But it was not his stories, it was his clearness which was his strongest point. He meant that the jury should see that he was right. For this reason he never used a word which the dullest juryman could not understand. Rarely, if ever, did a Latin term creep into his arguments. A lawyer quoting a legal maxim one day in court, turned to Lincoln, and said: "That is so, is it not, Mr. Lincoln?" "If that's Latin," Lincoln replied, "you had better call another witness." His illustrations were almost always of the homeliest kind. He did not care to "go among the ancients for figures," he said. "Much of the force of his argument," writes Judge Scott, "lay in his logical statement of the facts of a case. When he had in that way secured a clear understanding of the facts, the jury and the court would seem naturally to follow him in his conclusions as to the law of the case. His simple and natural presentation of the facts seemed to give the impression that the jury were themselves making the statement. He had the happy and unusual faculty of making the jury believe they and not he-were trying the case. Mr. Lincoln kept himself in the background and apparently assumed nothing more than to be an assistant counsel to the court or the jury, on whom the primary responsibility for the final decision of the case in fact rested." He rarely consulted books during a trial, lest he lose the attention of the jury, and if obliged to, translated their statements into the simplest terms. In his desire to keep his case clear he rarely argued points From an ambrotype made in the fall of 1857 at Urbana, Illinois. Mr. Lincoln is wearing the photographer's coat, he having gone to the gallery in a light linen garment which would not "take" well. This accounts for the peculiar "fit"! which seemed to him unessential. "In law it is good policy never to plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you can not," he wrote. He would thus give away point after point with an indifferent "I reckon that's so," until the point which he considered pivotal was reached, and there he hung. "In making a speech," says Mr. John Hill, "Mr. Lincoln was the plainest man I ever heard. He was not a speaker but a talker. He talked to jurors and to political gatherings plain, sensible, candid talk, almost as in conversation, no effort whatever in oratory. But his talking had wonderful effect. Honesty, candor, fairness, everything that was convincing, were in his manner and expressions." This candor of which Mr. Hill speaks characterized his entire conduct of a trial. "It is well understood by the profession," says General Mason Brayman, "that lawyers do not read authorities favoring the opposing side. I once heard Mr. Lincoln, in the Supreme Court of Illinois, reading from a reported case some strong points in favor of his argument. Reading a little too far, and before becoming aware of it, he plunged into an authority against himself. Pausing a moment, he drew up his shoulders in a comical way, and half laughing, went on, "There, there, may it please the court, I reckon I've scratched up a snake. But, as I'm in for it, I guess I'll read it through.' Then, in his most ingenious and matchless manner, he went on with his argument and won his case, convincing the court that it was not much of a snake after all." CHAPTER XVI LINCOLN'S IMPORTANT LAW CASES-DEFENCE OF A SLAVE GIRL THE MC CORMICK CASE-THE ARM- ABRAHAM LINCOLN's place in the legal circle of Illinois long went undefined. The impression prevailed that, though a faithful and trusted lawyer, he never rose to the first rank of his profession. This idea came from imperfect information concerning his legal career. An examination of the reports of the Illinois Supreme Court from 1840, when he tried his first case before that body, to 1861, when he gave up his profession to become President of the United States, shows that in this period of twenty years, broken as it was, from 1847 to 1849, by a term in Congress, and interrupted constantly, from 1854 to 1860, by his labors in opposition to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, Lincoln was engaged in nearly one hundred cases before that court, some of them of great importance. This fact alone shows him to have been one of the leading lawyers of his state. Between ninety and one hundred cases before the Supreme Court of a state in twenty years is a record surpassed by but few lawyers. It was exceeded by none of Lincoln's Illinois contemporaries. Among the cases in which he was prominent and of which we have reports, there are several of dramatic |