The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

by Abraham Lincoln

Although the humble condition and disreputable character of some of his relations and connections were the subject of constant annoyance and most painful reflections, he never tried to shake them off, and never abandoned them when they needed his assistance. A son of his foster-brother, John Johnston, was arrested in———County for stealing a watch.

Mr. Lincoln went to the same town to address a mass meeting while the poor boy was in jail. He waited until the dusk of the evening, and then, in company with Mr. H. C. Whitney, visited the prison. "Lincoln knew he was guilty," says Mr. Whitney, "and was very deeply affected,—more than I ever saw him. At the next term of the court, upon the State's Attorney's consent, Lincoln and I went to the prosecution witnesses, and got them to come into open court, and state that they did not care to presecute." The boy was released; and that evening, as the lawyers were leaving the town in their buggies, Mr. Lincoln was observed to get down from his, and walk back a short distance to a poor, distressed-looking young man who stood by the roadside. It was young Johnston. Mr. Lincoln engaged for a few moments apparently in earnest and nervous conversation with him, then giving him some money, and returning to his buggy, drove on.

A thousand tales could be told of Mr. Lincoln's amusing tricks and eccentricities on these quiet rides from county to county, in company with judges and lawyers, and of his quaint sayings and curious doings at the courts in these Western villages. But, much against our will, we are compelled to make selections, and present a few only, which rest upon the most undoubted authority.

It is well known that he used to carry with him, on what Mr. Stuart calls "the tramp around the circuit," ordinary school-books,—from Euclid down to an English grammar,—and study them as he rode along, or at intervals of leisure in the towns where he stopped. He supplemented these with a copy of Shakspeare, got much of it by rote, and recited long passages from it to any chance companion by the way.

He was intensely fond of cutting wood with an axe; and he was often seen to jump from his buggy, seize an axe out of the hands of a roadside chopper, take his place on the log in the most approved fashion, and, with his tremendous long strokes, cut it in two before the man could recover from his surprise.

It was this free life that charmed him, and reconciled him to existence. Here he forgot the past, with all its cruelties and mortifications: here were no domestic afflictions to vex his weary spirit and to try his magnanimous heart.

"After he had returned from Congress," says Judge Davis, "and had lost his practice, Goodrich of Chicago proposed to him to open a law-office in Chicago, and go into partnership with him. Goodrich had an extensive practice there. Lincoln refused to accept, and gave as a reason, that he tended to consumption; that, if he went to Chicago, he would have to sit down and study hard, and it would kill him; that he would rather go around the circuit—the Eighth Judicial Circuit—than to sit down and die in Chicago."

In the summer of 1857, at a camp-meeting in Mason County, one Metzgar was most brutally murdered. The affray took place about half a mile from the place of worship, near some wagons loaded with liquors and provisions. Two men, James H. Norris and William D. Armstrong, were indicted for the crime. Norris was tried in Mason County, convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to the penitentiary for the term of eight years. But Armstrong, the popular feeling being very high against him in Mason, "took a change of venue to Cass County," and was there tried (at Beardstown) in the spring of 1858. Hitherto Armstrong had had the services of two able counsellors, but now their efforts were supplemented by those of a most determined and zealous volunteer.

Armstrong was the son of Jack and Hannah Armstrong of New Salem, the child whom Mr. Lincoln had rocked in the cradle while Mrs. Armstrong attended to other household duties. His life was now in imminent peril: he seemed clearly guilty; and, if he was to be saved, it must be by the interposition of some power which could deface that fatal record in the Norris trial, refute the senses of witnesses, and make a jury forget themselves and their oaths. Old Hannah had one friend whom she devoutly believed could accomplish this. She wrote to Mr. Lincoln, and he replied that he would defend the boy. (She says she has lost his letter.) Afterwards she visited him at Springfield, and prepared him for the event as well as she could, with an understanding weakened by a long strain of severe and almost hopeless reflection.

When the trial came on, Mr. Lincoln appeared for the defence. His colleague, Mr. Walker, had possessed him of the record in the Norris case; and, upon close and anxious examination, he was satisfied that the witnesses could, by a well-sustained and judicious cross-examination, be made to contradict each other in some important particulars. Mr. Walker "handled" the victims of this friendly design, while Mr. Lincoln sat by and suggested questions. Nevertheless, to the unskilled mind, the testimony seemed to be absolutely conclusive against the prisoner, and every word of it fell like a new sentence of death. Norris had beaten the murdered man with a club from behind, while Armstrong had pounded him in the face with a slung-shot deliberately prepared for the occasion; and, according to the medical men, either would have been fatal without the other. But the witness whose testimony bore hardest upon Armstrong swore that the crime was committed about eleven o'clock at night, and that he saw the blows struck by the light of a moon nearly full, and standing in the heavens about where the sun would stand at ten o'clock in the morning. It is easy to pervert and even to destroy evidence like this; and here Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity which nobody had dreamed of on the Norris trial. He handed to an officer of the court an almanac, and told him to give it back to him when he should call for it in presence of the jury. It was an almanac of the year previous to the murder.