The prosecutor changed color, hesitated a moment, and then, his better nature gaining the mastery, responded with much feeling: “Yes, Mr. Lincoln, I do know it, and I take it all back.”
Many of those who were present could not resist the impulse to applaud, as the two men approached each other and shook hands. The trial then went on to its anticipated conclusion—Harrison’s acquittal.[iii-29]
On another occasion Lincoln took quite a different method of meeting an unfair attack. His opponent in a case, while selecting the jury, challenged a man because he was acquainted with counsel on the other side. Such an objection appears to have been regarded, in those days, as a reflection upon a lawyer’s honor. So Judge Davis, who was presiding at the time, sharply overruled the challenge. Yet when Lincoln’s turn came to examine the panel, he gravely followed the other’s lead and asked them, one by one, whether they were acquainted with his adversary. After several had answered in the affirmative, however, the judge interrupted him.
“Now, Mr. Lincoln,” he said severely, “you are wasting time. The mere fact that a juror knows your opponent does not disqualify him.”
“No, Your Honor,” retorted the advocate; “but I am afraid some of the gentlemen may not know him, which would place me at a disadvantage.”[iii-30]
In only one other notable instance, so far as the writer’s knowledge goes, has Lincoln’s integrity at the bar been directly questioned. Charges of fabricating certain important evidence to save his client grew out of a sensational episode in the camp-meeting murder trial. The case was that of William (Duffy) Armstrong indicted for the killing of James Preston Metzker, during a brawl near the Salt Creek camp-grounds, a few miles from Mason City, on the night of Saturday, August 29, 1857. “Duff” and “Pres,” as the two young men were called, after drinking heavily with other wild companions of their kind, quarreled. In the fracas which ensued late that same night, Armstrong and a friend named James Henry Norris, who came to his assistance, had, it was alleged, inflicted injuries on Metzker that, several days later, proved to be fatal. A true bill for murder had been found against both men. And Norris, brought first to trial, at Havana in Mason County, had, upon a verdict of manslaughter, gone to prison for eight years. His comrade’s case looked darker still. Public sentiment condemned “Duff” out of hand; and from all sides came demands that the law should be enforced against him in its utmost rigor. Then, as if to make matters worse, his father died. The widowed mother, struggling alone for her boy’s life, managed to secure the services of Walker and Lacey, local lawyers at Havana; but they could hold forth only slender prospects of success. At this juncture news of the trouble reached Lincoln. Occupied though he was, by that time, over the affairs of an extensive practice and the demands of a growing political leadership, this tragedy claimed his attention. He appears to have been deeply moved by the father’s death, as well as by the son’s peril. For that father was the Jack Armstrong of Clary’s Grove fame, with whom he had wrestled and chummed during the by-gone New Salem days; that mother was the Aunt Hannah, in whose kitchen he had many a time been made welcome; and her baby, which he had rocked to sleep while she cooked him a meal, was the prisoner who, now arrived at manhood’s estate, lay in jail awaiting trial for a capital crime. In this, her hour of dire need, the poor woman had naturally turned to their old friend. Going to his office at Springfield, she told the whole distressing story, and received instant promise of help.
“Abe,” said Hannah, as one of her sons relates, “I can’t pay you much money or money of any account, but I can pay you a little.”
To which he replied: “You do not need to pay me a cent, for my services are free to the family as long as I live.”[iii-31]
So it happened that when the trial, by a change of venue, opened the following spring before Justice James Harriott, at Beardstown, in the less prejudiced atmosphere of Cass County, Lincoln led for the defense. He came into court with faith in his client. According to “Duff’s” version of the affair, Metzker had been the aggressor, and the fight, as far as these two were concerned, had been with their bare fists only. Yet how could the jury be convinced of this? Such evidence, indeed, as was presented against Armstrong at the outset did not appear to be very damaging; but when the prosecution called its principal witness, Charles Allen, a painter from Petersburg, matters became serious. He testified that he saw the defendant strike Metzker on the head with a slung-shot. Under cross-examination, Allen averred that the assault occurred at about eleven o’clock in the night. When asked to explain how, despite the lateness of the hour, he could so distinctly have seen what took place, the witness stated that there was a bright moon, nearly full, and “about in the same place that the sun would be at ten o’clock in the morning.” This answer, to use the language of the day, apparently put the hangman’s noose around Armstrong’s neck. In the opinion of his alert counsel however, it was just what undid that ghastly cravat. For, profiting by the testimony given at previous hearings, Lincoln had prepared to meet that very situation. On the morning of the trial he had placed in the keeping of Sheriff James A. Dick an almanac—probably Goudy’s—for the year of the homicide. This document was now produced by that officer, at the request of the defense, and put in evidence. It proved, as Lincoln pointed out, that on the night in question the moon had but slightly passed the first quarter, that it gave practically no light at eleven o’clock, and that its computed time for setting was at about midnight.[iii-32] The effect of this announcement seemed almost magical. At one stroke of the master hand, Allen’s spurious moonshine had turned into a lightning flash, by which the weakness of the prosecution stood revealed. There was an immediate revulsion of feeling in the prisoner’s favor. His counsel were as quick to seize upon the lucky turn. Closing for the defense, Mr. Lincoln addressed the jury in words of which his associate, Mr. Walker, afterwards said, “A more powerful and eloquent speech never, in my opinion, fell from the lips of man.” The perjured testimony, as well as the discrepancies in the evidence, were dwelt upon by the speaker with telling effect. So moved was he, moreover, by his ancient gratitude to “Duff’s” parents, and by his own manifest belief in the young man’s innocence of willful murder, that the tears which blurred his eyes as he spoke, no less than the sympathetic earnestness of his appeal, touched responsive chords among the wrought-up jurymen. They did not deliberate long. When they came in with their verdict, the foreman said “not guilty,” and this remarkable case was at an end.
The case, indeed, was at an end, but the talk about it was not. Lincoln’s dramatic introduction of that almanac appears especially to have stimulated the gossip, which took many forms, until out of it all in some unaccountable way emerged a strange canard. According to this tale he had tricked prosecutors, court, and jury by palming off on them, as of the year when the homicide took place, a calendar of some previous year. The obvious reply to this charge is that there would have been no reason whatever for such a piece of rascality. An almanac dated 1857 bears out—as any one may satisfy himself at his leisure—Lincoln’s contention to the letter, and he could not have bettered his case by fraudulently using one for another year. Of course, those who repeated the story did not take the trouble to consult calendars, but a moment’s reflection might have warned them of its absurdity. They should have known that an experienced lawyer, whose adherence to the highest ideals of his profession had by this time passed into a by-word, would hardly have jeopardized a cherished reputation, to say nothing of his standing as a public man, by stooping to any device at once so dishonorable and so futile. For it is not to be credited that an exhibit of such importance could pass through the hands of shrewd opponents, as well as those of judge and jurymen, without the closest scrutiny. This scrutiny did, in fact, take place.