Life of Abraham Lincoln | Page 8

unfair advantage or even use an unworthy
means of attaining a worthy end. Consequently courts and juries believed what he said.
He was a poor lawyer when on the wrong side of the case, and would not take a bad case
if he knew it. Upon one occasion, when, in the very midst of a trial, he discovered that his
client had acted fraudulently, he left the courtroom and when the judge sent for him, he
sent word back that he "had gone to wash his hands." He had too much human sympathy
to be the most effective prosecutor unless there was a clear case of Justice on his side;
and he was too sympathetic to make money--for his charges were so small that Herndon
and the other lawyers and even the judge expostulated with him. Though his name
appears in the Illinois Reports in one hundred and seventy-three cases,--a record giving
him first rank among the lawyers of the state, his income was probably not much over
two or three thousand a year. And he was engaged in some of the most important cases in
the state, such as Illinois Central Railroad Company v. The County of McLean, in which
he was retained by the railroad and successfully prevented the taxation of land ceded to
the railroad by the State,--and then had to sue to recover his modest fee of five thousand,
which was the largest he ever received. In the McCormick reaper patent litigation he was
engaged with Edwin M. Stanton, who treated him with discourtesy in the Federal Court at
Cincinnati, called him "that giraffe," and prevented him from delivering the argument
which he had so carefully and solicitously prepared. Such an experience was, of course,
very painful to his sensitive nature, and it shows how great he was that he could forgive
the injury entirely as he did later when he appointed Stanton as his Secretary of War,
despite the protest of friends who recalled it all to him.
In one of his most notable murder cases he defended William or "Duff" Armstrong, the
son of his old friend, Jack Armstrong. It was a desperate case for William and for his
mother Hannah, who had also been a warm friend to Lincoln when he was young. The
youth was one of the wildest of the Clary's Grove boys, and a prosecuting witness told
how, by the light of the moon, he saw the blow struck. Lincoln subjected the witness to
one of his dreadful cross-examinations and then confronted him with the almanac of the
year in which the crime was committed to show that the moon had set at the hour at
which the witness claimed to have seen the blow struck by Armstrong. The boy was
acquitted and Lincoln would accept no fee but the tears and gratitude of his old friends.
Another interesting case was one in which a principal witness was the aged Peter
Cartright who had more than ten years before waged a campaign against Lincoln for
Congress. Cartright was the grandfather of "Peachy" Harrison who was charged with the
murder of Greek Crafton. It was a dramatic moment when the old Methodist minister
took the stand in front of Lincoln, and as his white head bowed, Lincoln had him tell how,

as Greek Crafton lay dying, among his last words were "I want you to say to the man who
killed me that I forgive him." After such a dying declaration and such a scene Lincoln
was sure to make a speech that would move the hearts of any jury with pity and
forgiveness such as he himself always felt for all souls in trouble; and Harrison was
acquitted. It was such experiences at the bar that made him the great lawyer that he was;
and the great advocate of whatever he believed to be right; and prepared him to win the
great cause of humanity before the whole people of the nation and of the world.
In 1852 Lincoln campaigned for Scott. In 1854 he seemed to be losing interest in politics
when the news of the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise aroused him. This had
been brought about by Douglas, the new leader of the Democrats, then one of the most
influential men in Congress, and after the days of Webster, Clay and Calhoun, one of the
foremost politicians in America. Douglas came back to Illinois to find many of his
constituents in the North displeased with what they thought he had done to please the
Democrats of the South. They thought that he was sacrificing the ideal of limiting slavery
in order to advance his ambitions to become President. He set about to win back his state.
He spoke in Springfield; and a few days later, Lincoln replied in