Читать книгу "Honest Abe": A Study in Integrity Based on the Early Life of Abraham Lincoln - Alonzo Rothschild - Страница 7

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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]