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Does Lawyer Lincoln Matter?
- The University Press of Kentucky
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45 DoesLawyerLincolnMatter? Mark E. Steiner Lincoln’s Image as a Lawyer An opinion poll a few years back revealed that Abraham Lincoln was one of the five most admired lawyers in America.1 Lincoln’s status probably has more to do with how Americans view Lincoln the president than what they actually know about Lincoln the lawyer. The lawyer in popular biographies, movies, and children’s books is a virtuous and heroic lawyer.2 Early biographers , aware of the distrust and hostility toward lawyers, glossed over Lincoln’s law practice. These writers were content with somewhat superficial depictions of Lincoln as a virtuous, heroic country lawyer. The treatment of Lincoln’s law practice improved somewhat with the professionalization of history in the twentieth century, but, until recently, Lincoln biographers have tended to write about the same handful of cases. Historians’ lack of interest in his law career, their apparent belief that their lack of legal training precluded study of Lincoln’s law practice, and the inaccessibility of documents had stymied a thorough examination of the law practice.3 Lawyers, on the other hand, have written a lot about lawyer Lincoln.4 Lawyers have wanted to use the image of Lincoln to clean up their own. They have been invested in an image of Lincoln as a country lawyer who is above the fray and who seeks justice only. Lawyer Lincoln has become even more popular with the advent of alternative dispute resolution, as lawyers and law professors often turn to Lincoln’s advice to lawyers to “discourage litigation.”5 Treatment of Lincoln’s law practice has been anecdotal. Although Lincoln handled thousands of cases, most biographers settled on discussing the same four or five. These cases became canonical: the Duff Armstrong murder case (the “Almanac Trial”); the Effie Afton case; the Matson case (sometimes paired with Bailey v. Campbell); the McLean County taxation 46 Mark E. Steiner case; and the Manny Reaper case.6 All five were discussed by Albert J. Beveridge in 1928.7 They remained the only law cases mentioned by Benjamin Thomas in his 1952 biography and by Stephen Oates in his 1977 biography.8 William E. Gienapp in a 2002 biography mentioned four of the five cases.9 The canonical cases were the only law cases mentioned by Gienapp, Oates, and Thomas. The best known of this handful is the Duff Armstrong murder case, which is also known as the Almanac Trial.10 There, a witness testified that he could see Armstrong strike the fatal blow because the moon was high overhead. Lincoln, who defended Armstrong, helped secure an acquittal for his client by producing an almanac for the year that showed the moon was near the horizon at that time of night. Duff Armstrong was the son of Jack and Hannah Armstrong, friends of Lincoln from his early days in New Salem. The typical account tells how the widow Armstrong begged Lincoln to represent her son, how Lincoln emotionally argued Armstrong’s innocence, and how Lincoln refused to charge a fee.11 The typical account of Lincoln’s defense of Duff resonates with the positive cultural image of the heroic criminal defense lawyer winning (against the odds) the acquittal of an innocent person. The case was first mentioned in campaign biographies written in 1860 and continues to be featured in books about Lincoln.12 This case is so well known that I was told by a dean at a Chinese law school that he decided to become a lawyer after reading about the Almanac Trial in elementary school. Lincoln in early biographies emerges as a country attorney who was uninterested in fees, who protected the poor and defenseless, who would not defend unjust causes, and who would not take advantage of legal technicalities . This view of Lincoln’s law practice first appeared in campaign biographies published in 1860 and 1864. They devotedlittlespaceto Lincoln’s law practice, and they barely concealed the attempt to combat the negative cultural stereotype about lawyers. John Locke Scripps, for example, asserted that Lincoln often represented poor clients for free when justice and right were on their side.13 While the Duff Armstrong case appeared in at least six biographies, Lincoln’s association with the Illinois Central Railroad was not mentioned once.14 These campaign biographies set the tone for later ones. J. G. Holland wrote in 1866 that lawyer Lincoln’s “desire for the establishment of exact justice always overcame his own selfish love of victory.”15 The negative cultural...