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”

“HONEST ABE”

A STUDY IN INTEGRITY
BASED ON THE EARLY LIFE OF
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
BY
ALONZO ROTHSCHILD
AUTHOR OF “LINCOLN, MASTER OF MEN”

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

ILLUSTRATIONS

“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:—

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?’