-field. “You see,” said Abraham, relating the incident to a friend,
“I am tall and long-armed, and I went to work in earnest. At the end of
the two days there was not a corn-blade left on a stalk in the field. I
wanted to pay full damage for all the wetting the book got, and I made a
clean sweep.”[i-21] This ample submission to the laws of mine and thine
was not, however, so graceful as it might have been. Our “long-armed”
boy appears to have been still far removed from sainthood in those days;
and, after the manner of boys, he nursed a grudge against Crawford for
his unneighborly, though perhaps rightful, treatment of the accident.
Having satisfied that thrifty person’s demands with the Scriptural “good
measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over,”
Abraham--so tradition has it--lampooned the man whenever occasion
offered,--now in humorous prose, now in doggerel rhymes,--until Josiah’s
“blue nose,” as well as certain other unlovely features, became the
laughing-stock of the neighborhood. Indeed, the gibes ran their merry
course--if we may believe one veracious chronicler--all the way to “the
Wabash and the Ohio.”[i-22]
This unseemly persecution of Crawford, on the heels of an honorable
settlement with him, narrowly saved the youthful Lincoln from occupying
a place in the world’s gallery of premature worthies beside the
copper-plate little Washington portrayed by Parson Weems. Nevertheless,
that myth-maker’s model boy, who could not tell a lie, had left a deep
impression in the mind of this real boy. To Abe’s uncritical faculties
the biography rang true in every detail. For its reverend author, with
all his faults, had the literary merit of apparent sincerity; and his
string of “curious anecdotes,” as the title-page called them, had not
yet been worn threadbare, to the verge of the ridiculous, by derisive
repetition. Weems’s Washington, boy and man, became Lincoln’s hero--a
cherished ideal which he never consented to modify, even after he had
outgrown the story of the cherry tree and that truthful little
hatchet-swinger.
Emulating the great Virginian, Abe carried himself, now consciously, now
unconsciously, as this paragon of his fancy might have done, even to
the point of leaving a hatchet, or more accurately speaking, an axe
anecdote for later generations to admire. During those toilsome Indiana
days,--so runs our tale,--the youth was engaged in clearing a piece of
woodland some distance from the house. Leaving home early, he made it a
practice to carry some luncheon and stay away until nightfall. The
picnic element in the expedition appealed to the taste of his frolicsome
stepsister, Matilda, whose frequent appeals for permission to accompany
him met with her mother’s peremptory refusals. Eluding maternal
vigilance one morning, the girl slyly followed Lincoln as he strode
through the forest, humming a tune, with his axe on his shoulder. At a
favorable moment she darted forward and, exerting cat-like agility,
leaped squarely upon him. Grasping a shoulder with each hand, she braced
her knee in the middle of his back, and brought the young woodsman
dexterously to the ground. Lincoln, taken by surprise, went down like a
log, carrying his assailant with him. As they fell the axe cut the
girl’s ankle, making a painful wound that bled freely. After an
improvised bandage had stanched the blood, Abe, mindful of Mrs.
Lincoln’s oft-repeated orders, looked down at the sobbing culprit and
asked:--
“‘Tilda, what are you going to tell mother about getting hurt?”
“Tell her I did it with the axe,” she answered. “That will be the truth,
won’t it?”
To which he responded:--
“Yes, that’s the truth, but it’s not all the truth. Tell the whole
truth, ’Tilda, and trust your good mother for the rest.”[i-23]
Whether ’Tilda did tell “the whole truth,” and whether Sally Bush
gathered her or Abraham or both of them to her heart, after the manner
of Augustine Washington in the Reverend Mr. Weems’s tale, is not
definitely known. Nevertheless, when the Plutarch that is to be runs his
parallel between these two greatest of Americans, the legendary hatchet
and the historic axe may become symbolic of how closely both these
heroes did actually hew to the line, in their early fondness for the
verities.
But if further youthful similarities shall be sought by that
hypothetical biographer, he will not linger over the next episode in
this chronicle of Lincoln’s moral growth. Abe had passed his nineteenth
birthday when “the great man” of the Little Pigeon Creek neighborhood,
old James Gentry, picked him out for a signal mark of confidence. That
gentleman’s son, Allen, was to make a trading voyage in a Mississippi
flat-boat laden with goods, and Lincoln was hired to share the
adventure. They planned to do business along the river all the way, if
necessary, to the Gulf. Drifting down the Ohio and thence on the broad
waters of the Mississippi as far as New Orleans, the young men made a
prosperous, though not entirely uneventful journey. Only one incident of
the expedition concerns us here. At certain landings they were paid for
their merchandise--as they discovered too late--in counterfeit money.
Gentry, lamenting over the matter, feared his father’s anger; whereupon
Lincoln consoled him with the suggestion that their employer would not
care how much bad money they took in, if they brought the correct amount
of good money home. “Never mind, Allen,” he continued; “it will
accidentally slip out of our fingers before we get to New Orleans, and
then old Jim can’t quarrel at us.”[i-24] This prophecy did, in fact,
come true. The counterfeits, we are told, “all went off like hot cakes”;
but to what extent the prophet helped to bring about so sweeping a
fulfillment is nowhere recorded. When he and his associates, however, on
their return, rendered an account of their stewardship in currency that
was not hopelessly discredited, old Mr. Gentry is said to have
pronounced on Lincoln what corresponded with the Scriptural
commendation,--“Well done, good and faithful servant.”
In this approval the candid historian cannot concur, yet he hesitates to
condemn. The demoralized condition of our currency throughout the
Mississippi Valley for over half a century, the bewildering variety of
counterfeit bills, to say nothing of wildcat notes, in circulation, and
the scarcity of good money, left people small choice but to accept at
varying discounts--unless too obviously spurious--what they were
offered, and pass it along again with as little loss as possible.[i-25]
One aspect of the trouble was later humorously set forth by Lincoln
himself, in his story of the steamboat captain who, running short of
fuel on the river, steered to a woodpile alongshore.
“Is that your wood?” he inquired of a man near by.
“Yes,” was the answer.
“Do you want to sell it?”
“Certainly.”
“Will you accept wildcat currency?”
“Certainly.”
“How will you take it?”
“Cord for cord.”[i-26]
The passing of depreciated or fraudulent currency, in the ordinary
course of business, was evidently not regarded, during those days of
loose financiering, with the severity of more recent times.[i-27]
Indeed, after Lincoln had become a lawyer, though the clients that
offered themselves were accepted or rejected with scrupulous
discrimination, he on one occasion employed his wit and ability to
secure the acquittal of a man charged, under suspicious circumstances,
with passing counterfeit money. “There was a pretty clear case against
the accused,” said Adlai E. Stevenson, who attended the trial, “but when
the chief witness for the people took the stand, he stated that his name
was J. Parker Green, and Lincoln reverted to this the moment he rose to
cross-examine:--Why J. Parker Green?--What did the J. stand
for?--John?--Well, why didn’t the witness call himself John P.
Green?--That was his name, wasn’t it?--Well, what was the reason he did
not wish to be known by his right name?--Did J. Parker Green have
anything to conceal; and if not, why did J. Parker Green part his name
in that way?--and so on. Of course the whole examination was farcical,”
Mr. Stevenson continued, “but there was something irresistibly funny in
the varying tones and inflections of Mr. Lincoln’s voice as he rang the
changes upon the man’s name; and at the recess the very boys in the
street took it up as a slogan, and shouted, ‘J. Parker Green!’ all over
the town. Moreover, there was something in Lincoln’s way of intoning his
questions which made me suspicious of the witness, and to this day I
have never been able to rid my mind of the absurd impression that there
was something not quite right about J. Parker Green. It was all
nonsense, of course; but the jury must have been affected as I was, for
Green was discredited, and the defendant went free.”[i-28] Perhaps, too,
some of the twelve good men and true, like the highly respected counsel
for the defense, could have severally recalled times when the exigencies
of trade had wafted into their hands worthless bank-bills that, somehow,
did not remain there.
Be that as it may, much water, in the language of the old byword, was to
flow down the Mississippi River before this clever attorney evolved from
the gawky young bow-hand on Gentry’s flat-boat. Another trading voyage
to New Orleans in the spring of 1831, shortly after he had begun life on
his own account, appears to have been as successful as the first one.
The crew comprised Lincoln, his stepbrother John D. Johnston, and his
cousin John Hanks, who accompanied them, however, but part way, leaving
the responsibility of the undertaking largely on Abraham’s shoulders.
Their employer, Denton Offutt, a breezy speculator,--free-handed,
optimistic, and given to superlatives,--conceived a warm admiration for
Abe. The young fellow certainly conducted himself well. His manly
qualities, his muscular powers, his unfailing good humor, his
resourcefulness on certain trying occasions, his fidelity to the trust
reposed in him, above all, his integrity, made so strong an impression
on Offutt that at the termination of the voyage he established a general
store at New Salem,[i-29] and placed Lincoln in charge of it with the
assertion that this model clerk had not his equal in the United States.
Offutt’s extravagant praise was, it is perhaps needless to say, not
wholly merited. A keener merchant might have hesitated to entrust the
management of his business, and of the neighboring mill that was
presently merged with the enterprise, to a young man of Lincoln’s
peculiar make-up. Abe had, it is true, learned something of storekeeping
during the old Gentryville days, in the grocery of his friend William
Jones; and a small stock of goods purchased there, when the Lincoln
family moved from Indiana to Illinois, had been profitably peddled, on
the way. Moreover, those trading trips to New Orleans had doubtless
contributed somewhat to his commercial training; but no amount of
experience could make a successful business man of one so lacking, as
was Tom Lincoln’s son, in aptitude for hiving the nimble sixpence. How
not to do so appears, in a sense, to have concerned him more. Yet the
scrupulous care with which he shut Offutt’s till against the sixpences
that did not belong there would, had it been combined with mercantile
ability, probably in the end have made the young clerk’s fortune. His
honesty became a by-word.
Two typical instances of uprightness in small things especially
impressed themselves on the memory of the neighborhood. It is said that
once, having sold a woman a bill of goods, he found after her departure
that she had paid six and a quarter cents more than the purchases
amounted to. When the store was closed at night, so the story goes, he
walked several miles into the country to give his customer the fourpenny
piece which balanced her over-payment. Here again Lincoln’s punctilious
honesty recalls that of Washington. It is related that a ferryman on the
General’s estate, in making change for a moidore, took out one and a
half pence too much. Discovering the over-charge when the accounts for
the week were made up, Washington wrapped three halfpence in a piece of
paper, and had them delivered to the traveler on his return.[i-30]
The other anecdote concerning Lincoln, that belongs in this group, tells
how one night, just before closing time, he hastily weighed, as he
thought, half a pound of tea for a belated customer. Looking at the
scales on the following morning, he discovered that a weight of four
ounces, instead of eight, had been used. To wrap up another quarter of a
pound of tea, close the store again, and deliver his parcel at the end
of a long walk before breakfast, was the only method of repairing the
error that presented itself to this primitive conscience.
The young clerk’s ethical creed during those New Salem days seems simple
enough. It has been preserved by a friend, who thus restates what he
gathered, under this head, in the course of conversation:
“Lincoln said he did not believe in total depravity, and, although it
was not popular to believe it, it was easier to do right than wrong;
that the first thought was: what was right? and the second: what was
wrong? Therefore it was easier to do right than wrong, and easier to
take care of, as it would take care of itself. It took an effort to do
wrong, and a still greater effort to take care of it. But do right and
it would take care of itself. Then you had nothing to do but to go ahead
and do right and nothing to trouble you.”[i-31]
Out of this philosophy developed--to borrow a cynical phrase--the acute
attacks of chronic integrity that attracted particular attention to
Lincoln, even in the midst of an honest, plain-dealing community. The
rude people around him, for the most part, led upright lives, and they
expected others to do likewise; yet his efforts to treat every man with
fairness were so pronounced as to evoke frequent comment among them.
Their talk crystallized, at last, in the sobriquet, “Honest Abe.” This
name, having been generally adopted throughout the New Salem vicinage,
fitted Lincoln so nicely that it clung to him, with slight variations,
in one form or another, until the end of his career.
Meanwhile Offutt did not prosper. He appears to have had too many irons
in the fire, and one of them, as we know, was under the care of a man
who had no particular talent for keeping irons, or anything else, at a
money-making glow. Neither the honesty nor the popularity of this
clerk--for the young fellow had gained the good-will of their
customers--sufficed to save the store from the general ruin in which
the owner’s several ventures became involved. Failure overtook the new
business before the end of its first year. As the place is sold out,
Offutt disappears from historic view; while Lincoln steps nearer to the
lime-light for a brief but bloodless essay at soldiering in the Black
Hawk War. Returning to New Salem upon the conclusion of the campaign, he
made an unsuccessful canvass, on a National Republican platform, for
election to the State Legislature. Then “without means and out of
business,” as he himself expressed it, but “anxious to remain with his
friends,” Lincoln looked about him for something to do. Stalwart of
frame, with well-knit muscles, he naturally came to the thought of again
earning a living by manual labor. The blacksmith’s trade, which several
of his forbears had creditably followed, was, for a time, seriously
considered. It had, in fact, almost been decided on, when two of those
new-found friends, the Herndon brothers, familiarly known as “Row” and
“Jim,” offered their general store for sale. James sold his interest to
William F. Berry, the son of a neighboring Presbyterian minister, and
Rowan soon after disposed of his share to Lincoln, receiving in lieu of
money “Honest Abe’s” promise to pay. When “Row” was asked how he came to
make such liberal terms with a penniless man whom he had known for so
short a time, he answered: “I believed he was thoroughly honest, and
that impression was so strong in me I accepted his note in payment of
the whole. He had no money, but I would have advanced him still more
had he asked for it.”[i-32]
Herndon was not the only New Salemite who was willing to transfer his
business, after this fashion, for a promissory note. Soon after the
transaction, a neighboring storekeeper, Reuben Radford by name, incurred
the displeasure of a local gang, “the Clary’s Grove boys,” to such an
extent that they made a riotous night of it in his place. On the
following morning, standing discouraged amid the débris of the
establishment, Radford sold it to the first comer, William G. Greene, a
youth who had been a sort of junior clerk in the Offutt store. As the
purchaser could not pay in cash the four hundred dollars agreed upon, he
gave his note. Then, growing nervous over the transaction, he turned for
comfort to his former associate. Lincoln said: “Cheer up, Billy. It’s a
good thing. We’ll take an inventory.”
They found that the flotsam and jetsam which had survived the storm,
amounted in value to $1200. Whereupon Berry and Lincoln offered Greene a
substantial profit on his bargain. This the young man eagerly accepted,
with the stipulation that the firm should assume his indebtedness to
Radford. There was a little more shuffling of notes, and the goods
passed into the hands of Berry and Lincoln.[i-33] They shortly
afterwards, in presumably the same manner, absorbed a small business
owned by James Rutledge. Combining these three stocks,--all acquired by
a few strokes of the pen,--Lincoln and his partner now had what the
junior member later ironically referred to as “_the_ store” of New
Salem.
Despite its virtual monopoly along certain lines, the new firm was
ill-adapted to succeed. Berry soon developed habits of idleness and
intemperance that would have been fatal to any business;[i-34] while
Lincoln, though ambitious and sober to an exceptional degree, was hardly
more effective. His keen interest in books, study, newspapers, politics,
funny stories, horse-races, wrestling-matches, feats of
strength,--anything, in short, but buying and selling,--left him far
from alert to what is commonly called the main chance. When one
remembers these pursuits, moreover, to have been the preoccupations of a
man who combined rigid integrity with a kindly nature, it is not
surprising to learn, as Cousin Dennis relates, that “he purty nigh
always got the wust of a trade.”[i-35] The rest is soon told. Berry and
Lincoln did not thrive. Giving up the struggle after several ineffectual
shifts, they sold out, early in 1834, to Alexander and William Trent.
The purchasers had no money, but they willingly gave notes, which the
sellers as willingly accepted. Before these obligations fell due,
however, the Trent brothers had disappeared, their few remaining goods
had been seized by creditors, and the business had come to an inglorious
close.
Berry’s death, soon after, left the surviving member of the firm to
face, alone, the consequences of their ill-starred venture. Yet he could
not bring himself to join in the censure which was heaped upon the young
man’s memory. With characteristic consideration for his partner’s
father, the Reverend John M. Berry, whom he held in affectionate
regard, Lincoln declared that William’s dissipation was a result rather
than a cause of their misfortunes; and took on his own shoulders the
burden of liabilities bound up in those unpaid notes to Herndon,
Radford, Greene, and Rutledge.
How serious the whole affair was may be gathered from this account of
it, given by the hapless debtor to a friend[i-36] of later days: “That
debt was the greatest obstacle I have ever met in life. I had no way of
speculating, and could not earn money except by labor, and to earn by
labor eleven hundred dollars, besides my living, seemed the work of a
lifetime. There was, however, but one way. I went to the creditors and
told them that if they would let me alone, I would give them all I could
earn, over my living, as fast as I could earn it.”[i-37]
During the next few months no surplus, it is perhaps needless to add,
was available for this purpose. In fact, the situation reduced itself to
a struggle for bread. Lincoln’s earnings from the office of local
postmaster, to which he had been appointed before the above “winked
out,” were of course meager in the extreme; but he contrived to pick up
a living by doing odd jobs about the neighborhood. Helping his
friends--now Hill, now Ellis--behind their counters, working in the
field as a farm laborer, splitting rails, lending a hand at the
mill,--briefly, making himself useful on all sides, in his big,
good-natured way, he just “kept,” to quote the autobiography, “soul and
body together.”[i-38]
Throughout this trying period, however, Lincoln did not lose sight of
his self-respect, or of the respect due to him from others. He began to
manifest that sensitive chastity of honor which recoils from doubt as
from a blow. So, when a patron of the post-office, upon payment of
certain arrears demanded an acknowledgment, “A. Lincoln, P.M.,”
responded: “I am somewhat surprised at your request. I will, however,
comply with it. The law requires newspaper postage to be paid in
advance, and now that I have waited a full year, you choose to wound my
feelings by insinuating that unless you get a receipt I will probably
make you pay it again.”[i-39]
The reputation for honesty, which Lincoln so jealously guarded, had
meanwhile opened to him another channel for occasional employment. This
opportunity came through John Calhoun, the surveyor of Sangamon County,
who, overburdened with business, was looking about for an assistant of
intelligence and unquestioned integrity. The latter qualification
appears to have been especially important at the time, owing to a mania
for speculation in land that had possessed the people of the region to
such a degree as almost to put a premium on jobbery. A man beyond the
reach of corruption was, therefore, what Calhoun sought when he offered
to make Abraham Lincoln one of his deputies. The honor must have been
not less flattering to the young National Republican, because it came,
as had the postmastership, from a Democratic source, and with the
assurance that his acceptance carried with it no obligation of party
service, nor restraint upon his freedom of political action. To
Lincoln’s declaration that he knew nothing whatever about surveying,
Calhoun responded with an offer to aid him. Books and material having
been procured, six weeks of earnest study ensued. For assistance in
learning the theory of the subject, Lincoln turned to his friend, Mentor
Graham, the local schoolmaster; for guidance in the practical
application of the rules, he depended on the surveyor himself. When the
period of preparation had reached its close, the new-fledged deputy is
said to have made his pathetic little speech: “Calhoun, I am entirely
unable to repay you for your generosity, at present. All that I have you
see on me, except a quarter of a dollar, in my pocket.”[i-40]
Such extreme poverty left Lincoln, of course, unable to pay cash for the
saddle-horse that his new duties obliged him to buy. He agreed to take
care of the bill by installments; he did so, but ran behind when only
ten dollars remained unpaid. Whereupon his creditor, a horse-dealer
named Thomas Watkins, who is described as “a high-strung man,” lost his
temper and sued for what was still due. Lincoln did not deny the debt.
He hastily raised the required sum and settled the suit.
A still more unpleasant experience followed, for the young surveyor was
destined to drain his cup of mortification to its dregs. One of the
Berry-Lincoln notes had passed into the hands of a certain Van Bergen,
who forthwith brought suit and obtained judgment. Levying on the horse,
saddle, and surveying instruments, he offered them for sale in
satisfaction of his claim. But Lincoln’s loyal friends were not disposed
to stand idly by while he was deprived of the means of earning a
livelihood. They bought the effects that had been seized, restored them
to their former owner, and took the place of the impatient Van Bergen
among his creditors.[i-41] The loans, so handsomely made, were in time
repaid by Lincoln, principal and interest, as were all the obligations
left in the train of his unfortunate business ventures. Disdaining to
take advantage of a recently enacted law for the relief of insolvent
debtors, he set himself resolutely to the task of seeing to it that no
man should lose a penny by reason of any note which contained his
signature. Yet the prospect might have appalled a stouter heart. At
times, when the seeming hopelessness of the undertaking was borne in
upon him, he referred to what was still to be paid, with whimsical
humor, as “the national debt.” How long the process of liquidation did,
in fact, take is not precisely known. Lincoln’s occasional payments on
account of these claims would doubtless have made a braver showing had
the only other demands upon him been for his own simple wants; but, in
addition to such outlays, the frequent aid extended to his parents, and
the requirements, after his marriage, of a growing family, all had to
come out of earnings that never, at their best, were munificent.
Nevertheless, through good times and bad, the load of indebtedness
became steadily lighter, until, after seventeen years or more of
self-denial, the last note, with its heavy accumulations of interest,
was paid.[i-42]
A less scrupulous man than Abraham Lincoln might have appreciably
shortened this debt-bound period from the very beginning. As deputy
surveyor under John Calhoun, and later, under that officer’s successor,
Thomas M. Neale, he doubtless had opportunities enough for employing his
knowledge of what was going on, together with his still unimpaired
credit, in profitable land speculations. But he could not bring himself
to mingle the pursuit of private gain with public duties; and he scorned
to use, on his own account, information derived from official
sources.[i-43] The same conscientious spirit so manifestly entered into
the doing of the work itself that he soon gained the confidence of those
who employed him. They believed in the young surveyor’s accuracy, as
well as in his fairness, to such an extent that disputes concerning
boundaries or corners were frequently submitted to him for arbitration;
and, what is of greater moment, his findings, we are told, were
invariably accepted by the conflicting parties as final. A quarrel of
this nature, about a corner, took place in the northern part of the
county. “After a good deal of disputing,” relates one of the owners, “we
agreed to send for Lincoln, and to abide by his decision. He came with
compass, flagstaff, and chain. He stopped with me three or four days and
surveyed the whole section. When in the neighborhood of the disputed
corner by actual survey, he called for his staff and, driving it in the
ground at a certain spot said, ‘Gentlemen, here is the corner.’ We dug
down into the ground at the point indicated and lo! there we found about
six or eight inches of the original stake sharpened at the end, and
beneath which was the usual piece of charcoal placed there by Rector,
the surveyor who laid the ground off for the Government many years
before.” So well had the work been done that in this instance, as in the
others, differences were at an end, and all concerned “went away
completely satisfied.”[i-44]
There is another aspect of Lincoln’s early life that should not be
overlooked. He was apparently never too busy for the contests of
strength and skill from which came some of his first sweet triumphs in
leadership. That these were won, for the most part, with ease must have
made defeat, when it did on rare occasions occur, peculiarly hard to
bear; yet he carried himself, according to all accounts,--whether victor
or vanquished,--as a man of honor should. In fact, save for a single
untoward act which must be charged to the hobbledehoy exuberance of his
youthful Indiana days,[i-45] Lincoln treated whatever happened at these
sports with the same extreme candor and nicety of good faith that marked
his business dealings. Perhaps the most notable instance is that of a
certain wrestling-match which took place during the Black Hawk War. At
the risk of telling a twice-told tale, the story is repeated here,--told
anew rather than repeated, for the later researches of an Illinois
historian have contributed not a few additional details.[i-46] They
reveal Lincoln in the full flower of sportsmanlike honesty.
Having been elected Captain of the Volunteers from Sangamon County, he
was ever ready to uphold the credit of his company in the rough pastimes
whereby the soldiers sought to relieve the tedium of that peculiar
campaign. Proud of their leader’s exploits, especially as a wrestler,
they boasted that no man in the army could throw him; and he, at the
same time, owed much of his ascendancy over their undisciplined natures
to the uniform success with which he downed all comers. But Antæus
himself met his match at last.
One evening on the march, our phalanx from Sangamon happened upon a
choice piece of camping-ground at about the time it was reached by a
company from St. Clair County. In the altercations which ensued a
disgraceful scuffle seemed imminent, when Lincoln proposed to William
Moore, the opposing commander, that they might settle their dispute
after the good old-fashioned method of single combat--captain against
captain. This suggestion met with a modified approval. As the officer
from St. Clair had no skill in wrestling, it was agreed that each
company should be represented by its stoutest champion. Accordingly,
Lincoln soon stood within a circle of excited men, facing a redoubtable
athlete from southern Illinois, in the person of private Lorenzo Dow
Thompson. Both combatants had won the confidence of their respective
friends, who hastened to back their faith with bets, eagerly offered and
as eagerly accepted. Nor were the gathering crowds of soldiers from
other companies slow to gratify their sporting tastes. “Up went
powder-horns, guns, watches, coats, horses, pay-rolls, and reputations
until,”--so runs the chronicle,--“there remained not one solitary
article of property in possession or expectancy thereof, which had not
been put into the pot on that match.” The referee, Captain Moore’s
brother Jonathan, announced, as he tossed up a coin for choice of
“holts,” that two falls in three would decide the match; and the men
grappled.
It did not take Lincoln long to discover that his record was in danger.
Calling to his friends, with characteristic frankness, he managed to
say: “This is the most powerful man I ever had hold of. He will throw me
and you will lose your all, unless I act on the defensive.”
Yet Thompson was too quick for him. All of Lincoln’s extraordinary
strength did not avail against the St. Clair man’s skill, and in a few
moments the pride of New Salem measured his six feet four inches on the
ground--fairly thrown. Their second round did not differ widely from the
first. After attempting his favorite devices in vain, the tall captain
again went to earth, this time, however, pulling his antagonist down on
top of him.
“Dog fall!” shouted Lincoln’s supporters, seizing on a pretext for
dispute.
“Fair fall!” defiantly retorted the others.
A general fight--and a serious one at that--seemed inevitable, when
Lincoln springing to his feet averted, for the second time in this
affair, a scene of bloodshed.
“Boys,” he cried, “give up your bets; if he has not thrown me fairly, he
could.”[i-47]
This frank admission put an end to all hopes of further resistance. The
“boys” reluctantly obeyed, and Captain Moore’s followers took possession
of their captured bivouac, laden with the spoils of victory.[i-48]
But were they the only victors? Marshaling the several elements which
went to make up this little drama, recalling what defeat meant to the
Sangamon chief, and how easy it might have been for him to hide his
discomfiture under cover of the mêlée which he had prevented, thoughtful
readers will perhaps agree that the true hero of the episode--all things
considered--did not rest that night in the camp of the St. Clair
rangers.[i-49]
Virile men, rude and cultured alike, admire a winner; but how their
hearts go out to him who can lose or win with equal grace! So it was in
Lincoln’s case. During what might be called his New Salem period, he
became the central figure of those occasional little gatherings at which
the settlers sought to amuse themselves. They made him preside over
horse-races, wrestling-matches, athletic games, and what not. Indeed,
even cock-fights seemed incomplete if he was missing from the judge’s
corner. Expert knowledge of these pastimes, applied with tact, good
nature, and ready wit, went far to make his decisions acceptable, even
had they not been pronounced by a muscular giant, who could always be
relied on to enforce compliance. More noteworthy, however, than all
other circumstances was the abiding faith of this entire community in
the young man’s squareness. Said one old resident, reviving precious
memories: “In the spring or summer of 1832, I had a horse-race with
George Warburton. I got Lincoln, who was at the race, to be a judge of
the race, much against his will, and after hard persuasion. Lincoln
decided correctly, and the other judge said, ‘Lincoln is the fairest
man I ever had to deal with. If Lincoln is in this county when I die, I
want him to be my administrator, for he is the only man I ever met with
that was wholly and unselfishly honest.’”[i-50]
As might have been expected, this talent for holding the scales with a
steady hand brought more serious duties. When arrangements were made,
from time to time, in approved frontier fashion, for the fist-fights
whereby these backwoodsmen sought to adjust their irreconcilable
differences, Lincoln, if not called upon to second one of the
principals, was usually named by both as referee. Such functions are, in
the nature of things, difficult to perform; yet he conducted himself,
according to all accounts, with spirit, and with painstaking fidelity to
the rules of fair play. It is said, moreover, that he officiated on
these occasions reluctantly--in fact, only after failing to bring about
settlements of the quarrels by peaceable means. For it was as arbitrator
between man and man that his ripening intuitions of equity--tempered by
kindly sympathies with both sides--had their largest scope. With such
precision--to quote from an ancient judicial oath--“as the herring’s
backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish,” did he draw the line
between conflicting interests. Even those who were inclined to demur at
his decisions usually came to see that a lean compromise was better than
a fat lawsuit. So, in one way and another, to not a few people along the
Sangamon, Abraham Lincoln became, after a fashion, the court of last
resort.[i-51] It would seem as if, at this early date, he himself might
have been found worthy of the eulogy pronounced by him, some years
later, on a departed friend: “In his intercourse with his fellow-men, he
possessed that rare uprightness of character, which was evidenced by his
having no disputes or bickerings of his own, while he was ever the
chosen arbiter to settle those of his neighbors.”[i-52]
So far, indeed, did Lincoln carry his peacemaking activities that the
local justice, with an eye to diminishing fees, complained of
interference. If this functionary, as seems likely, was Squire Bowling
Green, who had befriended our amateur judge in many ways, the situation
must have been peculiarly unpleasant. But, be that as it may, Lincoln
did not adjourn court. Taking the rebuke amiably, he explained how hard
it was for him to see his neighbors spend money in unnecessary
litigation and--what was more important still--how desirous he felt of
saving them from perhaps lifelong enmities which might be prevented.
That reply was far-reaching. It opened a window, so to say, in the
speaker’s heart, and threw a flood of light forward upon many things
which he did, and many more which he refrained from doing, throughout
the fruitful years that were to come.
What motives first directed Lincoln’s attention to the legal profession
as a career are not definitely known. Whether the bar took his fancy on
account of that ideal justice to which lawyers theoretically, at least,
dedicate themselves, or whether he was moved by more commonplace
incentives, such as a taste for study, the desire to gain a livelihood
by means of an honorable calling, aspirations to become a controlling
factor in other men’s affairs, and the like, can only be surmised.
Perhaps each of these considerations carried due weight. They certainly
all had time enough to make their presence felt. For, as far back as the
youthful days at Gentryville, we find Abraham, in his insatiable craving
for the printed page, poring over a copy of the Indiana Statutes.[i-53]
This volume was supplemented presently by such books as he could borrow
from Justice John Pitcher of Rockport, whose kindly interest in the lad
grew out of his admiration for a little composition on the American
government, which one of the young writer’s friends had submitted to
judicial criticism. “The world couldn’t beat it,” was Pitcher’s comment,
and thenceforth Lincoln had the run of his office.[i-54] At about the
same time came opportunities--or rather Abe made opportunities--for
seeing the law administered. Whenever sessions of the circuit court for
the adjoining county were held in Boonville, he would trudge over the
road--a matter of fifteen miles--to attend. What took place there
doubtless repaid him. Closely following every word and act in the rustic
drama of justice, as it unfolded itself before his fascinated gaze, he
seemed identified, so to say, with the proceedings. They took such hold
upon his mind that he rehearsed them at home, reënacting the court-room
scenes and holding mock-trials in which a certain gawky country boy
defended imaginary prisoners against unjust charges, with uniform
success. If he might only become a lawyer! But such a notion was out of
the question. His parents, as he explained to Judge Pitcher, were so
poor that they could not spare him long enough for study. And there the
matter rested while the years passed on. In fact, it was not until after
Lincoln had left home and had become a business man at New Salem that
his youthful ambition, dormant though never wholly forgotten during the
long intervening period, began to revive. While casting about for
something to do, on his return from the Black Hawk War, he again thought
of taking up this calling; but the idea was promptly dismissed because,
to quote his own opinion, he “could not succeed at that without a better
education.” Nevertheless, before many months had elapsed, a chance
occurrence during the ill-starred Berry partnership quickened into life,
beyond any previous experience, Lincoln’s desire to study law. How this
came about he himself, chatting once with an acquaintance, in a
reminiscent mood, thus related:--
“One day a man who was migrating to the West drove up in front of my
store with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He
asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his
wagon, and which he said contained nothing of special value. I did not
want it, but to oblige him I bought it, and paid him, I think, half a
dollar for it. Without further examination, I put it away in the store,
and forgot all about it. Some time after, in overhauling things, I came
upon the barrel, and emptying it upon the floor to see what it
contained, I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of
Blackstone’s Commentaries. I began to read those famous works, and I had
plenty of time; for, during the long summer days, when the farmers were
busy with their crops, my customers were few and far between. The more I
read”--this he said with a sweeping gesture and a high pitch of
enthusiasm in his voice--“the more intensely interested I became. Never
in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I
devoured them.”[i-55]
Lincoln’s re-awakened appetite for legal lore was destined soon to be
gratified. After the store had, like that barrel of rubbish, passed into
the limbo of discarded things, he turned from his surveying during the
summer of 1834 long enough to make a second, and this time successful,
canvass for election to the State Legislature. While traveling over his
district, the young politician saw much of a fellow candidate on the
Whig ticket, Major John T. Stuart, with whom he had served two years
before through the Black Hawk War. Stuart, an attorney in reputable
practice at Springfield, conceived a high regard for Lincoln’s character
and ability. So that when Abraham confided to him his inclination for
the study of law, he met not only with instant encouragement, but with
equally prompt offers of assistance. Here, indeed, was the stuff out of
which lawyers at their best are made. Rigid honesty, a judicial
temperament, candor, and ambition, as well as the less salient
qualities,--common sense, perseverance, knowledge of human nature, and
keen sympathy with human affairs,--of all these the aspirant had given
abundant evidence. Nor could he be considered lacking in what, according
to Lord Eldon, constituted the prime requisite for a beginner who sought
distinction at the bar,--he was “not worth a shilling.”
This last attribute, however, hardly commended itself as an advantage to
Lincoln’s troubled mind. Poverty alone would probably not have stayed
his steps, but poverty staggering under a burden labelled “the national
debt,”--there was a prospect that gave him pause. What did he owe to his
creditors, what to himself? Pondering over these questions, he carried
them with him on a surveying expedition. All day long the pros and cons
of the matter jostled one another in his perplexed brain, without
result. Yet the time for a decision had come. On his way home, he swung
a pair of tired long legs across an old rail fence, and sat down
resolved to stay there until some conclusion should be reached.
Lincoln’s destiny truly trembled in the balance; but a controlling
thought, decisive enough to make one side outweigh the other, still
failed to present itself. In this dilemma he bethought himself of a way
out,--a way as freely utilized at the time, along our western frontier,
as it has been among the children of men from the beginning of recorded
days--the appeal to chance. Resting his Jacob’s-staff erect on the
ground, he determined to be guided by the direction in which it might
fall. If forward, he too would go forward into the new career that
beckoned him so alluringly; if backward, he would remain a surveyor. The
staff fell forward.[i-56]
Lincoln now began to study, if we may adopt his own phrase, “in good
earnest.” Availing himself of Major Stuart’s offer, he borrowed the
necessary textbooks, in their order, from that gentleman’s little
library at Springfield. This required an occasional journey of twenty
miles or more, each way, which our eager student appears to have
traveled, for the most part, on foot.[i-57] Days so spent, however, were
not wholly lost. As he strode across country with the precious volumes,
Abraham made frequent pauses for the reading of successive paragraphs,
which he recited aloud as he went.
Nor were these studies pursued with less zeal at home, though, in truth,
there seemed but few waking hours left for them. Between sessions of the
Legislature, which customarily made heavy drafts upon its members’ time,
Lincoln, facing the problem of how to live, “still mixed in the
surveying”--so runs his homely expression--“to pay board and clothing
bills.” Moreover, the postmastership with its occasional duties, as well
as sundry bread-and-butter jobs of a less exalted character, all crowded
their demands upon his attention. Yet some scraps of opportunity
remained. Employing these diligently, by day and by night, he worked his
way through Stuart’s collection.[i-58] To such good purpose, in fact,
did he study the Major’s books that, before the list was exhausted,
though “not lawyer enough to hurt” him, Lincoln had acquired skill
enough to draw up bills of sale, contracts, deeds, mortgages, and the
like, for his admiring neighbors. He even went so far as to represent
them before the local justice, in sundry suits whereby his reputation
was much enhanced, but not his income, for he made no charges whatever
on accounts of these activities. This seemingly Quixotic practice of
working without pay, at a time when poverty pressed sharply, was quite
in keeping with the young man’s kindly nature, and his biographer is
tempted to make the obvious comment. But here again, the hand of fact
rudely intervenes. Brushing away the gossamer web of romance, it points
to “an act concerning attorneys and counselors at law” in the statutes
of Illinois that expressly prohibited unlicensed persons from formally
practicing at the bar or from receiving fees for legal services.[i-59]
After awhile, however, this disability, as far as it concerned the New
Salem amateur, was, by the customary steps, removed. Before his second
year of preparation had elapsed,--in the spring of 1836,--the necessary
certificate of “good moral character” had been entered on the records of
the Sangamon County Circuit Court. In the following autumn a license was
issued, and later Abraham Lincoln’s name was duly inscribed on the roll
of attorneys.[i-60] So “Honest Abe,” at the age of twenty-eight, became
a full-fledged practitioner in that notable company of scholars that
have furnished mankind with some of its noblest and, at the same time,
with some of its most pernicious impulses. On which side this newcomer
would exercise his talents, none doubted who had observed him in any of
the makeshift occupations whereby he sustained himself while toiling up
the circuitous path that led to the portals of the Supreme Court.
CHAPTER II
TRUTH IN LAW
Early one spring morning long ago,--to be precise, on the 15th day of
April, 1837,--a solitary horseman might have been seen riding along the
wagon road that ran from New Salem to Springfield. He was obviously not
one of G. P. R. James’s jaunty heroes, nor yet a new-world variation on
the melancholy Don, but romance and allegory alike can furnish forth few
figures more striking than that which skirted the Illinois prairies on
this particular forenoon. The traveler, sad-eyed and gaunt, was our
friend Lincoln. His mount, a pony borrowed from Bowling Green, barely
stepped high enough to keep the rider’s lank extremities from touching
the ground. Nor did the picture that he presented gain in grace, as
one’s eye rested on the man’s ill-fitting garments. Yet they were the
best he had, for the bulging saddle-bags contained--as we now know--not
clothing, but a few articles of underwear, packed in with that
well-thumbed set of Blackstone’s Commentaries, several volumes of
statute law, and two other books. Add to this inventory a small amount
of money in pocket,--“about seven dollars,” according to one friend’s
estimate,--and the whole sum of Lincoln’s own portable assets at the
moment is told. To complete the balance-sheet, his liabilities, or, more
accurately speaking, the evidences thereof, might be traced, line for
line, in that pensive countenance. The shadow of “the national debt,”
still brooding over all, did in fact overlay his prospective earnings as
well as his actual means and leave him worse than penniless. It was in
the hope of mending these broken fortunes that he now turned his back on
the cherished associations of New Salem and rode with his scanty
belongings to Springfield.
The city had held out welcoming hands. Its leading citizens felt
grateful to Lincoln for effective aid rendered to them during the recent
session of the General Assembly, in which they had secured a vote
whereby the seat of government was transferred from Vandalia to
Springfield; and his faculty, withal, for engaging the affections of men
had already gained him several stanch friends in the new capital.
One of these admirers, William Butler, relates how after the victory at
Vandalia, as the Sangamon delegation were returning home, Lincoln had,
in a moment of depression, spoken to him of his gloomy prospects.
Without money, resources, or employment, he did not know, as he said,
“where to earn even a week’s board.”[ii-1] The listener’s ready sympathy
had inspired him to suggest that Lincoln would prosper in the practice
of his profession at Springfield; and before they parted company, Butler
had fortified the proposal with a tender of hospitality at his own
table, until the promised success should be attained. In response to
this generous offer, as well as to other invitations hardly less
cordial, the member from New Salem, a few weeks thereafter, came to make
his home in the bustling little town, just quickening with a sense of
its recently acquired dignity.
Having hitched his pony to a rack in the public square, Lincoln, with
the saddle-bags over his arm, entered the general store of Joshua F.
Speed. After an exchange of greetings,--for the two men knew each
other,--the newcomer said: “I just want to put my saddle-pockets down
here till I put up my beast at Bill Butler’s, then I want to see you.”
Returning in a short time, he continued: “Well, Speed, I’ve been to
Gorman’s and got a single bedstead; now you figure out what it will cost
for a tick, blankets, and the rest.”
After a brief interval with slate and pencil, the required furnishings
were found to reach, so the storekeeper announced, a total of seventeen
dollars.
Lincoln’s countenance fell, as he exclaimed: “I had no idea it would
cost half of that! It is probably cheap enough,” he went on, “but I want
to say that, cheap as it is, I have not the money to pay. But if you
will credit me until Christmas, and my experiment here as a lawyer is a
success, I will pay you then. If I fail in that I will probably never be
able to pay you at all.”
There was a note of dejection in the speaker’s voice and an air of gloom
in his manner that deeply affected the man behind the counter. Recalling
the scene, toward the latter end of his life, Mr. Speed declared, “As I
looked up at him I thought then, and think now, that I never saw a
sadder face.”
On the impulse of the moment, he said to his prospective customer:--
“You seem to be so much pained at contracting so small a debt, I think I
can suggest a plan by which you can avoid the debt and at the same time
attain your end. I have a very large room, and a very large double bed
in it, which you are perfectly welcome to share with me if you choose.”
“Where is your room?” asked Lincoln.
“Upstairs,” answered Speed, pointing to the winding steps which led from
the shop to the story above.
Without another word his questioner took up the saddle-bags, mounted the
stairs, and coming down again in a trice, announced with a happy,
smiling face: “Well, Speed, I’m moved.”[ii-2]
Thus dependent on the bounty of two friends,--on the one for food, on
the other for a bed,--Lincoln began his life in Springfield.
The anxious uncertainty which followed was of brief duration. Before a
fortnight had elapsed, Major Stuart invited his old comrade-in-arms to
become his partner. This offer, it is perhaps needless to say, was
eagerly accepted; and the modest office above the county court-room,
that had been occupied by the senior member of the firm, became the
headquarters of Stuart and Lincoln.
After they were well under way occurred a little incident which nicely
exemplified the junior partner’s elemental probity, in all its
quaintness. He had ceased to be postmaster at New Salem, upon the
discontinuance of that office about a year before his departure from
the place. But his accounts with the Government still remained
unsettled, and he had probably forgotten about them, when an agent of
the Post-Office Department arrived in Springfield, one day, with a draft
for the unpaid balance. How much this amounted to is not definitely
known. It has been variously reported at figures ranging all the way
from “seventeen dollars and sixty cents” to “over one hundred and fifty
dollars.” Nor do the official records at Washington throw any light on
the matter, for the books covering this period have been destroyed. The
claim, whether large or small, however, doubtless called for a greater
sum than Lincoln had seemingly brought with him to the city. His
profound poverty and distress at that time might well lead one who knew
these circumstances to wonder how the required funds could possibly be
forthcoming. So the affair impressed his friend, Dr. A. G. Henry, who
happened to be present when the collector came. “I did not believe he
had the money on hand to meet the draft,” said the doctor, relating what
took place; “and I was about to call him aside and loan him the money,
when he asked the agent to be seated a moment while he went over to his
trunk at his boarding-house, and returned with an old blue sock with a
quantity of silver and copper coin tied up in it. Untying the sock, he
poured the contents on the table and proceeded to count the coin, which
consisted of such silver and copper pieces as the country people were
then in the habit of using in paying postage. On counting it up there
was found the exact amount, to a cent, of the draft, and in the
identical coin which had been received. As the agent departed, Lincoln
remarked, in a matter-of-fact tone, that he never used any money but his
own.”[ii-3]
This excellent rule was carried to an extreme which became, at times,
almost childish. It seemed especially so in Lincoln’s dealings with the
three friends,--Kentuckians all,--Stuart, Logan, and Herndon, who
succeeded one another as his partners.[ii-4] Yet, if one may judge by
what has been told concerning them, they entered readily enough into the
spirit of his primitive honesty. Whenever he received a fee, an
immediate division followed. If his associate happened to be present,
that gentleman’s part was handed over at once. But if a payment took
place in the absence of the other from their office, or while Lincoln
was on circuit, he wrapped his partner’s share in a piece of paper
marked, “Doe _v._ Roe--Stuart’s half,” or “Logan’s half,” or “Herndon’s
half,” as the case might be; and at the first opportunity thereafter the
identical money, as originally divided, was delivered to its rightful
owner.
In the case of one uncommonly large fee, however, even this method
apparently failed to satisfy his eagerness for prompt settlements. When
he collected his bill of forty-eight hundred dollars, on a judgment
against the Illinois Central Railroad Company, Lincoln telegraphed to
Herndon that he wished him to remain at their office until the return
train reached Springfield. It was night when he arrived, and found his
partner awaiting him. Counting out Herndon’s portion of the receipts,
with a characteristic little jest, he had the gratification of placing
the money where it belonged before they slept.
To infer from all this that Lincoln had any aversion for the keeping of
accounts, or that there were no fee-books in which these transactions
were recorded, is wide of the facts. He did keep books and properly,
too.[ii-5] It was in the handling of payments that he differed from many
honorable men around him. He had simply set up a financial creed of his
own, as it were, according to which the money of another was sacred from
being used by him, even temporarily,--yes, sacred from any act which
might cause it to lose, for a moment, its distinctive character as the
property of that other.
A lawyer conscientious to such a degree toward his partners would hardly
be less so in the treatment of his clients. And they, for their part,
were quick to appreciate the fact. One old chronicler records with warm
approval how Lincoln, at the very outset, gained the confidence of the
business men.[ii-6] As traffic in the Mississippi Valley was generally
based on long-time credit, merchants often found it necessary to commit
the collection of their overdue notes to local attorneys. Some of these
gentlemen were so dilatory in making returns that their clients, not
infrequently, had as much difficulty getting the money from them as from
their customers. Lincoln set a different pace. As soon as such payments
reached him they were, in every instance, turned over, without delay, to
their rightful owners who, by the way, lost no opportunity of
proclaiming their satisfaction.[ii-7]
But it was in the handling of more important matters that Lincoln
evinced how scrupulous could be an attorney’s attention to the true
interests of those who sought legal aid. His office became, as should
every good lawyer’s, a court of conciliation; and when people came to
him with their troubles, he usually tried, in the beginning, to bring
about amicable adjustments. These endeavors went beyond a merely
perfunctory observance of the time-honored dictum that it is a lawyer’s
duty to prevent not to promote litigation.[ii-8] Addressing himself, in
the notes for a lecture, to beginners at the bar, he wrote, after
perhaps fifteen years of legal experience: “Discourage litigation.
Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to
them how the nominal winner is often a real loser--in fees, expenses,
and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity
of being a good man. There will still be business enough.”[ii-9]
How earnestly Lincoln labored to reck his own rede, judges, attorneys,
and other officers of the law agreed in attesting. They declared,
according to one who canvassed their views, that “more disputes were
settled” by his advice “out of the courts than in them”; and, what is
perhaps of greater importance, it was added that “as a rule, these
settlements left the litigants friends.”[ii-10] Quarrels, ranging over
the whole field of human differences, from an altercation about a line
fence to the unhappy preliminaries of a divorce suit, were smoothed
out--if one may credit the current anecdotes--under his soothing
touch.[ii-11]
But were the mediations of this peacemaker satisfactory in every
instance? Did the contestants who had been brought to lay their claims
before him uniformly submit to his decisions with good grace? As though
to answer these questions one of his most brilliant contemporaries at
the bar, Leonard Swett, once said:--
“There is something remarkable about these Lincoln settlements and
arbitrations. The parties always submit. They seem to think they have to
submit, which is very little short of the power he exercises over a
jury, before which these arbitrated disputes would otherwise come. He is
so positive and final with them as to make his judgment equivalent to a
settlement in court. In all my observations of these cases, only one man
objected seriously and threatened to take his case into court. It
happened he was one of Lincoln’s clients; but when the man objected to
Lincoln’s arbitration, and said, ‘I will take the case into court,’
Lincoln gave him one of his deep-searching looks, and said, ‘Very well,
Jim, I will take the case against you for nothing.’ But that was
unnecessary, for the penetrating look had settled Jim and his
case.”[ii-12]
On other occasions, even when there were no arbitrations, Lincoln could
not wholly divest himself of the judicial spirit. He required those who
sought his aid to come--as to the judgment-seat--with clean hands. A
client, favored at the outset by some improper advantage, could hope for
his services only after the balance had been redeemed by some adequate
concession. Perhaps the best case in point is that of a widow who
retained Lincoln and Herndon for the purpose of looking into certain
alleged tax liens on a valuable piece of land to which she held title.
While making a search of the records the attorneys came upon a
description in one of the deeds that appeared to require verification.
Lincoln went to the place with the necessary instruments and surveyed
the ground himself. He found a material discrepancy. It was evident that
Charles Matheney, a former grantor, selling the tract at a certain price
per acre, had, by an error in the description, conveyed more land than
had been paid for. These facts were laid before the widow, with a
carefully made calculation showing how much, in the opinion of her
attorneys, was due to Matheney’s estate by reason of this erroneous
conveyance. Their suggestion, however, that she make this restitution
met with strenuous objection. Only after they had declined to continue
as her representatives, unless she did so, was the required sum
reluctantly placed in the firm’s hands. The senior member himself
divided it into a number of smaller sums, which he distributed, in due
form, among the Matheney heirs.[ii-13]
All refractory litigants were of course not amenable to reason. At times
when persuasion or threats failed, strategy came into play. One client
who insisted on bringing an unseemly action was circumvented by Lincoln
in an amusing manner. Here is the story as it was told by Gibson W.
Harris, a clerk at the time in that now famous law-office:--
“A crack-brained attorney who lived in Springfield, supported mainly, as
I understood, by the other lawyers of the place, became indebted, in the
sum of two dollars and fifty cents, to a wealthy citizen of the county,
a recent comer. The creditor failing, after repeated efforts, to collect
the amount due him, came to Mr. Lincoln and asked him to bring suit. Mr.
Lincoln explained the man’s condition and circumstances, and advised his
client to let the matter rest; but the creditor’s temper was up, and he
insisted on having suit brought. Again Mr. Lincoln urged him to let the
matter drop, adding, ‘You can make nothing out of him, and it will cost
you a good deal more than the debt to bring suit.’ The creditor was
still determined to have his way, and threatened to seek some other
attorney who would be more willing to take charge of the matter than Mr.
Lincoln appeared to be. Mr. Lincoln then said, ‘Well, if you are
determined that suit shall be brought, I will bring it; but my charge
will be ten dollars.’ The money was paid him, and peremptory orders were
given that the suit be brought that day. After the client’s departure,
Mr. Lincoln went out of the office, returning in about an hour with an
amused look on his face. I asked what pleased him, and he replied, ‘I
brought suit against Blank, and then hunted him up, told him what I had
done, handed him half of the ten dollars, and we went over to the
squire’s office. He confessed judgment and paid the bill.’ Mr. Lincoln
added that he didn’t see any other way to make things satisfactory for
his client as well as the rest of the parties.”[ii-14]
This aptitude for disposing of quarrels so as to satisfy all concerned
became generally recognized at the bar. Lincoln’s fellow attorneys,
conceding the disinterested skill with which he harmonized the
discordant elements of a matter in controversy, at times coöperated with
him by persuading their clients to accept his good offices. A few of
these colleagues even went further. When consulted concerning certain
cases in which Lincoln had been retained on the other side, they
emulated his self-denial, and before accepting any fees advised that the
settlement of these affairs be left wholly in his hands.
A typical instance was related, several years ago, by Henry Rice, a
prominent resident of New York. During his younger days, while in
business at Jacksonville, Illinois, he was requested by some Cincinnati
merchants to recommend a reputable lawyer, who might look after their
interests in the matter of a Decatur house that had made what they
regarded as a fraudulent failure. Mr. Rice promptly suggested Abraham
Lincoln, and meeting a committee of the creditors by appointment in
Springfield, he guided them to that attorney’s office. The ensuing
interview was brief. Hardly had the spokesman entered upon the purpose
of their visit, when Lincoln, raising his long arm high in the air,
interrupted him with the words:--
“Stop! Gentlemen, I am sorry to say that I cannot take your claims. Just
before you entered I received a message engaging me to act for the
Decatur concern.”
When asked whom the creditors had better retain, he suggested one of his
most active political opponents--that able lawyer and party leader, John
A. McClernand. To him the committee went. He heard them attentively, and
then said:--
“If that man has planned to go through bankruptcy without paying you any
part of his debts, he has chosen the poorest lawyer in Illinois to do
the job. I advise you to return to Mr. Lincoln, and state your whole
case as frankly as you have stated it to me. He is just the man to
settle this for you. Go back and put the whole matter into his hands.”
They did so. Mr. Lincoln, after hearing their statement, assured them
that no injustice would be done. More than that, he agreed to confer
with his client and arrange an equitable settlement. In an uncommonly
short time the creditors, to their joy, received seventy-five cents on
the dollar; the heavy expense, as well as the delays usually involved in
such failures, were averted, and the debtor was enabled to resume
business, with a name free from the stain of bankruptcy.[ii-15]
These compromises between opposing interests constituted--it is perhaps
unnecessary to say--only a part of Lincoln’s legal activities. Accepting
as a matter of course many cases that could not be arbitrated or settled
offhand, he conducted them, with varying fortunes, through their several
stages in the courts. But now and then came proposals for litigation
which, according to his code, admitted of neither suit nor compromise.
They belonged to that class of causes once wittily characterized by
Erskine, in the famous opinion,--“This action will not lie, unless the
witnesses do.” Such matters received short shrift at Lincoln’s hands.
When a prospective client was in the wrong he bluntly told him so. Nor
did he hesitate to treat old patrons and friends, painful as this must
at times have been, with the same embarrassing frankness. “You have no
case; better settle,” was heard in his office, over and over again.
Stripping a discreditable story of its sophistries, he pointed out the
sharp practice or worse in which those who concerned themselves with the
affair would inevitably become involved, refused the proffered retainer,
and urged the litigant to withdraw from an untenable position.[ii-16]
This was Lincoln’s course toward one of his early neighbors, Henry
McHenry, when that person desired him to bring an action of doubtful
propriety. Declining to touch the case on the ground that his client was
not strictly in the right, our attorney said: “You can give the other
party a great deal of trouble and perhaps beat him, but you had better
let the suit alone.”[ii-17]
So, too, Lincoln was careful--as he himself expressed it--not to “stir
up litigation,”[ii-18] or to do anything that might encourage the
vexatious and costly suits which often arise over the administration of
estates.
“Who was your guardian?” he asked a young man after weighing his
inconsistent complaint that a part of the property bequeathed to him had
been wrongfully withheld.
“Enoch Kingsbury,” was the answer.
“I know Mr. Kingsbury,” said Lincoln, “and he is not the man to have
cheated you out of a cent; I can’t take the case, and I advise you to
drop the subject.”[ii-19]
In the same conscientious spirit more important opportunities for
employment, holding forth prospects of generous fees, were turned away
from Lincoln’s door. His associates at the bar have recorded a few
instances. One of these is related by Judge Samuel C. Parks. He recalls
that in a matter entitled “Harris and Jones _versus_ Buckles,” the
plaintiffs, having employed him and Ward Hill Lamon as their attorneys,
desired them to secure Lincoln’s services also. His reply was
characteristic: “Tell Harris it’s no use to waste money on me in that
case; he’ll get beat.”[ii-20]
Among the retainers so declined, most notable, perhaps, was that of
Governor Joel A. Matteson, who, after his retirement from office, stood
accused of having defrauded the State of Illinois by reissuing redeemed
canal scrip and applying the proceeds to his own use. The alleged thefts
amounted, in the end, with interest, to about a quarter of a million
dollars. Matteson’s fortune, as well as his good repute, and perhaps his
very liberty, were at stake. He sought to gather around him a formidable
array of counsel. Having engaged the eminent lawyers Benjamin S. Edwards
and Major John T. Stuart for his defense, he tried likewise to retain
Abraham Lincoln and another of that gentleman’s former partners, Judge
Stephen T. Logan. Both these last-mentioned attorneys, however, after
carefully considering the facts submitted to them, reached the
conclusion that the distinguished defendant was guilty. They conceded
his right to such protection as one reputable advocate might properly
afford him, but neither of them was willing to join a powerful
combination of legal experts that should have for its object the
culprit’s escape from punishment. So, without conferring on the subject,
indeed without each other’s knowledge, they respectively declined to be
concerned in the matter. Their course, it should be added, was justified
before many months had elapsed by Matteson’s virtual confession and by a
heavy judgment rendered against him in the Circuit Court.[ii-21]
But Lincoln’s refusals to engage his services in actions of which he did
not approve went still further. A cause to enlist his interest had to be
intrinsically right as well as technically so. He ran no subtlety shop.
What has been termed “law honesty” fell far short, now and then, in his
opinion, of being genuine honesty. Indeed, it may be doubted whether any
leading practitioner of the Illinois bar felt more keenly than he, at
times, that “strictest law is oft the highest wrong.”
How far, on such occasions, the man in him got the better of the lawyer
was illustrated by the closing words of an interview overheard one
morning in his office. Mr. Lincoln, seated at the baize-covered table
near the center of the room, had been listening attentively, for some
time, to a person who addressed him earnestly and in a low tone of
voice. Suddenly the attorney interrupted the speaker with these words
that rang out through the place:--
“Yes, we can doubtless gain your case for you. We can set a whole
neighborhood at loggerheads. We can distress a widowed mother and her
six fatherless children, and thereby get for you six hundred dollars to
which you seem to have a legal claim; but which rightfully belongs, it
appears to me, as much to the woman and her children as it does to you.
You must remember that some things legally right are not morally right.
We shall not take your case, but will give you a little advice for which
we will charge you nothing. You seem to be a sprightly, energetic man;
we would advise you to try your hand at making six hundred dollars in
some other way.”[ii-22]
On another occasion, as a student in the office recalls, Lincoln sat
gazing at the ceiling while a client unfolded the shabby details of a
proposed suit. When the narrative was finished, the listener swung
around in his chair and exclaimed:--
“Well, you have a pretty good case in technical law, but a pretty bad
one in equity and justice. You’ll have to get some other fellow to win
this case for you. I couldn’t do it. All the time while standing talking
to that jury, I’d be thinking, ‘Lincoln, you’re a liar’; and I believe I
should forget myself and say it out loud.”[ii-23]
This last avowal discloses a striking justification--if justification is
needed--of “Honest Abe’s” course in rejecting clients whom he believed
to be in the wrong. Whatever claims they may, on general principles,
have had to his services were probably not pressed after such an
acknowledgment. Even our legal casuists, piling high the reasons why it
is an attorney’s duty to appear on either side of a cause, right or
wrong,--and some of the arguments are convincing enough,--would
doubtless hesitate to enforce their rule in the case of a lawyer who
thus frankly admits that, when his pleadings happen to be at variance
with his conscience, he finds himself unable to control his powers. The
greater those powers, the greater would seem the danger to the side that
had engaged them, if they should balk. For Pegasus unwillingly in the
traces might well be expected to make more trouble than a whole team of
refractory plough-horses. And Lincoln, keenly alive to his peculiar
limitations, realized that unless he himself believed in the justice of
a contention, his advocacy thereof--half-hearted, perhaps fatally
ingenuous--would do the case more harm than good.
In short, he was too “perversely honest,” as one old acquaintance
phrased it, to be of any use to a client who was not honest. The man’s
whole make-up harbored no trace of that mercenary, free-lance spirit
which can fight for hire under one banner, as valiantly as under
another--in a base cause as well as in a righteous one. Nor did pride of
intellect, exulting in uncommon forensic dexterity, betray him into that
habit of mind which derives its keenest gratification from making “the
worse appear the better reason.” And all his skill would have failed him
here had he tried to be otherwise. For if there was one quality more
than another that Abraham Lincoln lacked, it must have been the kind of
versatility of which Cardinal Duperron boasted, when he said, in
response to a compliment by King Henry III, on the convincing eloquence
with which the prelate had proved the existence of the Deity: “Sire, I
can now turn about, if it pleases Your Majesty, and prove to you, with
arguments equally irrefutable, that there is no God.”
Lincoln’s intellect was of a wholly different cast. It had been devoted
to the truth, with single-minded fealty, from boyhood. At a time when
children’s thoughts usually run on play, his had begun to puzzle out the
problems of life. Nothing but the facts would content him. And whether
he acquired them by observation, dug them out of books, or picked them
up from chance conversations, there was no rest until they had been
brought well within the circle of his comprehension. Referring, at a
maturer period, to this trait, he said:--
“Among my earliest recollections I remember how, when a mere child, I
used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not
understand. I don’t think I ever got angry at anything else in my life.
But that always disturbed my temper, and has ever since. I can remember
going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an
evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking
up and down, and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some
of their, to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep, though I often tried
to, when I got on such a hunt after an idea, until I caught it; and when
I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it
over and over,--until I had put it in language plain enough, as I
thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of passion
with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now, when I am
handling a thought, till I have bounded it North, and bounded it South,
and bounded it East, and bounded it West.”[ii-24]
This eagerness to see every side of a subject made trouble, at times,
for the juvenile inquirer. His Cousin Dennis has illustrated this, in a
characteristic little thumb-nail sketch. Chatting about those early
days, in his old age, Mr. Hanks said:--
“Sometimes a preacher, ’r a circuit-ridin’ jedge, ’r lyyer, ’r a
stump-speakin’ polytician, ’r a school-teacher’d come along. When one o’
them rode up, Tom’d go out an’ say,--‘’Light, stranger,’ like it was
polite to do. Then Abe’d come lopin’ out on his long legs, throw one
over the top rail and begin firin’ questions. Tom’d tell him to quit,
but it didn’t do no good, so Tom’d have to bang him on the side o’ his
head with his hat. Abe’d go off a spell an’ fire sticks at the
snow-birds, an’ whistle like he didn’t keer. ‘Pap thinks it ain’t polite
to ask folks so many questions,’ he’d say. ‘I reckon I wasn’t born to be
polite, Denny. Thar’s so darned many things I want to know. An’ how else
am I goin’ to git to know ’em?’”[ii-25]
The habit of asking questions remained with Lincoln to the end of the
chapter. Frankly declaring himself ignorant concerning many things, on
many occasions, he laid his face low, as the Persians say, at the
threshold of truth. Indeed, no forceful character in recent history was
so free from pride of mentality, so willing to admit that he did not
understand some important matter, or that, perchance, a trivial one had
escaped his knowledge. Taking stock of himself, during middle-life, for
an inquiring biographer, he summed up his intellectual attainments in
two words,--“education defective.” To a young friend who, at a still
later period, pointed out an error of speech, he called himself
“deplorably ignorant.” When an opponent taunted him with having
“carefully written” an address, he replied before his next audience: “I
admit that it was. I am not a master of language. I have not a fine
education.”
And when he had composed a certain notable letter, he laid it before a
learned neighbor, with the words: “I think it is all right, but grammar,
you know, is not my stronghold; and as several persons will probably
read that little thing, I wish you would look it over carefully, and see
if it needs doctoring anywhere.”
Perhaps we should add that the missive did need a touch of “doctoring,”
and that the writer submitted to the treatment with good grace. Nor was
he less ingenuous on other occasions. One day in court a lawyer, quoting
a Latin maxim, bowed to him and said: “That is so, is it not, Mr.
Lincoln?”
To which he answered: “If that’s Latin, you had better call another
witness.”
So, during a visit by a distinguished company, when one gentleman turned
to another and repeated a quotation from the ancient classics, Lincoln
leaned forward in his chair, looked inquiringly at them, and remarked,
with a smile: “Which, I suppose you are both aware, _I_ do not
understand.”
Equally free from false pretense concerning his work at the bar, he
would turn the compliment of an admirer with some such phrase as, “Oh, I
am only a mast-fed lawyer.”
The same spirit of candid self-appraisal was strikingly manifested
during the McCormick reaper suit, in which Lincoln, with other lawyers,
had been retained for the defense. When the cause came to trial, he
found himself elbowed, so to say, out of a leading part by Edwin M.
Stanton. Yet while listening to the argument of the colleague who had
thus displaced him, he forgot his disappointment, keen though it was, in
his admiration of the great advocate’s masterly plea. Indeed, Lincoln is
said to have been so moved that he hardly repressed his enthusiasm in
open court; and upon the conclusion of the address, he remarked to one
of the clients who had retained him: “Emerson, it would have been a
great mistake if I had spoken in this case. I did not fully understand
it.”[ii-26]
These confessions, under all their varying circumstances, showed how
honest the man could be. The simple words, “I do not know,” are among
the hardest to pronounce in the language. Still he must use them freely
who would find the key to Pilate’s age-worn riddle, and behold the fair
vision of Truth, at last, face to face. So believed this conscientious
lawyer, who realized, however, that here his duty began rather than
ended. For it was not until all the questions in a legal tangle had been
answered and all the perplexities straightened out, not until he had
gone at the very heart of a problem,--to use his own expression,--“like
a dog at a root,” and laid the facts bare to the last fiber, that
Lincoln’s intellectual probity arose to its full stature. Then all
concessions were at an end. His logical mind, a marvel of close and
clear thinking, progressed through a subject, step for step, from
premise to conclusion, with unerring precision. There was no retreat, no
dodging, no attempt to evade or color the inevitable result. If that
result stood in the way of his desires, so much the worse for those
desires. He sought the truth for the truth’s sake. Having followed a
chain of reasoning from start to finish, with an utter disregard of
personal interests,--his own, no less than those of others,--he was as
loyal to the outcome as he had been to the mental process whereby it had
been reached. Lincoln never apparently resorted to the meanest of
pettifogging--that of a man at the bar of his own conscience. As he
could not tolerate a fallacious premise, he could not argue to a false
conclusion. Utterly unable to deceive himself, he was incapable of
deceiving others; and once an essential truth had entered into his
consciousness, there was not room enough in that whole gigantic frame,
if he spoke at all, for its concealment.
How marked were these characteristics may be inferred from the fact that
they evoked comment among lawyers and judges who are credited themselves
with a high standard of professional honor. David Davis, who presided
for nearly fourteen years over the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Illinois,
in which Lincoln tried most of his cases, said concerning this upright
advocate: “The framework of his mental and moral being was honesty, and
a wrong cause was poorly defended by him. The ability, which some
eminent lawyers possess, of explaining away the bad points of a cause by
ingenious sophistry, was denied him. In order to bring into full
activity his great powers, it was necessary that he should be convinced
of the right and justice of the matter which he advocated.”[ii-27]
Similar comments have been made by the Judges of the Illinois Supreme
Court, in which, for a period of twenty years, he had an unusual number
of cases. What these experienced jurists thought concerning this aspect
of Lincoln’s nature was summed up, so to say, by Judge Caton, in the
single sentence: “He seemed entirely ignorant of the art of deception or
of dissimulation.”[ii-28]
To which should be added the observations made by Judge Thomas Drummond,
from the bench of the United States Circuit Court, at Chicago: “Such was
the transparent candor and integrity of his nature that he could not
well or strongly argue a side or a cause that he thought wrong. Of
course he felt it his duty to say what could be said, and to leave the
decision to others; but there could be seen in such cases the inward
struggle of his own mind.”[ii-29]
Lincoln’s commendable weakness in this respect was equally patent to his
associates at the bar. Few of them, if any, knew him so well as Leonard
Swett, who touches on his friend’s inability to be otherwise than
intellectually honest, in these words: “If his own mind failed to be
satisfied, he had little power to satisfy anybody else. He never made a
sophistical argument in his life, and never could make one. I think he
was of less real aid in trying a thoroughly bad case than any man I was
ever associated with. If he could not grasp the whole case and believe
in it, he was never inclined to touch it.”[ii-30]
In the same strain wrote Henry C. Whitney: “It was morally impossible
for Lincoln to argue dishonestly. He could no more do it than he could
steal. It was the same thing to him, in essence, to despoil a man of his
property by larceny or by illogical or flagitious reasoning; and even to
defeat a suitor by technicalities, or by merely arbitrary law, savored
strongly of dishonesty to him. He tolerated it sometimes, but always
with a grimace.”[ii-31]
A number of other fellow-attorneys have expressed similar opinions. To
quote them all might lead to a veritable paroxysm of citation; and
needlessly so, for enough has been said to show that in refusing
unworthy cases Lincoln did simple justice by the rejected litigants, as
well as by himself.
But it should not be inferred that he looked with misgivings on every
retainer which was offered to him, or that he peered unduly about in
search of reasons for turning patrons away. On the contrary, Lincoln
welcomed the general run of business as any lawyer might. Like most men
who are free from guile, he usually suspected none in others.
He certainly did not guard himself against deception, as did that fine,
old-fashioned practitioner of the Colonial school, George Wythe, who,
when there seemed reason to mistrust a client’s initial statement,
required it to be made under oath. On circuit, moreover, Lincoln
generally found but scant opportunity for probing into his suits before
they came to trial. Acting as counsel for local attorneys, he had to
rely upon them for the proper preparation of their cases; and so it
happened that he found himself at times in court supporting litigants
whose contentions the evidence wholly failed to sustain.
When a mishap of this nature occurred, trouble ensued. The recently
alert advocate--all enthusiasm, courage, and skill--lapsed into a
dispirited pleader whose movements seemed almost mechanical. In fact, if
we may credit the traditions of the circuit, his thoughts were engaged,
from that moment, not on how to win the case, but on how to get out of
it. Particularly was this so when, taken by surprise in the midst of a
criminal trial, he became convinced--as happened on several
occasions--of his client’s guilt.
An instance in point has been related by Judge Parks, a prominent
member, at the time, of the Illinois bar. He writes: “A man was indicted
for larceny. Lincoln, Young, and myself defended him. Lincoln was
satisfied by the evidence that he was guilty and ought to be convicted.
He called Young and myself aside, and said, ‘If you can say anything for
the man, do it,--I can’t. If I attempt, the jury will see that I think
he is guilty, and convict him, of course.’ The case was submitted by us
to the jury without a word. The jury failed to agree, and before the
next term the man died. Lincoln’s honesty undoubtedly saved him from
the penitentiary.”[ii-32]
A similar difficulty arose in the Patterson murder trial, a case of some
celebrity that held the center of the judicial stage for some days in
Champaign County. The prosecution was conducted by District Attorney
Lamon; the defense, by Leonard Swett and his friend Abraham Lincoln. As
the evidence against the prisoner developed, his counsel realized that
they were defending a guilty man. The discovery appears to have unnerved
Lincoln who, as the District Attorney expressed it, “felt himself
morally paralyzed.” Acknowledging this condition to his associate, he
said: “Swett, the man is guilty. You defend him,--I can’t.”
There is reason to think that Lincoln urged his colleague privately
before Judge Davis, the presiding magistrate, to join him in arranging
for a plea of manslaughter, with the understanding that their client
should receive the minimum sentence. This proposition Swett apparently
brushed aside. He conducted the defense to its formal conclusion, made
his argument to the jury, and--again quoting Lamon--“saved the guilty
man from justice.” A considerable fee was paid for that signal service,
but Lincoln is said to have declined any share of the money.[ii-33]
In civil actions, he disposed even more summarily of clients who had
deceived him, or who persisted in litigating over matters that were
found to lack merit. Recalling such instances, Mr. Herndon says: “His
retention by a man to defend a lawsuit did not prevent him from
throwing it up in its most critical stage if he believed he was
espousing an unjust cause. This extreme conscientiousness and disregard
of the alleged sacredness of the professional cloak robbed him of much
so-called success at the bar. He once wrote to one of our clients, ‘I do
not think there is the least use of doing anything more with your
lawsuit. I not only do not think you are sure to gain it, but I do think
you are sure to lose it. Therefore the sooner it ends the
better.’”[ii-34]
Another anecdote of similar bearing is furnished by J. Henry Shaw, a
lawyer in practice years ago at Beardstown, Illinois. This contributor
writes: “Lincoln came into my office one day with the remark, ‘I see
you’ve been suing some of my clients, and I’ve come down to see about
it.’ He had reference to a suit I had brought to enforce the specific
performance of a contract. I explained the case to him, and showed my
proofs. He seemed surprised that I should deal so frankly with him, and
said he would be as frank with me; that my client was justly entitled to
a decree, and he should so represent it to the court; and that it was
against his principles to contest a clear matter of right. So my client
got a deed for a farm which, had another lawyer been in Mr. Lincoln’s
place, would have been consumed by the costs of litigation for years,
with the result probably the same in the end.”[ii-35]
Still another civil suit was well under way before Lincoln discovered
the defendant, whom he represented, to be in the wrong. This man, a
live-stock breeder, had sold the plaintiff a number of sheep at a
stipulated average price. When the animals were delivered, many of them,
according to the purchaser’s claim, proved to be so young that they did
not fulfill the conditions of the contract, and he sued for damages. The
evidence produced at the trial sustained the complaint. Several
witnesses testified, moreover, that according to usage such of the
animals as were under a certain age should be regarded as lambs, and of
less value than full-grown sheep. No sooner had these facts been
established than Mr. Lincoln changed his line of action. Ceasing to
contest the case, he directed all his attention to the task of
ascertaining exactly how many lambs had been delivered. This done, he
briefly addressed the jury. They were obliged, he conceded, to bring in
a verdict against his client; but he asked them to make sure of the
exact damage sustained by the plaintiff, in order that both parties
might have simple justice. And this was done.[ii-36]
To these stories should be added the testimony of Judge Joseph
Gillespie, a leading Illinois attorney: “Mr. Lincoln’s love of justice
and fair play was his predominating trait. I have often listened to him
when I thought he would certainly state his case out of court. It was
not in his nature to assume, or attempt to bolster up, a false position.
He would abandon his case first. He did so in the case of Buckmaster for
the use of Dedham _versus_ Beems and Arthur, in our Supreme Court, in
which I happened to be opposed to him. Another gentleman, less
fastidious, took Mr. Lincoln’s place and gained the case.”[ii-37]
But perhaps his most notable desertion of a client occurred once at
Postville, before Circuit Judge Treat, in the midst of a Logan County
trial. The suit of Hoblit against Farmer had come up on appeal from a
decision given by some local justice of the peace. What the alleged
circumstances were Lincoln did not know until he was retained, in the
Circuit Court, to represent the plaintiff. That worthy went upon the
witness stand to prove his claim. After testifying about the items of
the account against Farmer, and after allowing all set-offs, he swore
positively that the balance had not been paid. Yet when the defendant’s
attorney, Asahel Gridley, produced a receipt in full, given prior to the
bringing of the action, the witness was obliged to admit that he had
signed the paper. Whether or not it had been introduced at the original
hearing is left in doubt, as the story goes; but there can be no
question about the plaintiff’s surprise. Taken off his guard, Hoblit
turned to his counsel and exclaimed that he “supposed the cuss had lost
it.” Whereupon Lincoln arose, and left the court-room. Taking notice of
his departure, Judge Treat sent the sheriff, Dr. John Deskins, in
pursuit. When that officer found the missing lawyer, he was seated in
the tavern across the court-house square, with his feet on the stove and
his head among the clouds.
“Mr. Lincoln,” said the sheriff, “the judge wants you.”
“Oh, does he?” was the reply. “Well, you go back and tell the judge that
I can’t come. My hands are dirty and I came over to clean them.”[ii-38]
The message was duly delivered to the honorable court, and Lincoln’s
unprincipled client suffered a nonsuit.[ii-39]
There is a pretty little sequel to this episode. Some time later, when
Gridley discontinued practice for more lucrative pursuits, he manifested
his confidence in Lincoln, as well as his esteem, by transferring his
entire law business to him without compensation. This was somewhat after
the manner in which Robert Carter Nicholas, a veteran member of the
profession during a former generation, had turned over his clientage to
Patrick Henry. But no such encounter appears to have taken place between
the Virginians as has just been related concerning the Illinois men. Nor
is it to be expected. That abandonment by Lincoln of a case in
mid-career, so to say, without regard for the judge’s wishes, is perhaps
unique. It certainly is characteristic. There are instances of honorable
counsel, who, finding themselves in the course of a trial grossly misled
by their clients, have declined to serve them further, and have obtained
leave from the court to withdraw. But if any other celebrated American
pleader, at any time during his career, rushed from a court-room in a
passion of righteous indignation over such a deception, and refused to
return upon the mandate of the presiding magistrate, that occurrence is
not commonly known. Moreover, from a professional point of view, the
propriety, generally speaking, of Lincoln’s course in these matters has
been gravely questioned. Some critics, conceding the misconduct of the
clients whom he deserted, still appear to think that his treatment of
them detracted somewhat from his character as a lawyer. And with reason,
if an advocate’s first duty, as has been repeatedly asserted, is
fidelity to the cause in which his services are enlisted. Yet how far
does that duty require him to go after he has lost confidence in the
rectitude of his cause? Some barristers--and the number includes men of
distinction--have frankly set no limits to their obligations. They hold
that a lawyer, once he has accepted a client’s retainer, is pledged to
stand by him through thick and thin. The blacker the evidence develops
against him, in a criminal action, or the less palpable become the
merits of his case in a civil one, the more firmly they consider his
counsel bound in honor to battle for a verdict. Should that verdict, if
it is finally won, seem contrary to morality or justice, the fault, in
their opinion, does not lie with the man to whose skill and eloquence it
may be due. His attention, they believe, was properly fixed, to the
exclusion of everything else, upon that part of the proceedings which
had been committed to his care. If the same singleness of purpose,
perhaps the same ability with which he discharged this function, had
been exercised by the attorney on the other side, as well as by the
judge and the jury, to say nothing of witnesses and lawmakers, the
administration of justice would, according to their code, have been
secure. It is as though they were priests in the temple of the
blindfolded goddess, interceding for sinners no less persuasively than
for saints; as though, serving every comer however unclean, they thought
it no shame on their sacred office if they seized a chance, when the
divinity should relax her vigilance, or the high-priest should nod, to
jog the delicately poised balance in their suppliant’s favor.
Such a theory of advocacy revolted Lincoln. Indeed, his whole career at
the bar was a protest against the conception of a lawyer’s duty that
imposes upon him any fancied requirement to procure a judgment of which
his conscience disapproves. He had little or no sympathy, therefore,
with the loyalty-at-any-cost practitioners; and he would not join them,
it goes without saying, on those slippery paths of sophistry, which wind
too often through the ivory gates of falsehood. What criticism, if any,
he made of their conduct is not definitely known. Yet we almost seem to
hear him exclaim, as Carlyle did, “Can there be a more horrible object
in existence than an eloquent man not speaking the truth?”
These reflections, be it said, apply all in all to some only of the
counselors who stand by their colors, after they discover them to be
tarnished; for many faithful members of the profession regard the
advocate’s mission in a different light. He is bound, they admit, to
remain in a case after a trial has begun, especially if retained for the
defense; and this, however distasteful or even reprehensible his
client’s side may prove to be. That client, according to their theory,
must be represented, to the close of the action, by his legal adviser,
or the whole judicial machinery, of which an attorney on each side is an
essential part, breaks down. In this nicely adjusted mechanism, they
claim, the functions of the advocate, and those of the judge as well as
the jury, are exercised on widely different planes, so that under normal
conditions their operations can never coalesce. Should counsel,
therefore, in the midst of a trial, assume the judicial rôle, condemn
his own cause before the hour of judgment, and deny his own client the
protection which had impliedly been pledged, he would, in their eyes,
commit a gross breach of professional propriety. Nay, more, his course
would involve, they contend, a betrayal of both court and client,--a
Quixotic freak, in which private and public interests would alike be
sacrificed. So far, both classes of practitioners who will not abandon a
cause, after they find it tainted, appear to move abreast; but at this
point their ways part. While the one advocate leaves not a stone
unturned, as the expression goes, to extricate his man--right or
wrong--with a sweeping victory, the other, deeming himself under no
obligation to strive for an obviously unjust verdict, remains to
safeguard his client’s legal rights, presents his case fairly on the
evidence, and does in his behalf all that an honorable officer of the
court may do, without lending himself to an evasion of the law or a
perversion of justice.
This latter conception of what a lawyer owes at once to conscience and
to society had doubtless impressed itself on Lincoln’s good sense. For
he tried hard enough, in several instances, to conduct forlorn hopes to
their bitter conclusions. But here again the compelling honesty of the
man’s nature thwarted his efforts, until it would almost seem as if, by
a singular paradox, he really evinced more loyalty when he deserted,
than when he stood his ground to make a half-hearted fight.
Lincoln’s ineptitude on the latter occasions vexed his colleagues not a
little. They appear to have been embarrassed more by his halting
coöperation than by an out-and-out withdrawal from a case. One of his
local associates on the circuit, Henry C. Whitney, has related several
unpleasant experiences of this nature; and from the warmth with which he
writes, many years after the event, one may infer how acute must have
been the narrator’s irritation at the time. Perhaps one of these
anecdotes, in Mr. Whitney’s own language, will best illustrate the whole
peculiar matter. He is telling about the trial of a man for a homicide
committed at Sadorus, Illinois:--
“When the facts were brought out before the petit jury, it was very
clearly developed that the indictment should have been for murder,
instead of--what it was--for manslaughter, and Lincoln was evidently of
that opinion. Mr. Lincoln, Leonard Swett, and myself were associated for
the defense. The wife of the accused had wealthy and influential
relations in Vermillion County, and no pains were spared to make a good
defense. Swett and myself took the lawyer’s view, and were anxious to
acquit entirely. Lincoln sat in our counsels, but took little part in
them. His opinion was fixed and could not be changed. He joined in the
trial, but with no enthusiasm. His logically honest mind chilled his
efforts.
“Lincoln was to make the last speech to the jury on our side, and Swett
the speech preceding. Swett was then, as he was long afterward, the most
effective jury advocate in the State, except Lincoln. He occupied one
evening on this occasion, and when he closed, I was full of faith that
our client would be acquitted entirely. Lincoln followed on our side,
the next morning, and while he made some good points, the honesty of his
mental processes forced him into a line of argument and admission that
was very damaging. We all felt that he had hurt our case.
“I recollect one incident that we regarded as especially atrocious.
Swett had dwelt with deep pathos upon the condition of the family--there
being several small children, and his wife then on the verge of
confinement with another. Lincoln himself adverted to this, but only to
disparage it as an argument, saying that the proper place for such
appeals was to a legislature who framed laws, rather than to a jury who
must decide upon evidence. Nor was this done on account of any dislike
to Swett, for he was especially fond of Swett as an advocate and
associate. In point of fact, our client was found guilty, and sent to
the penitentiary for three years; and Lincoln, whose merciless logic
drove him into the belief that the culprit was guilty of murder, had his
humanity so wrought upon, that he induced the Governor to pardon him out
after he had served one year.”[ii-40]
If Mr. Lincoln’s course during that trial struck his
fellow-practitioners as “atrocious,” it might be interesting to know
what epithet would have sufficed to express their feelings had they
been concerned with him in his first matter before the Supreme Court of
Illinois. Appearing on that occasion for the appellant,--according to
Judge Treat, the commonly accepted authority for an extraordinary
tale,--he said: “This is the first case I have ever had in this court,
and I have therefore examined it with great care. As the court will
perceive by looking at the abstract of the record, the only question in
the case is one of authority. I have not been able to find any authority
to sustain my side of the case, but I have found several cases directly
in point, on the other side. I will now give these authorities to the
court, and then submit the case.”[ii-41]
That speech is probably without parallel in the history of appeals from
judicial decisions. An approach to the spirit which actuated it may be
found in the career of William Pinkney, the renowned Maryland advocate.
Having gained a verdict for a client from the Court of Chancery, he
became convinced of its injustice when the claim was made, on appeal,
that not all the parties in interest were before the court. The point
impressed itself on his mind as well taken. He promptly so declared, and
without any attempt at sustaining the decree, allowed it to be reversed.
Lawyers, whose fealty to the truth exercised such an overmastering
influence upon their conduct, would have graced the bench. Yet neither
of these illustrious men, it should be added, attained judicial honors;
unless indeed we count Lincoln’s irregular elevation to the
judgment-seat by David Davis, who appointed him, from time to
time,--without legal sanction, however, for so doing,--to preside over
his court. The substitution appears to have been made for the
convenience of all concerned, when the judge could not be present; and
both sides are said, as a rule, to have consented gladly thereto.[ii-42]
Once a whole term for Champaign County was held, it is asserted, in this
unauthorized way. But how successfully the pseudo-magistrate dispensed
justice must, by reason of the meager details that have been preserved,
be left largely to conjecture. Did Lincoln, some may ask, really possess
the attributes of a great judge? The query will, perhaps, suggest itself
to those who are fond of reconstructing history around events that
failed to happen. If they take account of his faculty for seeing both
sides of a question with crystal clearness, his mellow wisdom, his
inflexible love of truth, and, above all, his militant sympathy with the
right against the wrong, their fancy may well picture him, under altered
circumstances, mounting to a place beside the leading jurists of
Illinois. Breese, Caton, and their compeers, developing that admirable
system of jurisprudence which distinguished the Prairie State, might,
indeed, have profited by his collaboration.
CHAPTER III
PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
If the judicial rather than the forensic temperament swayed Lincoln’s
conduct as a lawyer, it should be remembered that this was a drawback
only when he found himself on the wrong side of a suit. When he stood on
the right side, with time enough to exert all the faculties of his
slow-moving mind, no advocate in the State was more skillful and
effective. Indeed, those very qualities which impaired his usefulness
for the winning of a bad cause made him especially strong in a good one.
After he himself was convinced that his client ought to prevail, he
rarely failed to imbue judge and jury with the same belief.[iii-1] This
should be attributed somewhat to Lincoln’s reputation for avoiding
unworthy cases. The commonly accepted idea that he would appear only in
matters of which his conscience approved, gave him, from the very
beginning of a trial, an advantage not to be despised. But what he did,
or omitted to do, as the proceedings advanced, contributed still more,
it may be needless to add, toward the gaining of a verdict. His methods
make one wonder whether there may not be more than a stale gibe at the
legal profession tucked away somewhere in the query of the lad who
asked,--“Father, do lawyers tell the truth?” and the jesting
answer,--“Yes, my son; lawyers will do anything to win a case.” For
Lincoln in court was truth in action. His simple adherence to facts made
as vivid an impression on those who heard him as did his intellectual
powers, which were, by the way, of no mean order. The man’s
interpretation of the law, his logic, his eloquence, his humor, his
homely, common-sense view of things--all shone in the light of a
never-failing candor. While he was trying a cause, strangers who
happened to enter the court-room usually found themselves, after a few
moments,--if contemporary accounts may be accepted,--on his side and
wishing him success. Yet success, in the ordinary meaning of that term,
did not, to all appearances, alone concern him. What engaged most of his
attention, apparently, was how to present the affair in hand as it had
actually happened, without regard to his client’s interests. In fact,
every step that he took, as the trial moved along, seemed intended, not
so much to secure a victory as to sift out the truth and establish
justice at any cost.
Reverting, unconsciously perhaps, to the time-honored though quite
obsolete idea of a counselor’s duties, he conducted himself more like
the helpful friend or adviser of the court than like a modern advocate
striving for a decision. As one of his most intimate colleagues, Leonard
Swett, relates: “Where most lawyers would object he would say he
‘reckoned’ it would be fair to let this in, or that; and sometimes, when
his adversary could not quite prove what Lincoln knew to be the truth,
he ‘reckoned’ it would be fair to admit the truth to be so-and-so. When
he did object to the court, and when he heard his objections answered,
he would often say, ‘Well, I reckon I must be wrong.’”[iii-2]
This equable disposition extended in a marked degree to Lincoln’s manner
of conducting an examination. His own witnesses usually told their story
in response to a few straightforward, kindly questions, and those who
took the stand on the other side were treated by him with the same frank
courtesy. He had a good-natured way of making these people feel at home
amidst unaccustomed surroundings, while draining them adroitly of what
they knew about the case on trial. It was so clearly his aim, moreover,
to arrive at the facts, rather than to score winning points, that time
after time hostile witnesses mellowed under the charm of his sincerity
and, contrary to their original intentions, told the truth. Candor
begets candor. The light which shines through an upright man’s eyes
often kindles a responsive gleam in the heart of a shuffler. And when,
as in Lincoln’s case, that upright man was a shrewd lawyer, controlling
an unwilling witness with all the masterful tact of a seer to whom human
nature must have read like an open book, we begin to understand how one
usually self-restrained biographer--himself a member of the bar--came to
believe the cross-examiner “endowed,” at such moments, “with psychic
qualities of extraordinary power.”
Less occult gifts, however, suffice to explain some of these
achievements. For here, as elsewhere in Lincoln’s practice, notable
results were reached by simple, open methods. How easily he extracted
the facts, for instance, from one unfriendly witness has been told in a
characteristic anecdote by the man himself. This was the Honorable James
T. Hoblit, of Lincoln, Illinois. Recalling his discomfiture and the
attorney who caused it, he once said:--
“I shall never forget my experience with him. I was subpœnaed in a
case brought by one Paullin against my uncle, and I knew too much about
the matter in dispute for my uncle’s good. The case was not of vital
importance, but it seemed very serious to me, for I was a mere boy at
the time. Mr. Paullin had owned a bull which was continually raiding his
neighbor’s corn, and one day my uncle ordered his boys to drive the
animal out of his fields, and not to use it too gently either. Well, the
boys obeyed the orders only too literally, for one of them harpooned the
bull with a pitchfork, injuring it permanently, and I saw enough of the
occurrence to make me a dangerous witness. The result was that Paullin
sued my uncle, the boys were indicted for malicious mischief, Mr.
Lincoln was retained by the plaintiff, who was determined to make an
example of somebody, and I was subpœnaed as a witness.
“My testimony was, of course, of the highest possible importance,
because the plaintiff couldn’t make my cousins testify, and I had every
reason to want to forget what I had seen, and though pretty frightened,
I determined, when I took the stand, to say as little as possible. Well,
as soon as I told Mr. Lincoln my full name he became very much
interested, asking me if I wasn’t some relative of his old friend John
Hoblit who kept the halfway house between Springfield and Bloomington;
and when I answered that he was my grandfather, Mr. Lincoln grew very
friendly, plying me with all sorts of questions about family matters;
which put me completely at my ease, and before I knew what was
happening, I had forgotten to be hostile and he had the whole story.
After the trial he met me outside the court-room and stopped to tell me
that he knew I hadn’t wanted to say anything against my people, but that
though he sympathized with me, I had acted rightly and no one could
criticize me for what I had done. The whole matter was afterward
adjusted, but I never forgot his friendly and encouraging words at a
time when I needed sympathy and consolation.”[iii-3]
Of course, all opposing witnesses were not so pliant. They failed
frequently to give Lincoln the answers that he sought; yet his patience
and courtesy lost nothing of their fine flavor, as long as the man on
the stand appeared to be telling the truth. There were no efforts made
to confuse him by artfully framed questions, or to entrap him into
seeming contradictions. Above all, he was safe from brow-beating,
because this level-headed advocate apparently never committed the fault
of harassing an honest witness. Lincoln’s spirit of fair play forbade
any such behavior, even if the spirit of wisdom had not taught him, from
the very beginning, what so many learned gentlemen at the bar fail,
throughout their entire careers, to grasp, that the art of
cross-examination rarely consists in examining crossly.
But there came a time, now and then, when this even-tempered giant, with
his homely, magnetic smile, did become cross--how cross, only those who
caught the direct impact of his anger fully realized. Let some scamp try
to tell him a lie from the witness-chair, and the fellow’s troubles
began. He could hardly have brought his spurious wares to a less
profitable market. For, slow as Lincoln generally was to doubt another’s
probity, so quick was he to detect false values when that probity fell
under suspicion. And cunningly woven, indeed, must have been the web of
perjury which his logical mind--once it set about the task--could not
unravel. He had a disconcerting way of stripping unsound testimony, with
one searching question after another, until the futile cheat lay exposed
in all its nakedness. Then his contempt for the discredited witness knew
no bounds. Kindness gave way to severity. Words that scorched came hot
and fast. It was as if some sacred thing had been violated. And what
happens after one arouses the fury of a patient man, received uncommonly
vivid illustration.
He was once trying a railway case for the defense, when the plaintiff,
testifying in his own behalf, flagrantly misstated certain facts. The
perjurer’s attorney, on addressing the jury, tried to excite prejudice
against the defendant company by making the trite charge that on one
side was “a flesh-and-blood man,” with a soul such as the jurymen had,
while on the other was a soulless corporation. To which Lincoln
indignantly replied: “Counsel avers that his client has a soul. This is
possible, of course, but from the way he has testified under oath in
this case, to gain, or hoping to gain, a few paltry dollars, he would
sell, nay, has already sold, his little soul very low. But our client is
but a conventional name for thousands of widows and orphans whose
husbands’ and parents’ hard earnings are represented by this defendant,
and who possess souls which they would not swear away as the plaintiff
has done for ten million times as much as is at stake here.”[iii-4]
It would be wrong to infer that Lincoln’s scorn for untruthfulness on
the stand was visited upon the heads of opposing witnesses only. His own
witnesses, when they sulked under cross-examination or tried to mislead
counsel on the other side, had a taste of his quality in this respect.
He even went so far, at times, as to rebuke them in open court for their
misbehavior.
An occurrence of this character--there are said to have been several--is
related by a colleague of Lincoln, Anthony Thornton, who says: “On one
occasion he and I were associate counsel in an important lawsuit, when
he exhibited his love of right and fairness in a remarkable manner. John
T. Stuart, of Springfield, was counsel for the opposite party. It was a
trial by jury. I examined the witnesses and Mr. Lincoln attended to the
legal questions involved. I had examined an intelligent witness whose
testimony was clear and satisfactory, and readily given. When the
cross-examination commenced, this witness hesitated, manifested
reluctance to answer, and was evasive in his replies. Mr. Lincoln arose
and addressed the court, and publicly and severely reprimanded the
witness. It was a dangerous experiment which might have brought
discredit on our most important witness. His object, however, was
accomplished, and the witness answered promptly all questions on
cross-examination.”[iii-5]
This act is perhaps unique in the annals of the American bar. At all
events, its fellow--if there ever was one--has not become known to
general literature. Nor is this surprising, for there have not been many
Lincolns, and reputable lawyers of to-day hardly see fit to follow such
an example. A pleader who would do so--in fact, one who generally
speaking would employ that remarkable man’s methods with success--must
not only have faith in the merits of his cases, but he must be
efficiently honest, too, to the backbone. For Lincoln’s plan of conduct
rested upon the single virtue which, in the nature of things, is least
easily simulated. Had he failed at crucial points to be straightforward,
without shuffling or reserve, had the delicate image of truth, which he
sought to rear, leaned ever so little out of true, to the north or the
south or the east or the west, that entire fair fabric would, at the
first jolt, inevitably have fallen to the ground in ruins before the
very eyes of the jury.
How well this advocate stood the test in doubtless many trying
situations, judges and lawyers have admiringly recounted. Justice Breese
spoke, as it were, for the bench when he said that Lincoln practiced
“none of the chicanery of the profession to which he was devoted, nor
any of those mean, and little, and shuffling, and dishonorable arts all
do not avoid.”[iii-6] The judgment of the bar was as comprehensively
summed up in these words of Mr. Whitney: “Unlike the average lawyer, he
would not do anything mean, or which savored of dishonesty or sharp
practice, or which required absolute sophistry or chicanery in order to
succeed.”
Turning up a leaf in his own early experiences, that same associate
says: “When I was new to the bar, I was trying to keep some evidence
out, and was getting along very well with the court, when Lincoln sung
out, ‘I reckon it would be fair to let that in.’ It sounded treasonable,
but I had to get used to this eccentricity.”[iii-7]
Perhaps the clearest conception of Lincoln’s fidelity to his own high
standards of practice, even when beset by almost compelling temptations,
is derived from Mr. Herndon’s account of an incident which occurred
during their partnership. To do the story justice it should be told,
without abridgment, in the narrator’s own language.
“Messrs. Stuart and Edwards,” he relates, “once brought a suit against a
client of ours, which involved the title to considerable property. At
that time we had only two or three terms of court, and the docket was
somewhat crowded. The plaintiff’s attorneys were pressing us for a
trial, and we were equally as anxious to ward it off. What we wanted
were time and a continuance to the next term. We dared not make an
affidavit for continuance, founded on facts, because no such pertinent
and material facts as the law contemplated existed. Our case for the
time seemed hopeless. One morning, however, I accidentally overheard a
remark from Stuart indicating his fear lest a certain fact should
happen to come into our possession. I felt some relief, and at once drew
up a fictitious plea, averring as best I could the substance of the
doubts I knew existed in Stuart’s mind. The plea was as skillfully drawn
as I knew how, and was framed as if we had the evidence to sustain it.
The whole thing was a sham, but so constructed as to work the desired
continuance, because I knew that Stuart and Edwards believed the facts
were as I pleaded them. This was done in the absence and without the
knowledge of Lincoln. The plea could not be demurred to, and the
opposing counsel dared not take the issue on it. It perplexed them
sorely.
“At length, before further steps were taken, Lincoln came into court. He
looked carefully over all the papers in the case, as was his custom, and
seeing my ingenious subterfuge, asked, ‘Is this seventh plea a good
one?’ Proud of the exhibition of my skill, I answered that it was.
‘But,’ he inquired incredulously, ‘is it founded on fact?’ I was obliged
to respond in the negative, at the same time following up my answer with
an explanation of what I had overheard Stuart intimate, and of how these
alleged facts could be called facts if a certain construction were put
upon them. I insisted that our position was justifiable, and that our
client must have time or be ruined. I could see at once it failed to
strike Lincoln as just right. He scratched his head thoughtfully and
asked, ‘Hadn’t we better withdraw that plea? You know it’s a sham, and a
sham is very often but another name for a lie. Don’t let it go on
record. The cursed thing may come staring us in the face long after this
suit has been forgotten.’ The plea was withdrawn. By some agency--not
our own--the case was continued and our client’s interests were saved.”
To which Mr. Herndon adds the significant comment: “I venture the
assertion that he was the only member of the bar in Springfield who
would have taken such a conscientious view of the matter.”[iii-8]
Apparently Lincoln differed from his brother lawyers in being equipped
with a vizualizing sense of what has well been called “the moment
after.” Taking a firm stand, moreover, on the old moral dictum that
nothing can need a lie, he avoided the quirks and quillets which have so
often brought reproach upon the administration of the law. For Cicero’s
theory of a pleader’s occasional duty “to maintain the plausible, though
it may not be the truth,” evidently found no favor in his eyes. Nor did
he look more kindly upon false pleas to impede justice when they were
made by his friends and colleagues. Some of them, hard-pressed for a
valid defense, did so in the Chase case--an action brought before
Lincoln as deputy judge, during one of those irregular sittings on the
Circuit Court bench that he owed, as we have seen, to Davis’s
appointment. This particular trial, if such it may be called, is the
only instance among his judicial experiences of which a detailed report
has come down to us. The suit was instituted to collect a promissory
note given by some citizens of Champaign County to one Chase, with the
understanding that he would establish a newspaper. Failing to keep his
agreement he had, nevertheless, transferred the note before maturity to
an innocent holder, who now sued for the money. There was no good
defense, yet several young lawyers had been retained by the makers of
the note to do what they could toward warding off a decision. Whenever
the plaintiff pressed for judgment, this whole array of budding legal
talent ranged itself before the bench and, by resorting to every
conceivable shift, succeeded in securing postponement after
postponement. Seemingly the old legal maxim, “justice delayed is justice
denied,” would soon have one more literal illustration. So matters stood
on the last day of the term. Court was about to close, and the plaintiff
again demanded judgment, to which counsel for the defendants, as before,
strenuously objected. Finally Lincoln announced that he would return at
candlelight to dispose of that case. He came accordingly, took his seat
at the clerk’s desk, and called for the papers. Finding no proper
defense on file, he began to write an order, when one of the young
attorneys, his friend and associate in several matters, interposed
saying that a demurrer had been entered. But Lincoln continued to write,
merely changing the form and reading aloud, as he wrote:--
L. D. Chaddon } April term, 1856.
_vs._ }
J. D. Beasley _et al._ } _In Assumpsit._
Ordered by the Court: Plea in abatement by B. Z. Greene, a defendant not
served, filed Saturday, April 24, (?) 1856, at 11 o’clock A.M., be
stricken from the files by order of Court. Demurrer to declaration, if
ever there was one, overruled. Defendants, who are served now, at 8
o’clock P.M. of the last day of the term, ask to plead to the merits,
which is denied by the Court, on the ground that the offer comes too
late, and therefore, as by _nil dicit_, judgment is rendered for
plaintiff. Clerk assess damages.”
* * * * *
“How can we get this up to the Supreme Court?” inquired the somewhat
dazed young man who had spoken last.
In Lincoln’s ready reply may be discerned the pent-up scorn of a whole
session. “You all have been so smart about this case,” said he, “that
you can find out for yourselves how to carry it up.” And court stood
adjourned.[iii-9]
A more serious affair was that of the youthful practitioner who
disgraced himself at the Bloomington bar. While serving as a law
student, he had improved the opportunity to make himself acquainted with
certain important facts concerning a suit in which his preceptor
represented the plaintiff. Disclosing this information some time
thereafter to the defendant, whose counsel he became, the young man used
it in behalf of the one client against the other. Proceedings for his
disbarment were about to ensue when the offender threw himself upon the
clemency of the court, with a promise to leave the country and sin no
more. This impressed Judge Davis as the simplest way out of an
unpleasant duty. He stipulated, however, that the culprit, before
departing, should submit to a rebuke in open court, and selected
Lincoln to administer the lesson.
There must have been more of sorrow than of anger in the little speech
whereby this delicate office was discharged. The speaker, it is said,
sketched in a few well-chosen words an attorney’s obligations to his
client, and pointed out how the man at the bar, by betraying those who
trusted him, had forfeited public confidence. But most impressive of all
was the sympathy of this highly esteemed lawyer for the young colleague
in disgrace. “We bid you God-speed,” he concluded, with a clasp of the
hand, “in a work that will make you a better man.” And a better man the
other did indeed become. Seeking out a new field beyond the borders of
the State, he eventually made a place for himself there as an honored
member of the profession.[iii-10]
To infer from either of these two episodes that Lincoln was disposed to
lord it over his less experienced fellow barristers would be far from
the fact. How fairly he treated them many a timid beginner at the bar,
facing him as opposing counsel, had reason to remember. Not only did his
unaffected kindness set the young men at their ease and encourage their
efforts, but his frank concessions met them, as we have seen, more than
halfway in establishing points which otherwise might have been hard to
make. Nor were these generous little acts confined to our attorney’s
dealings with juniors. Any of the lawyers pitted against him might have
had similar experiences. They certainly were favored, at times, beyond
their legal rights, and that, too, on occasions remote from the
publicity of the court-room. A typical instance may be seen in the
letter from Lincoln to an associate that has recently come to light. It
read, in part: “Herewith I return the notices which I will thank you to
serve and return as before requested. This notice is not required by
_law_; and I am giving it merely because I think _fairness_ requires
it.”[iii-11]
Concerning the writer’s deportment in court, the judge before whom he
tried probably more causes than before all other judges combined, tells
us: “Mr. Lincoln was the fairest and most accommodating of
practitioners, granting all favors which he could do consistently with
his duty to his client, and rarely availing himself of an unwary
oversight of his adversary.”[iii-12]
To what lengths he carried this equitable procedure evinced itself
during the trial of a railroad suit, at which counsel on the other side
were, so to say, caught napping. The case having gone in Lincoln’s
favor, a decision was about to be given for the amount claimed by his
client, deducting a proved and allowed counter-claim, when the
successful attorney became convinced that his opponents had not proved
all the items justly due them as offsets. He promptly called attention
to this omission. The judge, agreeing with him, noted an additional
allowance against his client, and pronounced judgment accordingly.[iii-13]
Even-handed Justice herself could not have trimmed the balance truer.
Here was “the square deal” incarnate. And its spirit, interesting to
observe, animated Abraham Lincoln’s work-a-day conduct, in this most
trying of all professions, half a century or so before another
distinguished American, holding an ideal aloft for the admiration of a
nation, raised the expression itself to the dignity of a political
watchword.
Lincoln’s tendency to concede all that might reasonably be demanded of
him during a trial manifested itself chiefly when he came to the closing
argument. Here, neither the law nor the evidence could be noticed to
suffer the slightest perversion at his hands. In fact, as has been
frequently remarked, the statement with which he customarily began a
summing-up covered the case for the other side more fully and more
forcibly than did anything offered by his opponent. For this man’s
conscience ruled his intellect. In his make-up were happily blended that
rare faculty which can see, with comprehending eyes, the reverse of a
shield, and that still rarer courage which can expose the unfavorable
aspect to view, without flinching. So every point scored against him was
frankly acknowledged. Giving up advantage after advantage,--even
volunteering admissions which seemed well-nigh fatal to his cause,--he
moved steadily forward through the opening portion of such an argument,
like a seasoned philosopher conducting some abstract inquiry. There was
a savor, too, of passionless logic about what he said, that still more
suggests the ancient scholar. Indeed, his whole bearing, at this stage,
reminds one of the serene candor and the equally placid confidence in
the ultimate triumph of truth, whereby Thomas Aquinas, greatest among
schoolmen, has endeared himself, for all time, to those who love honest
reasoning.
Nor was Lincoln’s sincerity lost, in his day, upon those who were best
qualified to appreciate it. The judges of the Illinois Supreme Court
rated these habitual acts of fair play at their true value; and one of
them, Justice Koerner, speaking for the whole bench, once said: “We
always admired his extreme fairness in stating his adversary’s case as
well as his own.”[iii-14]
But how did the practice impress others? As if to answer this query, a
well-known newspaper man has left some good copy, made many years after
the event, concerning a certain trial that he reported at Chicago, in
the autumn of 1857.
“It was a railroad case,” says Colonel Hinton who tells the story; “and
as I was reading law at the time, I soon became interested in the points
involved. I remember thinking as I made my notes that the counsel
opposing the corporation had a sure thing of it. But my attention was
soon closely attracted to the counsel who rose to reply. ‘The homeliest
man I ever saw,’ was the thought I had. When I heard a judge speak to
him as ‘Mr. Lincoln,’ I recalled having heard the name before. A
reporter present told me that he was from Springfield, and at once I
remembered the Boston mention of him, and my interest became alert. The
one impression I retain apart from the striking and quaint appearance he
presented, was the fact that in his opening remarks he seemed to me to
be ‘giving his case away’ by the remarkably lucid and vigorous manner
in which by recapitulating the summary of the previous argument he
presented the argument and law of his opponent. With the ‘freshness’ of
a cock-sure student, I at once concluded he was a beaten man.”[iii-15]
The colonel goes on to relate how “the homeliest man” was not “beaten,”
but that is another story. Sticking to our text, we find ourselves
wondering what Lincoln’s clients, generally speaking, thought of him, at
about this stage in the proceedings. And it is not surprising to learn
that sometimes they “trembled with apprehension” for the verdicts which
his tactics seemingly endangered.[iii-16] Nor was this feeling of alarm
confined to clients. Some of his colleagues at the bar, when concerned
with him in the trying of causes, could never quite accustom themselves
to sit tranquilly by, while he bestowed important admissions on counsel
for the other side. His liberality toward adverse evidence, that so
disturbed Mr. Whitney, as the reader will remember, must have seemed
even more reprehensible to such associates when it cropped out in the
final argument.
A striking instance of this occurred during the famous Rock Island
Bridge litigation which, despite certain differences in the telling, may
have been the case that Colonel Hinton reported. The action was tried at
Chicago, in September, 1857, before the United States Circuit Court, the
honorable John McLean presiding. It had grown out of the clash between
the boatmen on the Mississippi River and the railroad people who
maintained a recently erected bridge across that stream, from Rock
Island, Illinois, to Davenport, Iowa. When the structure was planned,
several years previous, efforts to place legal obstacles in the way of
the project had been made without success. And upon the completion of
the undertaking, this quarrel appears to have raged more fiercely than
ever, until it had culminated in the destruction of a steamboat, the
Effie Afton, which came to grief on piers of the bridge. Her owners had
promptly brought suit for damages. The case was entitled, “Hurd _et al.
vs._ The Railroad and Bridge Company,” but these words meant more than
met the eye. Behind the litigants themselves were arrayed powerful
antagonists. The action might not incorrectly have been called, “River
Traffic _versus_ Railroads,” or “The Mississippi Valley _versus_ The Far
West,” or “St. Louis _versus_ Chicago”; for it involved vital points, on
which turned the future welfare of all these conflicting interests.
Their struggle naturally focussed the attention of a vast region on the
trial, and when proceedings began, men from all over the West crowded
the Federal court-room.
The Chicago and Rock Island Railroad Company, through its attorney,
Norman B. Judd, had retained Lincoln, among others, as counsel for the
defense. There was some favorable comment on the skill with which he
brought out the evidence; but when he discussed this evidence, in the
closing argument, one of his associates, Joseph Knox, was not so
pleased. In fact, that gentleman became alarmed to such a degree over
what Lincoln conceded that when court adjourned for the day, before the
speech was finished, he despaired of success. His indignation found
vent in a talk with Judd.
“Lincoln has lost the case for us,” he said. “The admissions he made in
regard to the currents in the Mississippi at Rock Island and Moline will
convince the court that a bridge at that point will always be a serious
and constant detriment to navigation on the river.”
“Wait until you hear the conclusion of his speech,” replied Mr. Judd.
“You will find his admission is a strong point instead of a weak one,
and on it he will found a strong argument that will satisfy
you.”[iii-17]
So indeed it proved to be. Before he closed, Lincoln did his own side
ample justice, and demonstrated to a victorious conclusion that,
currents or no currents, one man has as good a right to cross over a
river as another has to sail up and down.[iii-18]
Judd was not the only colleague who appraised this method at its full
value. Leonard Swett, sharing with our straightforward advocate the
leadership, as some thought, of the Eighth Circuit, and conducting many
causes, now with him now against him, had learned, when on the opposing
side, to be wary of gifts from Lincoln’s hands.
“If his adversary,” said Swett, “didn’t understand him, he would wake up
in a few moments, finding he had feared the Greeks too late, and wake up
to find himself beaten. He was ‘wise as a serpent’ in the trial of a
case, but I have got too many scars from his blows to certify that he
was ‘harmless as a dove.’ When the whole thing is unraveled the
adversary begins to see that what he was so blandly giving away, was
simply what he couldn’t get and keep. By giving away six points and
carrying the seventh, he carried his case; and, the whole case hanging
on the seventh, he traded away everything which would give him the least
aid in carrying that. Any one who took Lincoln for a simple-minded man
would very soon wake up on his back, in a ditch.”[iii-19]
This rather cynical analysis of the situation is significant. It
discloses the controlling factor upon which almost every case at bar
turns as on a hinge. To discern with precision where that pivotal point
lies may perhaps be deemed the prime requisite for a successful pleader.
The converse is of almost equal importance. “Never plead what you need
not,” said Lincoln, “lest you oblige yourself to prove what you
cannot.”[iii-20] And when, as in his practice, the vital issue is
pressed home, only after all vulnerable positions have been squarely
surrendered, the effect must seem at times well-nigh irresistible. Even
courts cannot help yielding something to one who yields so much. And
what he holds on to naturally prevails, with double force, by reason of
what he has given away. Addressing himself, then, to hearers thus
favorably disposed, Lincoln’s final statement of his own side left
little need for argument. In fact, they said of him,--as has from time
to time been said of Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice Marshall, Daniel
Webster, and less distinguished lawyers endowed with equal power,--his
statement of a case was worth the argument of another man. For here
again, the precision, clearness, and veracity of his mental operations
came into play. He would disentangle a complicated matter step for
step, until the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, stood
revealed to all. It was as if each successive word were set in place,
after the manner of Hugh Miller’s master, the Cromarty mason, who “made
conscience of every stone he laid.”
Lincoln’s conscience withal did double duty. His fealty to the cause of
justice was not allowed to crowd out an ever-present sense of what he
owed his client. In only rare instances and then, it is true, to that
client’s detriment, as we have seen, did these obligations clash. When
they harmonized, the advocate did not spare himself. Nor did his theory
concerning the essentials of a case betray him into omissions. Making an
argument once before one of the higher courts, he gave an elaborate
history of the law governing the matter in question. It was a masterly
discourse, prepared with much care, but as his partner thought, wholly
unnecessary. On their way home, Mr. Herndon, who tells the story, asked
Mr. Lincoln why he “went so far back in the history of the law,” adding
a surmise that the court knew it all.
“That’s where you’re mistaken,” was the instant reply. “I dared not
trust the case on the presumption that the court knows everything. In
fact, I argued it on the presumption that the court didn’t know
anything.”[iii-21]
There are, sooth to say, judicial decisions which almost seem to justify
such precautions. And we find ourselves wondering whether the speaker
knew that venerable anecdote of the counsel who, when interrupted by a
wearied Supreme Court Justice with the remark, “You must give this court
credit for knowing something,” replied, “That’s exactly the mistake I
made in the court below.”
Lincoln was himself, according to certain colleagues, occasionally
stopped from the bench, but for quite a different reason. His mere
statement of a matter sounded so clear and convincing that judges would,
at times, interpose before he could go on to his argument, with some
such words as: “If that is the case, Brother Lincoln, we will hear the
other side.”[iii-22]
Nor was he less felicitous in putting a winning touch to the confidence
of juries. When he faced them, at last, his lucid, even-handed methods
produced their strongest effects. “If I can free this case,” he was wont
to say, “from technicalities and get it properly swung to the jury, I’ll
win it.”[iii-23] To that end, the essential facts were so cogently
presented that they became almost self-evident. And the jurymen,
following a train of thought which reduced simplicity to its lowest
terms, easily fancied themselves in the speaker’s place, as though they,
not he, were making the statement. His anxiety to be right quickened
their anxiety to do right. It was seemingly their trial, not his; and he
conducted himself as if he were only assisting them to do their duty.
Every one of the twelve “free and lawful men,” even those who were least
intelligent, appear to have felt this. Indeed, throughout what Lincoln
said in addressing them, may be discerned a purpose, above all things,
to impress the truth upon that most important of all the personages in a
court, the dullest occupant of the jury-box. And how well he succeeded,
on the whole, is a matter of common repute. Some contemporaries went to
the extreme of saying--if we may credit one of them--that they could not
“expect a favorable verdict in any case where Lincoln was opposing
counsel, as his simple statements of the facts had more weight with the
jury than those of the witnesses.”[iii-24]
Such a result did, it is true, come about in at least one instance--the
trial of a tramp accused of murder. No one had seen the deed, but the
evidence, which proved to be purely circumstantial, pointed strongly
toward the prisoner. As the crime was of a brutal nature, feeling ran
high against him. A friendless stranger, in the midst of popular clamor,
his conviction appeared to be a foregone conclusion; and Lincoln, who
was appointed to defend, seemingly made but little headway. He contented
himself with eliciting from the witnesses full statements of what they
saw or knew. Evading nothing, suppressing nothing, making no attempt to
confuse those who testified or to present matters other than they were,
he helped the prosecuting attorney to bring out all the facts. When his
time came for addressing the jury, he called attention to the absence of
direct evidence. Frankly reviewing all the circumstances, and weighing
what seemed to prove the defendant’s guilt with what made for his
innocence, he concluded in about the following language: “I have looked
this matter over fully, candidly; and while I concede that the testimony
bears against my client, I am not sure that he is guilty. Are you?”
The prisoner was acquitted, and properly so, for some time thereafter
the real criminal was brought to justice.
“How different would have been the conduct of many lawyers!” exclaimed
the late Justice Brewer, of the United States Supreme Court, as he told
his story. “Some would have striven to lead the judge into technical
errors, with a view to an appeal to a higher court. Others would have
become hoarse in denunciation of witnesses, decrying the lack of
positive testimony and dwelling on the marvelous virtue of a reasonable
doubt. The simple, straightforward way of Lincoln, backed by the
confidence of the jury, won.”[iii-25]
That combination was hard to beat. Frequent repetitions of it gave
Lincoln, in time, a reputation which seems almost unique. There have
been advocates with more notable gifts of learning and eloquence, than
he could command; but few among them, if any, moved through our courts
with so large a measure of esteem. Yet it is going too far to say, as
Judge Caton did, that “no one ever accused him of taking an underhanded
or unfair advantage, in the whole course of his professional
career.”[iii-26] True, he was a general favorite on the circuit. His
fair, not to say generous, tactics made for good feeling; and to him,
perhaps, least of all that eager company, could have been applied the
ancient aspersion of the lawyer as a brawler for hire. Moreover, the “I
am holier than thou” pose, whereby the honored counselor sometimes seeks
to place less reputable opponents at a disadvantage, was wholly absent
from his demeanor. No practitioners, however low or discredited, met
here with discourtesy. Indeed, unless an adversary misbehaved in the
particular case on trial, Lincoln never uttered a word of personal
reproach which might unduly prejudice the jury. “Hence,” we are told,
“the meanest man at the bar always paid great deference and respect to
him.”[iii-27] But he did not wholly escape the penalty of his successes.
Some colleagues--and they should have known better--gave way to
jealousy. Those who sit in the shadow of the prophet’s mantle do not
always see the prophet. A few opponents were even known to question
Lincoln’s sincerity. His candor was in their eyes a cloak for trickery,
his unconventional manner a means of springing surprises on the unwary,
and his apparent fair dealing a bait for luring unsuspecting adversaries
to defeat. That an attorney smarting under a sense of failure might now
and then have felt this way is not surprising. Fresh from the reading of
Mr. Swett’s graphic little sketch, which left the vanquished one
floundering “on his back in a ditch,” we can appreciate the full force
of a statement made within recent years by Ezra Morton Prince, a
Bloomington attorney. Referring to these scattering charges of
unfairness, Mr. Prince, who attended many trials in the old circuit
days, says: “The truth is that Mr. Lincoln had a genius for seeing the
real point in a case at once, and aiming steadily at it from the
beginning of a trial to the end. The issue in most cases lies in very
narrow compass, and the really great lawyer disregards everything not
directly tending to that issue. The mediocre advocate is apt to miss
the crucial point in his case and is easily diverted with minor matters,
and when his eyes are opened he is usually angry and always surprised.
Mr. Lincoln instinctively saw the kernel of every case at the outset,
never lost sight of it, and never let it escape the jury. That was the
only trick I ever saw him play.”[iii-28]
If anybody knew Abraham Lincoln to do a dishonorable act, during all
these busy years in the courts, evidence to prove it has not been
forthcoming. And there have been iconoclasts enough at work on his
record to insure the telling of the story, had such an incident taken
place.
One opponent did, it must be said, in the heat of a certain famous
trial, accuse him of duplicity. The case was that of young Quinn
Harrison, sometimes called “Peachy,” arraigned for the murder of Greek
Crafton, a student in Lincoln’s office. While quarreling over some
political question, they had come to blows, and Crafton, sustaining a
knife-wound, had died within a few days. The young men, besides being
close friends, had been connected by marriage. Their families were
highly regarded. The prisoner’s people especially enjoyed good repute,
and that his grandfather was Dr. Peter Cartwright, the noted Methodist
circuit-rider, added not a little to popular sympathy in his behalf.
Notwithstanding all this, strenuous efforts were made to secure a
conviction. The regular prosecuting attorney, Amzi McWilliams, was
assisted by John M. Palmer and John A. McClernand. The defense had been
entrusted to Abraham Lincoln, Stephen T. Logan, William H. Herndon, and
Shelby M. Cullom. Able as the defendant’s counsel were, they achieved
but slight progress, for a time, in overcoming the strong case made out
against their client. It was only when Lincoln put Harrison’s
grandfather on the stand that the tide seemed to turn. Under his
examiner’s sympathetic guidance, the venerable preacher evinced how
fondly he loved the unfortunate young man, and told the story of his own
final interview with Crafton--a touching scene, in which the dying youth
charged Cartwright to tell “Peachy” that he forgave him. This formed the
basis of an appeal for mercy, in Lincoln’s closing argument. So wrought
up was the speaker by the pathos of the whole affair that he put aside
his dislike of such attempts to play on the sympathies of juries, and
made an eloquent plea for a verdict which should not set at naught the
slain man’s act of forgiveness. This speech made a profound impression.
It had moved those who listened, in fact, to a degree which disquieted
the prosecuting attorneys. One of them, as he arose to reply, was
determined that the effect must be counteracted, at all hazards.
“Well, gentlemen,” said he, “you have heard Mr. Lincoln--‘Honest Abe
Lincoln,’ they call him, I believe. And I suppose you think you have
heard the honest truth--or at least that Mr. Lincoln honestly believes
what he has told you to be the truth. I tell you, he believes no such
thing. That frank, ingenuous face of his, as you are weak enough to
suppose, those looks and tones of such unsophisticated simplicity, those
appeals to your minds and consciences as sworn jurors, are all assumed
for the occasion, gentlemen,--all a mask, gentlemen. You have been
listening for the last hour to an actor, who knows well how to play the
rôle of honest seeming, for effect.”
At this moment, amidst breathless stillness, Lincoln stood up. He was
deeply moved. It seemed as if every line of his gaunt features twitched
with pain. Facing the speaker he said: “You have known me for years, and
_you know_ that not a word of that language can be truthfully applied to
me.”
The prosecutor changed color, hesitated a moment, and then, his better
nature gaining the mastery, responded with much feeling: “Yes, Mr.
Lincoln, I do know it, and I take it all back.”
Many of those who were present could not resist the impulse to applaud,
as the two men approached each other and shook hands. The trial then
went on to its anticipated conclusion--Harrison’s acquittal.[iii-29]
On another occasion Lincoln took quite a different method of meeting an
unfair attack. His opponent in a case, while selecting the jury,
challenged a man because he was acquainted with counsel on the other
side. Such an objection appears to have been regarded, in those days, as
a reflection upon a lawyer’s honor. So Judge Davis, who was presiding at
the time, sharply overruled the challenge. Yet when Lincoln’s turn came
to examine the panel, he gravely followed the other’s lead and asked
them, one by one, whether they were acquainted with his adversary. After
several had answered in the affirmative, however, the judge interrupted
him.
“Now, Mr. Lincoln,” he said severely, “you are wasting time. The mere
fact that a juror knows your opponent does not disqualify him.”
“No, Your Honor,” retorted the advocate; “but I am afraid some of the
gentlemen may _not_ know him, which would place me at a
disadvantage.”[iii-30]
In only one other notable instance, so far as the writer’s knowledge
goes, has Lincoln’s integrity at the bar been directly questioned.
Charges of fabricating certain important evidence to save his client
grew out of a sensational episode in the camp-meeting murder trial. The
case was that of William (Duffy) Armstrong indicted for the killing of
James Preston Metzker, during a brawl near the Salt Creek camp-grounds,
a few miles from Mason City, on the night of Saturday, August 29, 1857.
“Duff” and “Pres,” as the two young men were called, after drinking
heavily with other wild companions of their kind, quarreled. In the
fracas which ensued late that same night, Armstrong and a friend named
James Henry Norris, who came to his assistance, had, it was alleged,
inflicted injuries on Metzker that, several days later, proved to be
fatal. A true bill for murder had been found against both men. And
Norris, brought first to trial, at Havana in Mason County, had, upon a
verdict of manslaughter, gone to prison for eight years. His comrade’s
case looked darker still. Public sentiment condemned “Duff” out of hand;
and from all sides came demands that the law should be enforced against
him in its utmost rigor. Then, as if to make matters worse, his father
died. The widowed mother, struggling alone for her boy’s life, managed
to secure the services of Walker and Lacey, local lawyers at Havana; but
they could hold forth only slender prospects of success. At this
juncture news of the trouble reached Lincoln. Occupied though he was, by
that time, over the affairs of an extensive practice and the demands of
a growing political leadership, this tragedy claimed his attention. He
appears to have been deeply moved by the father’s death, as well as by
the son’s peril. For that father was the Jack Armstrong of Clary’s Grove
fame, with whom he had wrestled and chummed during the by-gone New Salem
days; that mother was the Aunt Hannah, in whose kitchen he had many a
time been made welcome; and her baby, which he had rocked to sleep while
she cooked him a meal, was the prisoner who, now arrived at manhood’s
estate, lay in jail awaiting trial for a capital crime. In this, her
hour of dire need, the poor woman had naturally turned to their old
friend. Going to his office at Springfield, she told the whole
distressing story, and received instant promise of help.
“Abe,” said Hannah, as one of her sons relates, “I can’t pay you much
money or money of any account, but I can pay you a little.”
To which he replied: “You do not need to pay me a cent, for my services
are free to the family as long as I live.”[iii-31]
So it happened that when the trial, by a change of venue, opened the
following spring before Justice James Harriott, at Beardstown, in the
less prejudiced atmosphere of Cass County, Lincoln led for the defense.
He came into court with faith in his client. According to “Duff’s”
version of the affair, Metzker had been the aggressor, and the fight, as
far as these two were concerned, had been with their bare fists only.
Yet how could the jury be convinced of this? Such evidence, indeed, as
was presented against Armstrong at the outset did not appear to be very
damaging; but when the prosecution called its principal witness, Charles
Allen, a painter from Petersburg, matters became serious. He testified
that he saw the defendant strike Metzker on the head with a slung-shot.
Under cross-examination, Allen averred that the assault occurred at
about eleven o’clock in the night. When asked to explain how, despite
the lateness of the hour, he could so distinctly have seen what took
place, the witness stated that there was a bright moon, nearly full, and
“about in the same place that the sun would be at ten o’clock in the
morning.” This answer, to use the language of the day, apparently put
the hangman’s noose around Armstrong’s neck. In the opinion of his alert
counsel however, it was just what undid that ghastly cravat. For,
profiting by the testimony given at previous hearings, Lincoln had
prepared to meet that very situation. On the morning of the trial he had
placed in the keeping of Sheriff James A. Dick an almanac--probably
Goudy’s--for the year of the homicide. This document was now produced by
that officer, at the request of the defense, and put in evidence. It
proved, as Lincoln pointed out, that on the night in question the moon
had but slightly passed the first quarter, that it gave practically no
light at eleven o’clock, and that its computed time for setting was at
about midnight.[iii-32] The effect of this announcement seemed almost
magical. At one stroke of the master hand, Allen’s spurious moonshine
had turned into a lightning flash, by which the weakness of the
prosecution stood revealed. There was an immediate revulsion of feeling
in the prisoner’s favor. His counsel were as quick to seize upon the
lucky turn. Closing for the defense, Mr. Lincoln addressed the jury in
words of which his associate, Mr. Walker, afterwards said, “A more
powerful and eloquent speech never, in my opinion, fell from the lips of
man.” The perjured testimony, as well as the discrepancies in the
evidence, were dwelt upon by the speaker with telling effect. So moved
was he, moreover, by his ancient gratitude to “Duff’s” parents, and by
his own manifest belief in the young man’s innocence of willful murder,
that the tears which blurred his eyes as he spoke, no less than the
sympathetic earnestness of his appeal, touched responsive chords among
the wrought-up jurymen. They did not deliberate long. When they came in
with their verdict, the foreman said “not guilty,” and this remarkable
case was at an end.
The case, indeed, was at an end, but the talk about it was not.
Lincoln’s dramatic introduction of that almanac appears especially to
have stimulated the gossip, which took many forms, until out of it all
in some unaccountable way emerged a strange canard. According to this
tale he had tricked prosecutors, court, and jury by palming off on them,
as of the year when the homicide took place, a calendar of some
previous year. The obvious reply to this charge is that there would have
been no reason whatever for such a piece of rascality. An almanac dated
1857 bears out--as any one may satisfy himself at his leisure--Lincoln’s
contention to the letter, and he could not have bettered his case by
fraudulently using one for another year. Of course, those who repeated
the story did not take the trouble to consult calendars, but a moment’s
reflection might have warned them of its absurdity. They should have
known that an experienced lawyer, whose adherence to the highest ideals
of his profession had by this time passed into a by-word, would hardly
have jeopardized a cherished reputation, to say nothing of his standing
as a public man, by stooping to any device at once so dishonorable and
so futile. For it is not to be credited that an exhibit of such
importance could pass through the hands of shrewd opponents, as well as
those of judge and jurymen, without the closest scrutiny. This scrutiny
did, in fact, take place.
How thorough it was may be gathered from the recollections of Judge
Abram Bergen, who happened to be present. Attending the trial shortly
after his admission to practice, he sat within the bar behind both
groups of counsel engaged in the case, and watched what took place with
the acute attention of a young lawyer studying the tactics of
distinguished elders. This apparently credible witness, touching on the
accusation of fraud, said:--
“When Lincoln finally called for the almanac he exhibited it to the
opposing lawyers, read from it, and then caused it to be handed to
members of the jury for their inspection. I heard two of the attorneys
for the State, in whispered consultation, raise the question as to the
correctness of the almanac, and they ended the conference by sending to
the office of the clerk of the court for another. The messenger soon
returned with the statement that there was no almanac of 1857 in the
office. It will be remembered that the trial occurred in 1858 for a
transaction in 1857. In the Presidential campaign soon following, it was
even charged that Lincoln must have gone around and purloined all the
almanacs in the court-house. However, I well remember that another
almanac was procured from the office of Probate Judge Arenz, in the same
building. It was brought to the prosecuting attorneys, who examined it,
and compared it with the one introduced by Mr. Lincoln, and found that
they substantially agreed, although it was at first intimated by the
State’s attorneys that they had found some slight difference.
“All this I personally saw and heard, and it is as distinct in my memory
as if it had occurred but yesterday. No intimation was made, so far as I
knew, that there was any fraud in the use of the almanac until two years
afterwards, when Lincoln was the nominee of the Republican Party for the
Presidency. In that year, 1860, while in the mountains of southern
Oregon, I saw in a Democratic newspaper, published at St. Louis, an
article personally abusive of Mr. Lincoln, stating that he was no
statesman and only a third-rate lawyer; and to prove the deceptive and
dishonest nature of the candidate, the same paper printed an indefinite
affidavit of one of the jurors who had helped to acquit Armstrong, to
the effect that Mr. Lincoln had made fraudulent use of the almanac on
the trial. For some inexplicable reason he failed to call this pretended
knowledge to the attention of the other jurors at the time of the trial;
but very promptly joined in the verdict of acquittal, and waited two
years before giving publicity to what would at the proper time have been
a very important piece of information.
“Soon after this, I saw an affidavit made by Milton Logan, the foreman
of the jury, that he personally examined the almanac when it was
delivered to the jury, and particularly noticed that it was for the year
1857, the year of the homicide. I had a better opportunity than any of
the jurors to see and hear all that was publicly and privately done and
said by the attorneys on both sides, and know that the almanacs of 1857,
now preserved in the historical and other public libraries, sustain and
prove to the minute all that was claimed by Mr. Lincoln on that trial,
as to the rising and setting of the moon; although my best recollection
is that the hour of the crime was claimed to be about midnight, instead
of eleven o’clock, as stated in many of the books. I do not know that
this calumny was ever called to Mr. Lincoln’s attention, or if it was
that he ever took the trouble to contradict it. He might well have
pursued his regular habit of ignoring such things. If his public and
private conduct and his reputation as a citizen and lawyer were not
sufficient to refute the charges, his personal denial would have been of
little more avail.”[iii-33]
Judge Bergen may be right. Perhaps, in fact, no proofs--not even His
Honor’s own lucid statements, sustained by the almanac itself--have
vigor enough to overtake all the current versions of this absurd tale
and retire them from circulation. In the region of the old Eighth
Judicial Circuit, they are still passed around with variations to suit
each teller’s fancy; the press of the country helps them along with a
fresh start now and then; while at least one law book--a treatise,
strange to say, on “Facts”--throws an air of seeming authenticity over
the whole foolish business, in an indexed note which relates how Lincoln
once “procured an acquittal by a fraud.”[iii-34] Slander they say can
travel around the world before Denial has had time to draw on his boots.
This particular offender has been overtaken, again and again; but the
story, in some guise, goes merrily on. It evidently belongs among those
popular myths that thrive on refutation. To disprove them is easy
enough; to destroy them, as experience abundantly shows, is quite
another matter. Yet “hope springs eternal in the human breast”; and one
more lover of historic justice here tries what may be achieved by
turning the searchlight of truth full upon the discrepant features of
this hoary falsehood.[iii-35]
So much for the few specific instances in which doubts have been
publicly cast on Lincoln’s high ideals of practice. As to the rest,
those ideals apparently suffered but little let-down under all the
press and stress of his busy years at the Illinois bar. Yet he was not
immaculate. A thoroughly human man, loyal to his clients and fond of his
friends, he may have swerved ever so slightly to the right or the left
in their behalf, when no breach of truth or law was involved. As often
happens, moreover, with men of this type he appears to have been in such
cases his own severest censor. And when a student once asked him whether
the legal profession could stand the test, all in all, of the golden
rule, he winced. It happened while they were walking together one
afternoon after a trying day in court. The young man, Ralph Emerson by
name, was the son of a reverend instructor in Andover Theological
Seminary, and some things that he had seen Western lawyers do disturbed
the poise of his New England conscience. If such acts were necessary at
the bar, this would, he feared, be no career for him. In his perplexity
the youth determined to consult the eminent lawyer who walked by his
side. Turning suddenly to him, Emerson said:--
“Mr. Lincoln, I want to ask you a question. Is it possible for a man to
practice law and always do by others as he would be done by?”
Lincoln’s head dropped upon his breast. He walked on in silence for a
long time. Then came a heavy sigh, and when he did finally speak, it was
about another matter.
“I had my answer,” adds Mr. Emerson, recalling the incident. “That walk
turned the course of my life.”[iii-36]
Precisely what this little scene signified is not easy to determine; but
that it was of weighty import those who have progressed thus far with us
in the study of Lincoln’s character will hardly believe. Still, the
episode, however vague and inconclusive, must not be omitted from any
appraisement of the man’s honesty. Perhaps one explanation of that
profound sigh is to be sought among occasional victories, won by him on
technicalities, rather than on their merits. And then, again, a too
sensitive memory may, at the moment, have put Lincoln in mind of certain
acts which, while they hardly measured up to the standard set by the
Golden Rule, were not by any means dishonorable. They had their origin,
to some extent, in his distaste for trivial litigation, but still more,
in his disapproval of those “contentious suits which,” a great Lord
Chancellor long ago declared, “ought to be spewed out, as the surfeit of
courts.” How Lincoln dissuaded his own clients from bringing actions of
this kind has already been set forth. It may be needless to add that
when situations were reversed, and they were the objects of such
prosecutions by others, he willingly appeared in their behalf. Then woe
to the plaintiffs if the facts afforded but the slightest scope for the
play of his peculiar humor! Under his droll treatment, a petty cause,
though not without merit, might become so ridiculous as to leave the
claimant in a plight, from which nothing but an appeal to that same
beneficent rule of ethical conduct could have saved him. Indeed, by
these very tactics, Lincoln is said to have laughed more jury cases out
of court than any other attorney on the circuit. How he went about it
was well illustrated in a trial recalled by Judge Scott, who tells this
story concerning the affair:
“A young lawyer had brought an action in trespass to recover damages
done to his client’s growing crops by defendant’s hogs. The right of
action, under the law of Illinois, as it was then, depended on the fact
whether plaintiff’s fence was sufficient to turn ordinary stock. There
was some little conflict in the evidence on that question, but the
weight of the testimony was decidedly in favor of plaintiff and
sustained beyond all doubt his cause of action. Mr. Lincoln appeared for
defendant. There was no controversy as to the damage done by defendant’s
stock. The only thing in the case that could possibly admit of any
discussion was the condition of plaintiff’s fence; and as the testimony
on that question seemed to be in favor of plaintiff, and as the sum
involved was little in amount, Mr. Lincoln did not deem it necessary to
argue the case seriously. But by way of saying something in behalf of
his client, he told a little story about a fence that was so crooked
that when a hog went through an opening in it, invariably it came out on
the same side from whence it started. His description of the confused
look of the hog after several times going through the fence and still
finding itself on the side from which it had started, was a humorous
specimen of the best story-telling. The effect was to make plaintiff’s
case appear ridiculous. And while Mr. Lincoln did not attempt to apply
the story to the case, the jury seemed to think it had some kind of
application to the fence in controversy,--otherwise he would not have
told it,--and shortly returned a verdict for the defendant.”[iii-37]
There are other accounts of similar achievements. Perhaps the most
commonly known instance was that which Lincoln himself took pleasure in
relating. According to one version,--for there are several,--this is how
he told it:--
“I was retained in the defense of a man charged before a justice of the
peace with assault and battery. It was in the country, and when I got to
the place of trial I found the whole neighborhood excited, and the
feeling was strong against my client. I saw the only way was to get up a
laugh and get the people in a good humor. It turned out that the
prosecuting witness was talkative. He described the fight at great
length,--how they fought over a field, now by the barn, again down to
the creek, and over it, and so on. I asked him, on cross-examination,
how large that field was. He said it was ten acres. He knew it was, for
he and some one else had stepped it off with a pole. ‘Well, then,’ I
inquired, ‘was not that the smallest _crap_ of a fight you have ever
seen raised off of ten acres?’ The hit took. The laughter was
uproarious, and in half an hour the prosecuting witness was retreating
amid the jeers of the crowd.”[iii-38]
There is no more effectual way to dispose of a trifling suit, and
Lincoln’s ready wit was apparently equal to all such demands. Yet his
sallies, telling as they were, left no stings rankling in the memory of
unfortunate victims. Those who emerged beaten from these encounters
were conscious of a certain quaint good humor in the man’s demeanor that
disarmed resentment.
He was, however, not so genial when it came to another type of
litigants--the dishonest ones. They met, in fact, with a very different
kind of treatment. For Lincoln saw nothing amusing in their devices, and
as they could not be laughed out of court, his efforts were directed
toward shaming them out. An occurrence of this nature took place at
Tremont, in 1847, during the spring term of the Tazewell County Court.
It appears that an old farmer named Case had sold what was called a
“prairie team,” comprising several yoke of oxen and a plough, to two
young men known as the Snow boys. They had given their joint note in
settlement, but when it became due they had refused to pay. The account
was placed in Lincoln’s hands for collection, and he promptly brought
suit. When the case came to trial, this note, as well as the purchase of
a team, was not denied by the lawyer who appeared for the defendants. He
set up the plea of infancy, however, and offered to prove that both
brothers were under twenty-one years of age at the time they signed the
note. This fact, it was furthermore claimed, the plaintiff knew when the
transaction took place. To all of which Lincoln quietly said: “Yes, I
guess that is true, and we will admit it.”
Things looked bad for farmer Case. “What!” thought a by-stander,--the
teller of the story,--“is this good old man, who confided in these boys,
to be wronged in this way, and even his counsel, Mr. Lincoln, to submit
in silence!”
After the principle of law that a minor may avoid his contracts had been
duly cited, Judge Treat who presided, inquired:--
“Is there a count in the declaration for oxen and plow, sold and
delivered?”
“Yes,” answered Lincoln, “and I have only two or three questions to ask
the witness.”
Addressing the men who had been called to prove the ages of the
defendants, he asked:--
“Where is that prairie team now?”
“On the farm of the Snow boys,” was his answer.
“Have you seen any one breaking prairie with it, lately?”
“Yes, the Snow boys were breaking up with it, last week.”
“How old are the boys now?”
“One is a little over twenty-one, and the other near twenty-three.”
“That is all,” said Lincoln.
Arising slowly, when the time came for his closing argument, and
standing in an awkward, half-erect attitude, he began:--
“Gentlemen of the jury, are you willing to allow these boys to begin
life with this shame and disgrace attached to their character? If you
are, I am not. The best judge of human character that ever wrote, has
left these immortal words for all of us to ponder:
“‘Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name,
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.’”
Then drawing himself up to his full height, and looking down upon the
defendants as if with the compassion of an older brother, while his long
right arm was extended toward their attorney, he continued:--
“Gentlemen, these boys never would have tried to cheat old farmer Case
out of these oxen and that plow, but for the advice of counsel. It was
bad advice--bad in morals and bad in law. The law never sanctions
cheating, and a lawyer must be very smart indeed to twist it so that it
will seem to do so. The judge will tell you, what your own sense of
justice has already told you, that these Snow boys, if they were mean
enough to plead the baby act, when they came to be men should have taken
the oxen and plow back. They cannot go back on their contract, and also
keep what the note was given for.”
When Lincoln concluded with the words, “And now, gentlemen, you have it
in your power to set these boys right before the world,”--he almost
seemed to be pleading for the misguided young men rather than for his
own client. So it impressed the Snows themselves. Whatever their
technical rights may have been, they agreed with his view, as well as
with the reputed opinion of the jury, that the account ought to be paid.
And paid it was.[iii-39]
Whether all the circumstances attending this affair warranted Mr.
Lincoln’s severe arraignment of the defendants’ counsel raises a nice
point in professional ethics. Debts, as we know, may sometimes be barred
by the law of infancy, still oftener by statutes of limitation. The
debtors in such cases have been provided with legal defenses behind
which honorable men, however, disdain, as a rule, to seek refuge. They
realize that though these barriers shut creditors off from recovering on
certain kinds of claims, the debts themselves remain unpaid; and that
acts which are intrinsically wrong cannot be made right, however they
may be sanctioned by law or custom. Still, if clients insist on availing
themselves of such advantages, their attorneys are bound, in the
judgment of not a few high-minded lawyers, to interpose the required
pleas. So punctilious a practitioner as Horace Binney, the distinguished
Philadelphian, whose conceptions of duty have already served us with
some exalted standards, took this view. He once conducted the defense,
it is said, in the trial of a certain action on a promissory note. His
attempt to prove a set-off having failed, he arose and said, with an
expression of intense scorn: “My client commands me to plead the statute
of limitations.”
This implied rebuke was not lost on the defendant. He quickly withdrew
his plea, and paid, as did those abashed brothers, the contested
note.[iii-40] It is interesting to observe that here again the Western
lawyer measured up to the lofty principles of his refined Eastern
brother, and might, if confronted by a similar demand, have gone even a
step beyond him.[iii-41]
Where injustice was to be headed off, Lincoln never stopped halfway. His
honesty became militant. “He hated wrong and oppression everywhere,” as
Judge Davis declared; “and many a man whose fraudulent conduct was
undergoing review in a court of justice has writhed under his terrific
indignation and rebukes.”[iii-42] These onslaughts appear to have been
especially severe when the strong had robbed the weak or taken advantage
of the unfortunate. One typical instance was that of a pension agent
named Wright, against whom Lincoln brought suit to recover money
wrongfully withheld from the widow of a Revolutionary soldier. The claim
as collected amounted to about four hundred dollars, of which the
go-between had retained one half. This was, of course, an exorbitant
fee; but the friendless pensioner, bent and crippled with age, seemed to
be at the fellow’s mercy. He certainly expected no resistance from the
old lady. Finding her way, however, one day into the office of Lincoln
and Herndon, she told the whole sordid story. It aroused the instant
sympathy of the senior partner. He called, without loss of time, on the
agent to demand a fair settlement; and when this was refused, he as
promptly began an action. What ensued is best told in his associate’s
own words.
“The day before the trial,” writes Mr. Herndon, “I hunted up for
Lincoln, at his request, a history of the Revolutionary War, of which he
read a good portion. He told me to remain during the trial until I had
heard his address to the jury. ‘For,’ said he, ‘I am going to skin
Wright, and get that money back.’ The only witness we introduced was the
old lady, who through her tears told her story. In his speech to the
jury, Lincoln recounted the causes leading to the outbreak of the
Revolutionary struggle, and then drew a vivid picture of the hardships
of Valley Forge, describing with minuteness the men, barefooted and
with bleeding feet, creeping over the ice.[iii-43] As he reached that
point in his speech wherein he narrated the hardened action of the
defendant in fleecing the old woman of her pension, his eyes flashed,
and throwing aside his handkerchief, which he held in his right hand, he
fairly launched into him. His speech for the next five or ten minutes
justified the declaration of Davis, that he was ‘hurtful in denunciation
and merciless in castigation.’
“There was no rule of court to restrain him in his argument, and I
never, either on the stump or on other occasions in court, saw him so
wrought. Before he closed, he drew an ideal picture of the plaintiff’s
husband, the deceased soldier, parting with his wife at the threshold of
their home, and kissing their little babe in the cradle, as he started
for the war. ‘Time rolls by,’ he said, in conclusion. ‘The heroes of ’76
have passed away, and are encamped on the other shore. The soldier has
gone to rest, and now, crippled, blinded, and broken, his widow comes to
you and to me, gentlemen of the jury, to right her wrongs. She was not
always thus. She was once a beautiful young woman. Her step was as
elastic, her face as fair, and her voice as sweet as any that rang in
the mountains of old Virginia. But now she is poor and defenseless. Out
here on the prairies of Illinois, many hundreds of miles away from the
scenes of her childhood, she appeals to us, who enjoy the privileges
achieved for us by the patriots of the Revolution, for our sympathetic
aid and manly protection. All I ask is, shall we befriend her?’
“The speech made the desired impression on the jury. Half of them were
in tears, while the defendant sat in the court-room, drawn up and
writhing under the fire of Lincoln’s fierce invective. The jury returned
a verdict in our favor for every cent we demanded. Lincoln was so much
interested in the old lady that he became her surety for costs, paid her
way home, and her hotel bill while she was in Springfield. When the
judgment was paid we remitted the proceeds to her and made no charge for
our services.”[iii-44]
Some of the finest traditions known to the legal profession had been
observed in this case. St. Ives himself, “Advocate of the Poor” and
patron of lawyers, might have held such a brief. We can fancy him,
standing at the bar of the Springfield court, scroll in hand as he is
sometimes pictured, speaking for the poor widow; but whether that scroll
would have contained notes like those that Lincoln jotted down for the
argument may perhaps be questioned. They read: “No contract.--Not
profes
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