[iii-18] Admissions that seemed to be of a more damaging nature than those which were made in this case have at times been known to assist, rather than interfere with, the winning of a verdict. How far counsel may go, along such lines, was illustrated in the practice of Daniel Webster. A more brilliant, though less scrupulous, advocate than Lincoln, he went the limit.
Once in Boston, defending a man who had been indicted for forgery, his first act—at the very beginning of the trial, before a witness had been called—was to arise and say: “May it please the Court, we admit the forgery, so that evidence on this point will be unnecessary. We deny that the note was uttered in this county.”
The astonishment of those present gave way to comprehension, when it became evident that the prosecution could easily have made out a case of forgery against the prisoner; but that it could not so readily have proven, what was of equal importance, the issuing of the forged instrument in Suffolk County. For want of sufficient proof, on this very point, the defendant was acquitted. He might have fared differently if both the questions of forgery and utterance had been presented to the jury. It is not unlikely that had they listened to evidence on the crime itself, those facts would have so overshadowed other considerations in their minds as to bring about a conviction. Webster’s avowal prevented this, and saved his unworthy client.
[iii-19] Herndon, ii, 3; Whitney, 251.
[iii-20] Lincoln to Linder, February 20, 1848, Works, ii, 3.
[iii-21] Herndon, ii, 7.
[iii-22] Arnold, 84. See, also, Whitney’s Life, i, 173; Oldroyd, 37; Nicolay and Hay, i, 307.
[iii-23] Herndon, ii, 7.
[iii-24] Gibson W. Harris, quoted in Browne, 220.
[iii-25] Letter of Justice David J. Brewer to the author; and an article by him in the Atlantic Monthly, November, 1906, p. 591.