“The speech made the desired impression on the jury. Half of them were in tears, while the defendant sat in the court-room, drawn up and writhing under the fire of Lincoln’s fierce invective. The jury returned a verdict in our favor for every cent we demanded. Lincoln was so much interested in the old lady that he became her surety for costs, paid her way home, and her hotel bill while she was in Springfield. When the judgment was paid we remitted the proceeds to her and made no charge for our services.”[iii-44]

Some of the finest traditions known to the legal profession had been observed in this case. St. Ives himself, “Advocate of the Poor” and patron of lawyers, might have held such a brief. We can fancy him, standing at the bar of the Springfield court, scroll in hand as he is sometimes pictured, speaking for the poor widow; but whether that scroll would have contained notes like those that Lincoln jotted down for the argument may perhaps be questioned. They read: “No contract.—Not professional services.—Unreasonable charge.—Money retained by Def’t not given by Pl’ff.—Revolutionary War.—Describe Valley Forge privations.—Ice.—Soldiers’ bleeding feet.—Pl’ff’s husband.—Soldier leaving home for army.—Skin Def’t.—Close.”

And yet how could any true champion—inspired saint or just plain lawyer—have kept his hands off that defendant! Nothing but a flaying appears to meet the needs of the occasion. Even your gentle, courteous, sympathetic soul like Lincoln’s, alert to the conflict between right and wrong, is stirred by such meanness to its very depths. Love of justice then flames into hatred of injustice. The patient pleader becomes the masterful prosecutor. In fact, the better the man, the fiercer grows his rage. Wielding a scourge of whipcord and striking home, he drives the object of his contempt in hot anger before him. Nor is he at that moment a respecter of persons. Certainly Lincoln was not. The wrath with which he bore down from time to time, as we have seen, on unprincipled litigants, witnesses, and attorneys did not stop there. Misconduct on the bench incensed him still more. If the judge before whom he was trying a cause persistently attempted to be unfair, serious friction ensued; and the deference with which even adverse rulings were customarily received, gave way at last to an outburst of indignation. “In such cases,” writes Mr. Herndon of his associate, “he was the most fearless man I ever knew.”

Describing a remarkable encounter which occurred during the Harrison murder trial, between Mr. Lincoln and Judge E. J. Rice, our junior partner relates how the presiding magistrate repeatedly ruled against counsel for the defense in such a way as to convince them that he was prejudiced.

“Finally,” the narrator goes on to say, “a very material question—in fact, one around which the entire case seemed to revolve—came up, and again the court ruled adversely. The prosecution was jubilant, and Lincoln, seeing defeat certain unless he recovered his ground, grew very despondent. The notion crept into his head that the court’s rulings, which were absurd and almost spiteful, were aimed at him, and this angered him beyond reason. He told me of his feelings at dinner, and said, ‘I have determined to crowd the court to the wall and regain my position before night.’ From that time forward it was interesting to watch him. At the reassembling of court he arose to read a few authorities in support of his position. In his comments he kept within the bounds of propriety just far enough to avoid a reprimand for contempt of court. He characterized the continued rulings against him as not only unjust but foolish; and, figuratively speaking, he peeled the court from head to foot. I shall never forget the scene. Lincoln had the crowd, a portion of the bar, and the jury with him. He knew that fact, and it, together with the belief that injustice had been done him, nerved him to a feeling of desperation. He was wrought up to the point of madness. When a man of large heart and head is wrought up and mad, as the old adage runs, ‘he’s mad all over.’ Lincoln had studied up the points involved, but knowing full well the calibre of the judge, relied mostly on the moral effect of his personal bearing and influence. He was alternately furious and eloquent, pursuing the court with broad facts and pointed inquiries, in marked and rapid succession.... The prosecution endeavored to break him down or even ‘head him off,’ but all to no purpose. His masterly arraignment of law and facts had so effectually badgered the judge that, strange as it may seem, he pretended to see the error in his former position, and finally reversed his decision in Lincoln’s favor. The latter saw his triumph, and surveyed a situation of which he was the master. His client was acquitted, and he had swept the field.”[iii-45]

This appears to have been one of the great advocate’s last important victories at the bar. It forms, in certain respects, a fitting climax to his legal career. For the admirable honesty of word and act with which he started out would hardly have carried him far, had they not been reinforced betimes by the wisdom that comes to the sincere truth-seeker alone, and by the courage that is born of truth’s fairest offspring—an abiding love of justice. Looking back over the scenes of his labors, we become aware, despite their commonplace settings, of something akin to chivalry. They recall, as it were, those epic days when disinterested zeal inspired, or was thought to inspire, chevalier and barrister alike. No counselor of old, who took on himself a knightly obligation to plead the cause of the defenseless, could have acquitted himself, all in all, more nobly. Faithful to his ideals through many temptations, yet free from self-complacency; chivalrous to his adversaries, yet striking hard blows for the cause in which he was enlisted; afraid to make a false plea, yet not afraid of a false judge,—homely, unassuming Abraham Lincoln rode over the circuit in much the same spirit as quickened the knight errant on his ancient journeyings. No paladin of the law, at least in his day, bore himself more gallantly. None seemed to do more toward conferring a practical, latter-day meaning on Bayard’s motto, “Without fear and without reproach.”

CHAPTER IV
DOLLARS AND CENTS

THE love of money never twined its sinister roots around the heart of Abraham Lincoln. He was wholly free of any desire to amass riches, nor could he understand why others should be eager to do so. The mere piling up of possessions seemed to him unworthy of an able man’s ambition, and the benevolence which manifests itself in grinding the faces of many fellow-beings, so as to acquire a fortune for a few public benefactions, hardly appealed to one whose humanity took the form of honest, kindly abnegation toward all those with whom he came in contact. Pecuniary rewards, therefore, occupied a minor place among his incentives to action. In fact, when there was an end to be achieved, he became so engrossed over the work which should bring it about that not much attention was given to the pay. Although his faculties usually worked in striking harmony with one another, the harmony of thrift, whereby a man can perform a good action and, as the phrase goes, make a good thing out of it at the same time, was foreign to his nature. He appears to have been utterly lacking in the rather commonplace talent for transmuting people’s necessities into comfortable revenues. His whimsical humor once defined wealth to be “simply a superfluity of what we don’t need”; and his frankness, at another time, led him to say: “I don’t know anything about money. I never had enough of my own to fret me.”

How this condition came about, we have already, in a measure, seen. What Lincoln learned of business, at the outset, from his luckless father, from the ill-regulated Offut, and the dissipated Berry, did not carry him far on the road to fortune. Indeed, he can hardly be said to have made a fair start toward that delectable goal. To all appearances, the stuff which passes, as Mowgli says, “from hand to hand and never grows warmer,” was slow in coming his way; and what little did reach him rarely remained long enough to allow a test for heat or cold. Where money is concerned, some men are sponges, some are sieves.

One of this man’s first large coins that he earned for himself, by a single piece of work, passed through his fingers with ominous celerity. It happened in this way. While engaged on a voyage, during the youthful river days,—he was about eighteen years old at the time,—Lincoln stood near the water’s edge as a steamboat came in sight. Relating what followed to some friends many years later, he explained that there were usually no wharves for large boats along the shores of the Western rivers, and that it was customary for passengers to board the vessels, as best they could, in mid-stream.