[Sidenote: Lamon, p. 317.]
This is nothing less than the portrait of a great lawyer, drawn by competent hands, with the lifelong habit of conscientious accuracy. If we chose to continue we could fill this volume with the tributes of his professional associates, ranging all the way from the commonplaces of condolence to the most extravagant eulogy. But enough has been quoted to justify the tradition which Lincoln left behind him at the bar of Illinois. His weak as well as his strong qualities have been indicated. He never learned the technicalities, what some would call the tricks, of the profession. The sleight of plea and demurrer, the legerdemain by which justice is balked and a weak case is made to gain an unfair advantage, was too subtle and shifty for his strong and straightforward intelligence. He met these manoeuvres sufficiently well, when practiced by others, but he never could get in the way of handling them for himself. On the wrong side he was always weak. He knew this himself, and avoided such cases when he could consistently with the rules of his profession. He would often persuade a fair- minded litigant of the injustice of his case and induce him to give it up. His partner, Mr. Herndon, relates a speech in point which Lincoln once made to a man who offered him an objectionable case: "Yes, there is no reasonable doubt but that I can gain your case for you. I can set a whole neighborhood at loggerheads; I can distress a widowed mother and her six fatherless children, and thereby get for you six hundred dollars, which rightfully belongs, it appears to me, as much to them as it does to you. I shall not take your case, but I will give a little advice for nothing. You seem a sprightly, energetic man. I would advise you to try your hand at making six hundred dollars in some other way." Sometimes, after he had entered upon a criminal case, the conviction that his client was guilty would affect him with a sort of panic. On one occasion he turned suddenly to his associate and said: "Swett, the man is guilty; you defend him, I can't," and so gave up his share of a large fee. The same thing happened at another time when he was engaged with Judge S. C. Parks in defending a man accused of larceny. He said: "If you can say anything for the man, do it, I can't; if I attempt it, the jury will see I think he is guilty, and convict him." Once he was prosecuting a civil suit, in the course of which evidence was introduced showing that his client was attempting a fraud. Lincoln rose and went to his hotel in deep disgust. The judge sent for him; he refused to come. "Tell the judge," he said, "my hands are dirty; I came over to wash them." We are aware that these stories detract something from the character of the lawyer; but this inflexible, inconvenient, and fastidious morality was to be of vast service afterwards to his country and the world.
The Nemesis which waits upon men of extraordinary wit or humor has not neglected Mr. Lincoln, and the young lawyers of Illinois, who never knew him, have an endless store of jokes and pleasantries in his name; some of them as old as Howleglass or Rabelais. [Footnote: As a specimen of these stories we give the following, well vouched for, as apocrypha generally are: Lincoln met one day on the courthouse steps a young lawyer who had lost a case—his only one—and looked very disconsolate. "What has become of your case?" Lincoln asked. "Gone to h—-," was the gloomy response. "Well, don't give it up," Lincoln rejoined cheerfully; "you can try it again there"—a quip which has been attributed to many wits in many ages, and will doubtless make the reputation of jesters yet to be.] But the fact is that with all his stories and jests, his frank companionable humor, his gift of easy accessibility and welcome, he was, even while he traveled the Eighth Circuit, a man of grave and serious temper and of an unusual innate dignity and reserve. He had few or no special intimates, and there was a line beyond which no one ever thought of passing. Besides, he was too strong a man in the court-room to be regarded with anything but respect in a community in which legal ability was the only especial mark of distinction.
Few of his forensic speeches have been preserved, but his contemporaries all agree as to their singular ability and power. He seemed absolutely at home in a court-room; his great stature did not encumber him there; it seemed like a natural symbol of superiority. His bearing and gesticulation had no awkwardness about them; they were simply striking and original. He assumed at the start a frank and friendly relation with the jury which was extremely effective. He usually began, as the phrase ran, by "giving away his case"; by allowing to the opposite side every possible advantage that they could honestly and justly claim. Then he would present his own side of the case, with a clearness, a candor, an adroitness of statement which at once flattered and convinced the jury, and made even the bystanders his partisans. Sometimes he disturbed the court with laughter by his humorous or apt illustrations; sometimes he excited the audience by that florid and exuberant rhetoric which he knew well enough how and when to indulge in; but his more usual and more successful manner was to rely upon a clear, strong, lucid statement, keeping details in proper subordination and bringing forward, in a way which fastened the attention of court and jury alike, the essential point on which he claimed a decision. "Indeed," says one of his colleagues, "his statement often rendered argument unnecessary, and often the court would stop him and say, 'If that is the case, we will hear the other side.'"
[Sidenote: Raymond "Life of Lincoln." p. 32.]
[Sidenote: I.N. Arnold, speech before the State Bar Association, Jan. 7, 1881.]
Whatever doubts might be entertained as to whether he was the ablest lawyer on the circuit, there was never any dissent from the opinion that he was the one most cordially and universally liked. If he did not himself enjoy his full share of the happiness of life, he certainly diffused more of it among his fellows than is in the power of most men. His arrival was a little festival in the county-seats where his pursuits led him to pass so much of his time. Several eye- witnesses have described these scenes in terms which would seem exaggerated if they were not so fully confirmed. The bench and bar would gather at the tavern where he was expected, to give him a cordial welcome; says one writer, "He brought light with him." This is not hard to understand. Whatever his cares, he never inflicted them upon others. He talked singularly well, but never about himself. He was full of wit which never wounded, of humor which mellowed the harshness of that new and raw life of the prairies. He never asked for help, but was always ready to give it. He received everybody's confidence, and rarely gave his own in return. He took no mean advantages in court or in conversation, and, satisfied with the respect and kindliness which he everywhere met, he sought no quarrels and seldom had to decline them. He did not accumulate wealth; as Judge Davis said, "He seemed never to care for it." He had a good income from his profession, though the fees he received would bring a smile to the well-paid lips of the great attorneys of to-day. The largest fee he ever got was one of five thousand dollars from the Illinois Central Railway, and he had to bring suit to compel them to pay it. He spent what he received in the education of his children, in the care of his family, and in a plain and generous way of living. One who often visited him writes, referring to "the old-fashioned hospitality of Springfield," "Among others I recall with a sad pleasure, the dinners and evening parties given by Mrs. Lincoln. In her modest and simple home, where everything was so orderly and refined, there was always on the part of both host and hostess a cordial and hearty Western welcome which put every guest perfectly at ease. Their table was famed for the excellence of many rare Kentucky dishes, and for the venison, wild turkeys, and other game, then so abundant. Yet it was her genial manner and ever-kind welcome, and Mr. Lincoln's wit and humor, anecdote and unrivaled conversation, which formed the chief attraction."
Here we leave him for a while, in this peaceful and laborious period of his life; engaged in useful and congenial toil; surrounded by the love and respect of the entire community; in the fullness of his years and strength; the struggles of his youth, which were so easy to his active brain and his mighty muscles, all behind him, and the titanic labors of his manhood yet to come. We shall now try to sketch the beginnings of that tremendous controversy which he was in a few years to take up, to guide and direct to its wonderful and tragical close.