But then Lincoln sprang a trap, producing an 1857 almanac showing that the moon, instead of being high overhead at 11 P.M., when Metzker was attacked, was low on the horizon and due to set within an hour. This flummoxed Allen and led the prosecutor to object strenuously. Judge James Harriott examined the volume, as did the prosecutor and the jurymen. This shattered Allen’s credibility, which was not strong to begin with. (According to a local attorney, “Allen’s general reputation in the vicinity of Oakford for truth and veracity was exceedingly bad.” Thompson McNeeley, a noted criminal lawyer in Petersburg who served as a U.S. Representative, often told friends “that Allen would swear to anything in a trial and would work on either side of the case very nicely.”)158
Lincoln’s closing speech was, by all accounts, a tour de force. It is not known just what he said, but it probably incorporated points Lincoln made in these suggestions for instructing the jury: “That if they have any reasonable doubt as to whether Metzker came to his death by the blow on the eye or the blow on the back of the head, they are to find the defendant not guilty, unless they further believe from the evidence, beyond all reasonable doubt, that Armstrong and Norris acted in concert against Metzker, and that Norris struck the blow on the back of the head. That if they believe from the evidence that Norris killed Metzker, they are to acquit Armstrong unless they also believe from the evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Armstrong acted in concert with Norris in the killing or purpose to kill or hurt Metzker.”159
Because of the sultry heat on that summer day, Lincoln removed his coat, tie, and vest; as he proceeded, one suspender slid from his shoulder. Juror John T. Brady recalled that “this ‘backwoodsy’ appearance” made Lincoln “about as homely, awkward appearing [a] person as could be imagined; but all this was forgotten in listening to his fiery eloquence, his masterly argument, his tender and pathetic pleading for the life of the son of his old benefactor.”160 Another juror recollected that Lincoln began by “saying he appeared before us without any expectation of reward; that the prisoner’s mother, Hannah Armstrong, had washed and mended his worn shirts and clothes and done for him when he was too poor to pay her, and that he stood there to but partially try and pay the debt of gratitude he owed her. He carried us with him as if by storm and before he had finished speaking there were many wet eyes in the room.”161 (Duff said that Lincoln “did his best talking when he told the jury what true friends my father and mother had been to him in the early days, when he was a poor young man at New Salem. He told how he used to go out to Jack Armstrong’s and stay for days; how kind mother was to him, and how, many a time, he had rocked me to sleep in the old cradle.”)162 An observer reported that “in words of thrilling pathos Lincoln appealed to the jurors as fathers of sons who might become fatherless, and as husbands of wives who might be widowed, to yield to no previous impressions, no ill founded prejudice, but to do his client justice.”163 Juror Brady recollected that “[t]ears were plentifully shed by every one present; the mother of Duff Armstrong … wore a huge sun-bonnet, her face was scarcely visible, but her feelings were plainly shown by her sobs.”164 The assistant prosecutor thought that Lincoln’s story of his New Salem days was “told so pathetically that the jury forgot the guilt of the boy.” Lincoln wept, for his “sympathies were fully enlisted in favor of the young man, and his terrible sincerity could not help but arouse the same passion in the jury. I have said it a hundred times, that it was Lincoln’s speech that saved that criminal from the Gallows.”165 Lincoln’s co-counsel, William Walker, maintained that the concluding fifteen-minute segment of that speech “was as eloquent as I Ever heard, and Such [was] the power, & earnestness with which he Spoke, that jury & all, Sat as if Entranced, & when he was through found relief in a gush of tears. I have never Seen Such mastery Exhibited over the feelings and Emotions of men, as on that occasion.”166 The judge, on the other hand, thought that the “Almanac may have cut a figure—but it was Doct Parkers testimony confirming Lincolns theory—the Court Saw this—”167
But, curiously, when the jury withdrew, nine of its members voted to find Armstrong guilty. As the deliberations went on, however, the effect of Lincoln’s speech and the damaged credibility of the chief prosecution witness eventually led to a unanimous verdict of not guilty. One juror said that he and his colleagues “thought Allen was telling the truth. I know that he impressed me that way, but his evidence with reference to the moon was so far from the facts that it destroyed his evidence with the jury.”168
Lincoln was not in court when the jury announced its verdict. Upon his return, the jurors shook his hand as if they were old friends. Hannah Armstrong, who had withdrawn to await the verdict, was overjoyed. When informed of the good news, she hurried to thank the jury, the court, and Lincoln. “We were all affected,” she recalled, “and tears streamed down Lincoln’s Eyes.” He told her, “I pray to God … that this lesson may prove in the End a good lesson to him and to all.”169 He instructed Duff to return home “and be a good boy, and don’t get into any more scrapes. That is all I ask of you.”170 Soon thereafter Lincoln helped Hannah Armstrong fend off attempts to take from her the land she had inherited from her husband.
Mentor
In dealing with his fellow attorneys, Lincoln was unfailingly courteous to all, especially to junior members of the bar. Gibson W. Harris recalled that Lincoln’s “courtesy to young practitioners was little less than proverbial, and it was never more gracious than when he was the opposing counsel. He had a happy knack of setting them at ease and encouraging them to put forth their best efforts. In consequence they all liked him.”171 Lincoln did not seek popularity with young attorneys but he won their affection, and they came to him often.
In 1851, tyro attorney James Haines was startled when Lincoln, his co-counsel on a case, urged him to make the initial speech in defense of their client. Nervous, Haines suggested that Lincoln take the lead. Tactfully, the older man placed his hand on Haines’s shoulder and said: “No, I want you to open the case, and when you are doing it talk to the jury as though your client’s fate depends on every word you utter. Forget that you have any one to fall back upon, and you will do justice to yourself and your client.” That, Haines recalled, was “a fair sample of the way he treated younger members of the bar.”172 Lewis H. Waters received similar treatment. Though much older than Waters, Lincoln insisted that the young man act as lead counsel on their case and wrote out instructions that he urged Waters to copy and submit to the court as his own handiwork. When attorney Joe Blackburn was starting out as a nervous, 19-year-old, he began his presentation in such a confused fashion that he was tempted to let the case go by default. But Lincoln, who had been paying close attention, rose and made Blackburn’s point for him so effectively that the judge granted his demurrer. When the opposing counsel complained about this meddling, Lincoln replied “that he claimed the privilege of giving a young lawyer a boost when struggling with his first case, especially if he was pitted against an experienced practitioner.”173 Similarly, James H. Hosmer, in the midst of his first important case, floundered badly in a sea of details. Lincoln approached him saying: “Young man, I have handled cases like this in the past. Let us see if I can’t help you out.” Guided by the veteran attorney, young Hosmer won his case.174
“I remember with what confidence I always went to him,” recollected Lawrence Weldon. One time when he approached Lincoln with a paper he could not understand, the older man said: “Wait until I fix this plug for my ‘gallus,’ and I will pitch into it like a dog at a root.”175 No other lawyer was so willing to assist junior colleagues at the bar.
Lincoln’s solicitude for young attorneys was doubtless shaped by his own experience as an aspiring lawyer, when John Todd Stuart had been so kind to him. Jonathan Birch speculated plausibly that “somehow—probably because of the recollection of his own early struggles—his heart seemed especially filled with sympathy and concern for the young man whose footsteps took him in the direction of the law.” Memories of his law studies led Li
ncoln to visit young men poring over Blackstone, Chitty, et al. He would greet them cheerfully, peruse their volumes, test their knowledge, and play games with them.
Lincoln occasionally tested their knowledge formally, in the capacity of a bar examiner. He began examining Jonathan Birch by asking what books he had read. When the young man complied, Lincoln said: “Well, that is more than I had read before I was admitted to practice.” He then told how he had once argued a case against a college-educated attorney whose erudition impressed the judge and other attorneys, but not the jurors. “And they,” said Lincoln with a laugh, “were the fellows I was aiming at.” He resumed the exam, rapidly posing questions that taxed Birch’s memory but not his knowledge of the law. Lincoln abruptly ended the exam, wrote out a recommendation for a license, and offered some advice about future study which, Birch recalled, “was about the first thing that had been said to indicate that the entire proceeding was, after all, an examination to test the applicant’s ability to practice law.”176
Like Herndon, these young men were surrogate sons to Lincoln, whose paternal streak ran deep. Gibson W. Harris recollected that he “took undisguised pleasure in fathering many of us younger persons, including some already in their thirties.”177 Congressman R. R. Hitt, who covered Lincoln as a shorthand reporter in the 1850s, confided to his journal that “he treated me with the utmost kindness, almost like a father.”178 In 1860, the influential newspaperman Joseph Medill told Lincoln, his senior by fourteen years, “I have spoken to you with all the sincerity and truthfulness of a son writing to his father.”179 Though especially solicitous of these younger men, Lincoln was also kind to jurors, bailiffs, sheriffs, deputies, and all officers of the court.
Anger
Lincoln usually appeared relaxed and unruffled in court. One day in a significant railroad case which Whitney was arguing with his help, opposing counsel scored so many points that Whitney expressed some unease to his partner. “All that is very easily answered,” Lincoln remarked, and when he addressed those points, he blew them away “as easily as a beer-drinker blows off the froth from his foaming tankard.”180
For all Lincoln’s equanimity, though, he could erupt in terrible anger as he did in the 1843 case of Regnier vs. Cabot and Taylor, for example. Lincoln’s client, Eliza Cabot, sued Francis Regnier, charging that he had publicly declared that one Elijah Taylor “has Rogered her” and that he “has got skin there [from Eliza Cabot] as much as he wanted.” When Lincoln took the floor, he bitterly denounced Regnier for slandering a friendless school teacher. His tirade was, a colleague recalled, “as bitter a Philippic as was ever uttered.” Cabot won a judgment of $1,600.181 Seven years later, defending an orphan girl who had been seduced and abandoned, Lincoln reacted to defamatory testimony against his client by pouring upon the witness “a torrent of invective and denunciation of such severity as rarely ever falls from the lips of an advocate at the bar.” Turning to his client, he abruptly shifted gears, becoming mild and tender as he spoke on her behalf.182
In a similar case, Lincoln tore into slanderers during his closing speech in Dunn vs. Carle, an adultery case involving a married man. When the defendant went to great lengths to obtain testimony that the woman had sex with other men, Lincoln, believing that his testimony as well as that of his witnesses was untrue, attacked them mercilessly and won a crushing victory. Lincoln ridiculed one witness, S. H. Busey, who intimated that he was a ladies’ man: “there is Busey—he pretends to be a great heart smasher—does wonderful things with the girls—but I’ll venture that he never entered his flesh but once & that is when he fell down & stuck his finger in his [anus].”183
Lincoln ridiculed another witness who identified himself as J. Parker Green. To discredit him, Lincoln asked: “Why J. Parker Green? … What did the J. stand for? … John? … Well, why did n’t the witness call himself John P. Green? … That was his name, was n’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?” Green became an object of scorn, helping Lincoln to win his case.184 (During the Civil War, when an Iowa congressman recommended for office a man named H. Clay Caldwell, Lincoln said he would not appoint anyone who “parted his name in the middle.” He relented when it was explained that Caldwell employed only the initials H. C. when signing his name.)185
Lincoln’s indignation knew no bounds in the case of Rebecca Thomas, the poor widow of a Revolutionary War veteran. In Lincoln’s view, her agent, Erastus Wright, had charged too much for winning a pension. Lincoln took the case gratis. The notes for his speech to the jury read: “No contract.—Not professional services.—Unreasonable charge.—Money retained by Def’t not given by Pl’ff.—Revolutionary War.—Describe Valley Forge privations.—Ice—Soldier’s bleeding feet.—Pl’ffs husband.—Soldier leaving home for army. Skin Def’t.—Close.” In speaking of this trial, David Davis recollected that when Lincoln “attacked Meanness & littleness—vice & fraud—he was most powerful—was merciless in his Castigation.”186 According to Herndon, when his partner recounted how Wright had taken advantage of the widow, he “rose up to about 9 f[ee]t high—grew warm—then eloquent,” attacking “as with a thunderbolt the miscreant who had robbed one that helped the world to liberty.” Herndon recalled never seeing Lincoln “so wrought up.”187 (Lincoln acted as pension attorney for several other clients in addition to Mrs. Thomas, but not gratis.) In Todd vs. Ware, Lincoln again excoriated the same Wright, accusing him of lying. While discussing the endorsements on some promissory notes, Lincoln said of Wright: “he manifestly prevaricates—manifestly attempts to cheat his conscience and his God, with the mere literal import of his language, while [which?] he substantially and intentionally falsifies to the court.”188 For good measure, Lincoln also skinned Wright in the 1846 congressional campaign.
Lying witnesses also provoked Lincoln’s wrath. As Herndon put it, “woe be to him, if Mr. Lincoln took the notion in his head that the man was swearing to a wilful lie. Whips of scorpions in a man’s conscience could be no worse. To flee from Mr. Lincoln and conscience was impossible in the witness. In this condition I have seen the witness on the stand turn pale—& tremble, great big drops of sweat—drops of agony stood out all over the man’s face.”189 One day a physician offering expert testimony made some implausible claims, prompting Lincoln to ask him how much money he was receiving for his participation in the trial. The large amount astonished the jurors. Lincoln then “rose, turned, and, stretching out his long right arm and forefinger, … cried in a shrill voice, overflowing with the hottest indignation: ‘Gentlemen of the jury, big fee, big swear.’ ”190
Disgruntled clients could tax Lincoln’s goodwill. When Henry C. Whitney asked him to deal with a particularly difficult client, Lincoln replied: “Let him howl.”191 Once a client spurned his advice, saying: “I will be d[amne]d if I do.” Lincoln responded: “I will be d[amne]d if I attend to your suit, if you don’t.”192 In 1853, Lincoln snapped at a client who sulked and complained about the verdict in a fraud suit, which awarded him some money. Lincoln grew angry and cried out, “You old fool, you’ll keep on until you won’t get a cent.”193
Unscrupulous lawyers could also expect to feel the sting of Lincoln’s wrathful denunciation. In 1847 at Tremont, Lincoln argued on behalf of an elderly gentleman who had sold oxen to two young men named Snow, taking their note in payment. When he tried to collect from them, they refused to pay, saying they were minors when the note was written and therefore could not, under the law, be held accountable for contracts they had signed. Lincoln, believing that the lads had swindled the old man on the advice of their counsel, slowly rose and said: “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.” He then quoted Iago’s speech about reputation from Othello (“Good name in man or woman.…”) Then, unbending to his full height and gazing at the Snow b
rothers with compassion, he pointed at the opposing counsel and said: “Gentlemen of the Jury, these poor, innocent boys would never have attempted this low villainy, had it not been for the advice of these lawyers.” Since they were now over 21, the brothers should either pay what they owed or return the oxen. After rebuking practitioners who so disgraced the legal profession, he concluded: “And now, gentlemen, you have it in your power to set these boys right before the world.” The jury found for the old man.194
According to Leonard Swett, any attorney “who took Lincoln for a simple-minded man would very soon wake upon on his back, in a ditch.” When lawyers “went at him to joust him from his position and take away his weapons,” Lincoln “arose like a lion wakened from his lair. His stooping form straightened, his angular features acquired force and expression, his eye flashed, all his powers of logic, sarcasm, and ridicule were aroused, and rejecting all compromise, he fought it out on that line until he was routed or until he carried the day.”195 One day when attorney Amzi McWilliams shouted “No! No!! No!!!” at a client of Lincoln’s, he shouted back “Oh! Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!” while staring “daggers at McWilliams, who quailed under Lincoln’s determined look.”196 When Usher Linder interrupted Lincoln repeatedly as he was presenting his client’s case and the judge refused to stop the disruptions, Lincoln grew exasperated, shook his fist at his opponent, and declared angrily: “I did not bother you in your plea, and if the court cannot protect me I can protect myself. Now, sir, we’ll have no more of this.”197
Lincoln once grew irritated when an attorney for the other side challenged potential jurors by asking if they were acquainted with Lincoln, who in turn asked members of the jury pool if they knew the other attorney. When the judge admonished him, saying: “Now, Mr. Lincoln, you are wasting time. The mere fact that a juror knows your opponent does not disqualify him.”
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