CHAPTER 1
Born to Speak
ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS drawn to public speaking from his earliest days. His stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln, said that, even as a boy, Lincoln "would hear sermons preached — come home — take the children out — get on a stump or log and almost repeat it word for word." His older cousin Dennis Hanks likewise said that the young Lincoln, even at work, "sometimes would mount a stump — chair or box and make speeches — Speech with stories — anecdotes & such like thing[s]."
Thus would begin one of the great legacies of public persuasion, through both speech and pen.
Perhaps his first "debate" for which there is a "record" came in 1830, when the twenty-one-year-old Lincoln, while "driving a team of oxen, breaking prairie," encountered Peter Cartwright, a well-known "circuit-riding preacher and politician." William Butler witnessed the encounter and later recalled it:
Cartwright laid down his doctrines in a way which undoubtedly seemed to Lincoln a little too dogmatical. A discussion soon arose between him [Lincoln] and Cartwright, and my first special attention was attracted to Lincoln by the way in which he met the great preacher in his arguments, and the extensive acquaintance he showed with the politics of the State — in fact he quite beat him in the argument.
In the summer of the same year, the young Lincoln similarly impressed observers with a speech at a political gathering, which another of Lincoln's older cousins, John Hanks, later recalled:
A man by the name of Posey Came into our neighborhood and made a Speech: it was a bad one and I Said Abe could beat it. ... Abe made his Speech [and] ... beat him to death — his subject being the navigation of the Sangamon River. The man after the Speech was through took Abe aside and asked him where he had learned So much and what he did so well. Abe Explained, Stating his manner & method of reading and what he had read: the man Encouraged Lincoln to persevere.
Not long after this, the twenty-two year old Lincoln struck out on his own, leaving home and moving to New Salem, Illinois, where he soon began attending meetings of the town's Literary and Debating Society. He stood to speak for the first time after just a few months, and impressed the group's leader, James Rutledge, who reportedly told his wife that Lincoln "was already a fine speaker; that all he lacked was culture to enable him to reach the high destiny which he Knew was in store for him." Rutledge's son, who was also present when Lincoln first spoke, echoed that sentiment, saying that Lincoln "pursued the question [to which he spoke] with reason and argument so pithy and forcible that all were amazed."
The next year (1832), at the age of just twenty-three, Lincoln made his first try at elective office, running as a Whig against twelve other candidates for four available seats in the Illinois House. He finished eighth, but even in losing "acquired a reputation for ... speech-making," according to John Todd Stuart, a prominent Springfield politician and lawyer who would later become Lincoln's first law partner.
Lincoln then made a second run for the Illinois House two years later, in 1834, and this time was successful. He was quiet as a freshman legislator, making "no formal speeches and only two brief sets of remarks," but then "emerged as a prominent and effective Whig spokesman" when he ran for re-election in 1836. He campaigned not only in rural areas, as he had in his first two runs, but also in towns and villages, and according to a Whig colleague, Robert L. Wilson, took "a leading part" in presenting "the Whig side" of questions, showing "skill and tact" in debates, and presenting his arguments "with great force and ability." According to Wilson, the young Lincoln, at just twenty-seven and off the farm only five years, "was by common consent looked up to and relied on as the leading Whig exponent ... the best versed and most captivating and trenchant speaker on their side."
On one occasion in that 1836 campaign, Lincoln's skill at making a case reportedly stopped a Whig and a Democrat from trying to kill each other, when a confrontation between them became so heated that a duel looked imminent. Lincoln saved the day with what an observer called "one of the most eloquent and convincing speeches he ever made, carrying the crowd with him almost to a man."
On another occasion in the same campaign, Lincoln further enhanced his reputation by "skinning" a leading Democrat — a Methodist minister and physician known as "The Fighting Parson" — with a rebuttal that "became a legend" in Lincoln's county. The parson had disparaged a leading Whig, and Lincoln rose to the Whig's defense, with a response so good that by the time he was finished, "his reputation was made ... [and] he had placed himself, by a single effort, in the very front rank of able and eloquent debaters."
Lincoln showed the same skill, again in that campaign, in defending himself from an attack by one of the most experienced and highly regarded political speakers of the time, George Forquer. As Lincoln's friend Joshua Speed recalled the event, Lincoln spoke first, with a "very able" speech that used Whig principles "with great power and originality," and "produced a profound impression — The Crowd was with him."
Forquer then arose, condescendingly announced "that this young man [Lincoln] would have to be taken down," and delivered a speech against Lincoln in that same, arrogant tone. But when Forquer finished, Lincoln rose again, and "with great dignity and force" hoisted Forquer on his own petard. In a series of "fortunate" events, Forquer had recently switched from Whig to Democrat, been appointed Register of the land office, and built the best home in town, complete with a lightning rod — a novelty of that time. In his rebuttal, Lincoln cleverly used the latter to his advantage, saying that while he, Lincoln, desired "place and distinction as a politician ... I would rather die now than like the gentleman live to see the day that I would have to erect a lightning rod to protect a guilty Conscience from an offended God."
Speed, who heard Lincoln speak many times, in court and out, said that he never saw Lincoln in better form than on that occasion.
Lincoln won a second term in that 1836 election, and carried his speaking prowess into the Illinois House, where he became a Whig leader and colleagues regarded him as "a natural debater." When a group of legislators pushed to move the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield, for example, they looked to Lincoln as one of their two spokesmen, and their effort succeeded. Lincoln's success in distinguishing himself in that session of the Illinois legislature was all the more remarkable, as Ronald White, Jr. has noted, considering the talent in that session: "three future governors, six future U.S. senators, eight congressmen, a cabinet member, a number of generals, two presidential candidates, and one future president."
Lincoln then won a third term in the Illinois House two years later, in 1838, this time beating fifteen other candidates, and was by now so well regarded for his speaking ability that his party made him their choice for Speaker of the House. While he lost to the Democrats' nominee, and instead became "in effect minority leader," his party's regard for his ability to make a case was clear.
The next year (1839) featured a preview of an encounter that would repeat itself many times in the years to come, with ever increasing importance on a national level: Lincoln twice debated a Democrat named Stephen Douglas. The issue then was the differing economic policies of their respective parties, and the Bank of the United States, a point of especially heated contention. Lincoln did badly in the first debate, but redeemed himself in the second with a speech that a Whig colleague said "transcended our highest expectations," calling it "a triumphant vindication" of a magnitude that the colleague had never before heard or expected to hear.
Eight days later, Lincoln gave another speech that was reportedly so "powerful ... it became the Illinois Whig Party's textbook for 1840," and drew compliments even from Democrats.
The thirty-one-year-old Lincoln then continued to distinguish himself in campaigning the next year (1840) for the Whig presidential candidate, William Henry Harrison. John M. Scott, an attorney who later became Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, said that Lincoln was by that time considered "one of the ablest of the whig speakers," and the Quincy Whig wrote that, in political debate, no Democrat could "hold a candle to him."
Lincoln then campaigned again for the Whig presidential candidate, his hero, Henry Clay, four years later, in 1844. Lincoln made stump speeches for him throughout Illinois, again debating Democrat counterparts, impressing his audiences, and adding "much to his already well-established reputation as a stump speaker."
James C. Veatch, who heard Lincoln speak on tariffs in that campaign, said it was "the most remarkable speech that ... [he] had ever heard," on any topic. Joseph J. Lewis similarly wrote that another Lincoln speech in that campaign "presented arguments ... with a power and conclusiveness rarely equalled." D. W. Bartlett, the Washington, D.C. correspondent to the New York Independent and Evening Post, similarly praised Lincoln for the same speech, writing that it established Lincoln's reputation as the "ablest leader" of the Whigs "in the great West." Yet another observer, David Davis, a politically connected lawyer and judge who reportedly presided over more of Lincoln's trials than any other, said that by the 1844 campaign, Lincoln had become "the best Stump Speaker in the State."
After that 1844 campaign, Lincoln successfully positioned himself to win his district's congressional seat in 1847, in which he served one term, with two high points, both challenging President Polk on the Mexican-American War. The first came on December 22, just two weeks after Lincoln took his seat, when he introduced resolutions against that war, and the second was a floor speech that he made three weeks later, on January 12, 1848, which Michael Burlingame writes "was among the bitterest antiwar speeches delivered in the House up to that time."
Lincoln then headed north with his family during the congressional summer recess in 1848, to give campaign speeches in seven Massachusetts cities, again for the Whig presidential candidate, this time General Zachary Taylor. He did not disappoint. With past as prologue, he again distinguished himself.
The Boston Courier wrote that Lincoln gave "a most forcible and convincing speech" that "drew down thunders of applause." The Boston Daily Advertiser wrote that Lincoln gave a "truly masterly and convincing" speech in Worcester, "carrying the audience with him in his able arguments and brilliant illustrations." Henry J. Gardner, later a Governor of Massachusetts who heard the same speech, later recalled that Lincoln utterly captivated his audience:
He repeated anecdotes, told stories admirable in humor and in point, interspersed with bursts of true eloquence, which constantly brought down the house. ... [W]henever he attempted to stop, the shouts of "Go on! go on!" were deafening. He probably spoke over an hour, but so great was the enthusiasm time could not be measured. It was doubtless one of the best efforts of his life.
The Lowell Daily Journal reported that a Lincoln speech in Lowell, Massachusetts "was replete with good sense, sound reasoning, and irresistible argument, and spoken with that perfect command of manner and matter which so eminently distinguishes the Western orators." And the Old Colony Republican, in Taunton, Massachusetts, enthusiastically and colorfully praised a Lincoln speech there, writing:
Argument and anecdote, wit and wisdom, hymns and prophecies, platforms and syllogisms, came flying before the audience like wild game before the fierce hunter of the prairie.
There has been no gathering of any party ... where the responses of the audience were so frequent and so vigorous."
But his success in New England notwithstanding, when his term in Congress ended in March the next year (1849), Lincoln returned to Springfield with no plans for further elective office. He would focus for the next five years on his law practice, and it would be solely in the courtroom, during this period, that he would show his ability to make a case.
CHAPTER 2
Best in the State
LINCOLN BEGAN THE study of law in the early 1830s while working in a general store in New Salem and serving in the Illinois House. As with his non-legal education, he studied on his own, unlike "most law students of his day," who served "an apprenticeship with an established lawyer." He was found qualified to practice in Illinois on March 24, 18363 at age twenty-seven, and then moved to Springfield the next year, where he practiced for the next twenty-four, until February 1861, when he left for Washington as president-elect. He practiced during those years in three successive firms, each with one other law partner, the first being John Todd Stuart, the second Stephen T. Logan, and the third William H. Herndon. His practice largely was a general one, like that of most lawyers then, but it was in trials and appeals that he set himself apart.
He handled cases in the Illinois trial courts, both state and federal (in Springfield and Chicago), as well as in the Illinois Supreme Court, and even the U.S. Supreme Court, where he argued one case and was counsel in four others. He was involved in more than 5,100 cases, a number that, as historian Douglas Brinkley has written, is "truly staggering."
He tried cases year round, six months in Springfield (his county's seat) and six months outside it, riding from one county seat to another, along the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Illinois. The Circuit was in the middle third of the state, encompassing more than ten thousand square miles and a ride of four to five hundred miles through fifteen (later fourteen) counties. Lincoln rode that circuit with a judge and other lawyers, and was one of but a few who rode the full circuit all six months, and perhaps the only one who did so consistently. Frederick Trevor Hill, who studied Lincoln's career, said that Lincoln probably
tried more cases between 1849 and 1860 than any other man on the Eighth Circuit. He was the acknowledged leader of the local bar, whose services were constantly in demand, and the one man who could be relied upon to take a case in any of the counties comprising the circuit, for he alone covered the entire route.
He tried the cases that most lawyers handled in his day — debts, divorces, slander, the replevin of horses and mules — as well as two medical malpractice cases in which he represented the defendant doctors, and cases that many lawyers did not handle, among them patent infringement and admiralty cases (the latter involving ships on the Mississippi). He also had a significant number of cases involving railroads, as they expanded throughout the country. He represented them in seventy-one cases and opposed them in sixty-two.
He also tried murder cases, twenty-seven in all, the first in October 1838, just a year into his legal career, when he and his first senior partner, John Todd Stuart, were hired with three other lawyers for the defense. Stephen Logan, one of Springfield's most senior attorneys (and later Lincoln's second law partner), served as lead defense counsel, but the team chose Lincoln for the all-important closing argument, even though he was the youngest and least experienced member of the team. Logan later complimented Lincoln's speech as "short but strong and sensible," and their client was acquitted.
Lincoln tried at least one murder case as late as 1859,22 just a year before his election as president, and his best known murder case the year before that, in May 1858, several months before his famous debates with Stephen Douglas. The latter case was People v. Armstrong, in which the state accused William "Duff" Armstrong and another man of killing a third man in a late-night fight, on the outskirts of an evangelical camp meeting, where whiskey sellers had set up wagons. The prosecution alleged that the other defendant had hit the victim with a three-foot board, and that Armstrong had hit him with a "Slung Shot," a lead weight wrapped in a leather pouch that could be swung. The prosecution tried the other defendant first, won a conviction, and then turned to Armstrong.
Armstrong's parents had befriended the young Lincoln when he came to New Salem many years earlier, and when Armstrong was charged, his widowed mother asked Lincoln to help with the defense, which he agreed to do.
The key witness claimed that he saw what happened, even though it was late at night and he was some distance away, because of bright light from the moon high overhead. On cross-examination, Lincoln patiently asked him to repeat his story a number of times (the exact number varies according to different accounts), always emphasizing the importance of the moon high above. Then, after thus establishing the importance of the supposed moonlight, Lincoln produced an almanac showing that the moon had not been high overhead at the time of the incident, and had instead been within an hour of dropping below the horizon.
