a quantity of small silver coin and "red cents." These they counted; they amounted to $17.60, the precise amount called for by the draft. More than that—it was the very money called for by the draft, for at leaving his postmastership, the punctilious officer had tied up the balance on hand, and kept it by him, awaiting the legal call for it. At paying it over, he remarked that he never used, even temporarily, any money that was not his. This money, he added, he felt belonged to the government, and he had no right to exchange or use it for any purposes of his own.
His honesty, shrewdness, energy and keen practical insight into men and things soon made him the most influential man in his state, both as lawyer and politician. Of this influence, and most especially of its depending upon his wonderfully direct plain common sense, and the absolute honesty and utter justness of his mind, there are many anecdotes. In politics and in law alike, both the strength of his conscientiousness and the kind of yearning after a rounded wholeness of view which was an intellectual instinct with him, forced him habitually to consider all sides of any question. "For fifteen years before his election to the Presidency," says one writer, in striking illustration of this habit in politics, "he subscribed regularly to The Richmond Enquirer and The Charleston Mercury. He grew slowly, as public opinion grew; and as an anti-slavery man, was a gradual convert." Thus it resulted that "while Rhett and Wise, with slavery in full feather, wrote every day the inviolateness of secession and the divinity of bondage, these two Illinois lawyers, (Lincoln and his partner, Herndon,) in their little square office, read every vaunting cruel word, paid to read it, and educated themselves out of their mutual indignations."
In like manner he was fair and impartial in legal investigations. "The jury" says one account, "always got from him a fair statement of any case in hand, and years later it was remarked by the Chief Justice of Illinois that when Lincoln spoke, he argued both sides of the case so well that a speech in response was always superfluous."
Mr. Lincoln's fellow lawyers used to say that he was in professional matters, "perversely honest." He could not take hold heartily on the wrong side. He never engaged in it, knowingly; if a man desired to retain him whose cause was bad, he declined, and told the applicant not to go to law. A lady once came to him to have him prosecute a claim to some land, and gave him the papers in the case for examination, together with a retainer in the shape of a check for two hundred dollars. Next day she came to see what her prospects were, when Mr. Lincoln told her that he had examined the documents very carefully, that she "had not a peg to hang her claim on," and that he could not conscientiously advise her to bring an action. Having heard this judgment, the lady thanked him, took her papers, and was about to depart. "Wait a moment," said Mr. Lincoln, "here is the check you gave me." "But," said she, "Mr. Lincoln, I think you have earned that." "No, no," he answered, insisting on her receiving it, "that would not be right. I can't take pay for doing my duty."
He was quite as prompt and just in accepting unprofitable duty as in declining its profitable opposite. During all the early part of his legal practice in Springfield, it was considered an unpopular and politically dangerous business for a lawyer to defend any fugitive slave on trial for surrender to the South, and even the brave Col. Baker, in those days also practicing there, on one occasion directly refused to defend such a case, saying that as a political man he could not afford it. But the luckless applicant, having consulted with an abolitionist friend, went next to Lincoln, and got him. "He's not afraid of an unpopular case," said the friend; "when I go for a lawyer to defend an arrested fugitive slave, other lawyers will refuse me; but if Mr. Lincoln is at home, he will always take up my case."
On a few occasions after having even entered into the trial of a case, Mr. Lincoln would find that, as sometimes happens, he had been deceived by his own client, and that he really had not the right on his side. When this was the case, he could as it were be seen to wilt at once, and whatever further he might do in the case was only mechanical. In such a case, having an associate, and having refused to argue it, the associate argued the case and won it, and then offered to divide with Mr. Lincoln the fee of $900; but Lincoln would not take a cent. Once in defending a man sued for delivering lambs instead of sheep, the testimony clearly showed that such delivery had been made. Instead of trying to confuse the witnesses or becloud the evidence, Mr. Lincoln ascertained how many such lambs had been delivered, and quietly told the jury that they must give a verdict against his client. He simply cautioned them to be just in fixing the damages. When he had recovered a verdict against a railroad company, and a certain offset against his client was to be deducted, he interrupted the final decision just in time to have the offset made larger by a certain amount which he had just found out ought to be added to it. His careful and primitive scrupulousness was just as marked in dealing with any associates in a case. When he received a joint fee his invariable custom was to divide it properly, and tie up in a separate parcel each associate's part of the very money received, duly labelled and directed.
In 1841 Mr. Lincoln argued before the Supreme Court of Illinois, the case of Nance, a negro girl, who had been sold within the state. A note had been given in payment for her, and the suit was brought to recover upon this note. Mr. Lincoln, defending, proved that Nance was free, and that thus nothing had been sold; so that the note was void. The Court below had sustained the note, but the Supreme Court, in accordance with Mr. Lincoln's argument, reversed this judgment. The decision made Nance free, and put a stop to sales of human beings in Illinois.
Another remarkable case in which he was engaged, was, the defence of young Armstrong from a charge of murder. This Armstrong was the son of a man who had befriended and employed Mr. Lincoln in youth, and the present charge was, that he had killed a certain person who had unquestionably died from injuries received in a camp-meeting riot where young Armstrong was present. The father was dead, and the mother aged and poor; a chain of apparently perfectly conclusive circumstantial evidence had been forged, which had convinced the community of Armstrong's guilt; indeed, had he not been safely secured in a strong jail he would have been lynched. Neither the youth nor his old mother had any money. The people and the newspapers were furious against the prisoner; and his fate appeared absolutely certain even to himself, when Mr. Lincoln, hearing of the matter in some way, volunteered for the defence, and was gladly accepted. When the trial came on, the evidence for the prosecution was given, and constituted what appeared to the audience a perfectly conclusive proof of guilt. Lincoln cross-examined very lightly, only correcting up and ascertaining a few places and dates; and his own witnesses were only to show comparatively good previous character for the prisoner.
The prosecutor, sure of his prey, made only a short and formal argument. Mr. Lincoln followed for the defence. He began slowly, calmly, carefully. He took hold of the heart of the evidence for the state—that of the chief witness. He pointed out first one discrepancy, and then another, and then another. He came at last to that part of the evidence where this principal witness had sworn positively that he had been enabled by the light of the moon to see the prisoner give the fatal blow with a slung shot; and taking up the almanac he showed that at the hour sworn to on the night sworn to the moon had not risen; that the whole of this evidence was a perjury.
The audience, gradually stirred and changed in the temper of their minds by the previous series of skilfully displayed inconsistencies, rising from hate into sympathy, flamed suddenly up at this startling revelation, and the verdict of "not guilty" was almost visible in the faces of the jury. But this was not all. Turning upon the infamous man who had sought to swear away another's life, Mr. Lincoln, now fully kindled into his peculiarly slow but intensely fiery wrath, held him up to the view of court and jury and audience, in such a horrid picture of guilt and shame that the miserable fellow, stunned and confounded, actually fled from the face of the incensed lawyer out of the court room. And in conclusion, Mr. Lincoln appealed to the jury to lay aside any temporary prejudices, and to do simple justice. And he referred to the motive of his own presence there—to his gratitude for the kindness of the prisoner's father in past years, in a manner so affecting as to bring tears from many eyes. In less than half an hour the jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and the young man was set free, his life saved and his character restored.
When he went for the second time into public life, on the passage of the Nebraska Bill in 1854, he was becoming eminent in the difficult and lucrative department of patent law. But his fellow lawyers used to call his fees "ridiculously small."