Lincoln Raw

by DL Fowler

  “Well, Lincoln,” says Harriott.

  “Sir?”

  The judge’s face is bright red, and his jugulars are bulging. “Where is Mrs. Goings?”

  I look over to the sheriff. “As I last recall, she was in the sheriff’s custody.”

  The sheriff bounces to his feet. “Your Honor, she was in Mr. Lincoln’s charge, not mine.”

  Harriott asks again of Mrs. Goings’ whereabouts.

  “Your Honor, when she was last with me, she complained of being thirsty and asked where she could find some water. I told her I understand they have mighty fine drinking water down in Tennessee. What the sheriff did with his charge after that I am unaware.”

  The spectators in the courtroom begin hooting as they would at an Independence Day parade. Judge Harriott pounds his gavel and mutters, “Next case.”

  On accepting Fullerton’s congratulations, I shake his hand and say, “Sometimes justice is a higher law than the statutes we make on its behalf.”

  During Congress’ Christmas recess, Senator Trumbull travels back from Washington City and calls on me. Though our wives are still not cordial, we’ve enjoyed a collegial relationship since I paved the way for him to claim Shields’ U.S. Senate seat in 1854.

  “Lincoln,” he says, “things might be looking in our favor, at least as far as the next Senate election is concerned. Douglas made a speech on the Senate floor defying President Buchanan on the Kansas Constitution. The Little Giant complains that accepting the LeCompton version, which Buchanan supports, goes against Popular Sovereignty; it was passed without support from a majority of voters. Douglas has spent years rallying his party around the Popular Sovereignty banner, and he’s not going to let that ground slip away without a fight. Now Buchanan has little Douglas in his sights and means to take him out.”

  I hand him the Chicago Tribune and ask, “Have you seen this? The opinion page says that Douglas will gradually drift toward the Republican side and eventually join the party in 1860.”

  Trumbull clutches the back of his neck. “With this feud between Douglas and Buchanan, the Democrats are coming apart at the seams. I hear Douglas demanded that the national Republicans force you to stand down from challenging his re-election to the Senate. When word of a deal got out, the story changed. Now Douglas says he’ll let you have the Senate if Republicans allow him to run unopposed for the House seat in his home district of Chicago.”

  I shake my head. “What’s his angle? He must have some trick up his sleeve.”

  “Don’t know. That’s a mystery so far.”

  I pick up a copy of the New York Tribune laced with praise for Douglas. “This doesn’t look like he has any plans to give me a clear path to the Senate seat.”

  Trumball takes the paper.

  I don’t wait for him to finish reading. “Shouldn’t a Republican editor like Horace Greeley be on my side?”

  He shrugs as he hands the paper back to me.

  I throw the paper down on my desk and glare at him. “Does Greeley speak for the national Republicans? Have they concluded their cause can be best promoted by sacrificing us in Illinois? If that’s so, I’d like to know it at once. It will save us a great deal of labor to surrender now.”

  Trumbull waves off my complaint. “Before coming down from Chicago, I met with Norman Judd, the Republican’s state committee chairman. He agrees that Greeley has done us some injury, but he’s not alarmed.”

  “Should I find solace in his lack of alarm?”

  He shakes his head. “We should always be on guard, especially when it comes to Douglas.”

  “Will you take a message to Judd for me? Tell him I’m the only one who can beat Douglas.”

  “He already knows that, and he’s more devoted to Illinois than he is to the national Republicans.”

  When Trumbull leaves, I send Billy Herndon to Washington to ask Douglas about his intentions with regard to the Senate.

  Several days later, Billy returns and tells me the little bantam leaned back in his oversized chair, propped his feet on top of his massive desk and lit a cigar. With a grin stretching across his face he said, “Tell Lincoln I have crossed the river and burned my boat. I do not intend to oppose him.”

  While in Washington City, Billy also learned that Buchanan is pushing a candidate to oppose Douglas for their party’s Senate nomination. The “Buchaneer” candidate, Judge Sidney Breese, feeds Billy a juicy morsel. He claims he was told by Senator George Jones of Iowa that Douglas has made a deal with the national Republicans. According to the deal, Seward will be the party’s candidate for president in 1860, and Douglas will get the nomination in 1864. He’ll be allowed to stay in the Senate in the meantime.

  Billy reminds me of something I said during the Senate race I lost to Trumbull. “The race of ambition has been a failure for me—a flat failure. For Douglas it has been one splendid success after another. His name fills the nation and is not unknown even in foreign lands.”

  I could have added that Mother must regret that she did not choose Douglas as her husband when she had the chance.

  Sweat runs down the back of my neck as I climb down off my horse in Beardstown. It’s unseasonably hot and muggy for early May. That means the courthouse will be stifling for the trial of twenty-four-year-old Duff Armstrong who’s accused of murder. Duff’s sweet mother Hannah has asked me to defend him. She and his recently deceased father, my dear friend Jack, gave me shelter and fed me when I was a penniless lad in New Salem.

  Judge Harriott, a “hanging judge” of mature years who attempted to try Mrs. Goings for murder in Metamora last fall, is to preside over the case. When I greet him in the lobby of Tom Beard’s City Hotel, his hard, cold eyes have softened, and his beard is noticeably greyer than a few months ago. His recent trip to Iowa to recover the body of his own son—a young doctor who was killed by Dakota Indians during the Spirit Lake Massacre—has subdued his countenance.

  I also find Hugh Fullerton, the slick-sure prosecutor, lounging by the empty fireplace. The fire in his eyes must account to some small degree for the abnormally warm temperatures. I suppose he’s still angry with me over Mrs. Goings slipping out of his clutches over in Metamora. Hugh tells me his key witness, Charles Allen, is missing, and the trial will not proceed without him. I want to tease him about losing a defendant and now a witness, but I bite my lip. Instead, I hurry off and locate Hannah to explain that Duff will remain in jail for another six months if Allen is not found and brought to testify.

  Not wanting any more delays, she sends two of her nephews out to the town of Virginia where they have sequestered Allen in hopes his absence would avert Duff’s conviction. By morning they return with Allen and the trial moves forward.

  Allen, a rough-edged, middle-aged house painter from Petersburg, remains calm and confident as he gives testimony under questioning by Fullerton. Allen contends that Duff hit William Metzker in the head using a slung shot, a lead ball cradled in a leather thong. He says the blow killed Metzker. Allen claims he was able to see the weapon clearly in Duff’s hand from a distance of around a hundred feet because the moon was almost directly overhead in the sky.

  During his testimony, I sit back, staring at a fixed spot on the blank ceiling, only breaking my gaze a few times to stand and ask the witness to repeat the position of the moon at the time of the assault. The sweat Fullerton daubs off his forehead is only partly due to the weather. My interruptions bring him closer to a boiling point.

  On cross examination, instead of haranguing Allen with the kind of invective I often use against opponents, I produce an almanac and turn to the page for the date of the assault.

  “Charles,” I say. “Can you read here where it tells us the time when the moon set that night?”

  Allen reads the entry in the almanac and looks up at me, wide-eyed.

  “Is something the matter?”

  He looks down at the page. “It … it says … it says the moon was setting….”


  “I’m sorry. Can you say that a little louder so that the jurymen can hear?”

  He looks up. “It says the moon was setting when Metzker was killed.”

  Fullerton jumps to his feet. “Your Honor?”

  Harriott calls us forward to the bench, asking to see the almanac. When he finishes reading it he hands it to the prosecutor.

  Fullerton studies it, glares at me, and hands it back to the judge.

  “Mr. Lincoln,” says Harriott, glaring down at me. “You’re mistaken. The moon was just coming up instead of going down.”

  “Your Honor, it serves my purpose nonetheless—just coming up, or just going down. It was not overhead as the witness swore it was. I would like the almanac entered into evidence.”

  Harriott looks at Fullerton. “Objections?”

  “No, Sir.”

  After dismissing Allen, Fullerton rests his case.

  I produce eight witnesses. One of them is a doctor who testifies that the wound above the victim’s eye, which was allegedly made by a slung shot found near the scene of the fight, was not made by such a heavy object and couldn’t have been fatal. Another witness claims that the slung shot in question belonged to him and was in his possession, not Duff’s, at the time of the fight. The other witnesses say Duff hit Metzker with his fists after Metzker, the more powerful man, attacked him.

  As I begin my closing argument, I remove my coat and vest. “Gentlemen, I admit that I have a personal investment in this case.” I gaze into each of their faces. They are all young men, most of them not yet thirty. I have encountered many of them as children as they’ve grown up here in Cass County. Their parents are well known to me as well. Some of the older ones such as Milt Logan, a farmer and leading citizen, have either been clients or adversaries in this very courtroom; if not that, we’ve crossed paths in politics. To a man, their expressions are warm and attentive.

  I turn and fix my eyes on Duff Armstrong. “When I was not much older than this boy, I often sat on the floor of his mother’s home, rocking his cradle.” I gesture toward Hannah sitting next to me, wearing a large sunbonnet covering her silvery hair. “On one such occasion, she was mending the only tattered suit of clothes I owned. I was penniless and alone in a strange village. They were one of many families that gave me shelter and fed me.”

  I turn back to the jurymen, removing my tie. “It would break his mother’s heart, and mine as well, to see him hanged for defending himself.” I dab tears with my tie and lay it on the witness chair. A juryman, Benjamin Eyre—the son of a plow and wagon manufacturer—swallows hard. Hannah begins to sob.

  I take a kerchief from my trouser pocket and wipe my brow. I point to Duff; the suspender on my left shoulder slips off and hangs at my side. “This good boy is too bright to have attacked a man much larger than himself—Metzker weighing about two-hundred pounds while Duff is only one-hundred and forty. Had Duff done so, he would have armed himself first, even if under the influence of whiskey.

  “Eight witnesses say Duff was unarmed. In fact, we are told that Metzker dragged Duff off of a bench, spat in his face and began to beat him. Only the witness Allen claims Duff was armed, but now he admits he could not have seen what he believes he saw due to darkness that evening. Furthermore, the alleged weapon was in someone else’s possession at the time of the fight.”

  I step up to the jury box and lean in towards the twelve men seated there. One of them, a farmer’s son who’s no older than Duff, smiles. My voice cracks. “This boy’s father was my dear friend. He died while Duff was in jail awaiting trial. Poor Jack never knew what his boy’s fate would be, but he died knowing he’d raised a good boy who got caught up in circumstances that weren’t of his own making. Circumstances that might have cost him his life if he hadn’t defended himself. But in choosing to defend himself that night, he trusted his life would be safe in a courtroom in the hands of good men like yourselves.”

  Again, I gaze into each of the jurymen’s faces. Not a single eye is dry. “I ask you, I plead with you to see the facts of this case clearly. If there be any doubt in your minds, consider a broken-hearted widow who needs her son back home to comfort her. Do not add the slightest blackness to her darkest hour.”

  Finally, I turn to Duff. “I can assure you on my own honor that this boy will go from here to make a good man of himself, as good a man as his father was.” They all nod and several wipe tears from their eyes.

  When Fullerton rises to make his summation, Hannah leaves the courtroom just as his ringing voice pronounces his greeting to the jury. I imagine she’s near the breaking point and can’t bear to hear what the prosecutor will say about her boy.

  One hour later, when the jury returns with a verdict of “Not Guilty,” Duff throws his arms around me, burying his face in my coat. Barely audible through his weeping, he asks, “How can I ever pay you for what you’ve done?”

  “You don’t owe me a thing, but I made a promise today, boy. Now it’s your job to keep it.”

  He nods. “I will, Sir. I will.”

  I smile. “You better. I whipped your pa many years ago, and don’t you think I can’t do the same to you, even in my mature years.”

  With my arm draped over his shoulder, we head off to find Hannah and deliver the joyful news.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  When I return home from the Armstrong trial, Billy Herndon waves a note at me and says, “Look at this. Your friends have been working.”

  I take the paper and read it. It’s a letter from Norman Judd to the Republicans of Illinois.

  In 1855 Mr. Lincoln threw his votes to Trumbull in order to defeat a Douglas man for the Senate, creating upon us a moral obligation which we have no wish to avoid.

  The Republican State Committee therefore resolves spontaneously and heartily to call a general state convention for the purpose of nominating Abraham Lincoln as the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the U.S. Senate, as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas.

  Never before have either Whigs or Republicans aimed to settle on a single nominee for the office of United States Senate. Judd’s letter encourages his party to do just that.

  A lump rises in my throat. I tell Billy, “Reckon I’d be crying if my reservoir of tears hadn’t been drained back in Beardstown.”

  Before appearing at the state convention to accept the Republican Party’s nomination, I prepare a speech and take it to the office for Billy to read.

  When he finishes reading it, he shakes his head. “It’s politically the wrong thing. You come within a hair of saying war is certain.”

  I throw up my hands. “I’ve chosen to anchor my argument on a universally known expression, something that will strike home in the minds of men and rouse them to the peril of the times. But never do I intend to advocate bloodshed.”

  He shrugs.

  I glare at him and stuff my speech back under my hat. “It is indisputably true that the Nebraska Act has surely made the slave question harder to resolve, and I will deliver it as written.”

  He sags back into his chair.

  At eight o’clock that evening, June 16, 1858, I stand before one-thousand delegates at the Illinois Republican Convention to accept the young party’s first nomination for the United States Senate. My stomach is twisted in knots.

  Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention,

  If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

  We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to the argument over slavery.

  Under that policy the agitation not only has not ceased, but has constantly increased.

  In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.

  “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

  I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half
free.

  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

  It will become all one thing or all the other.

  Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South.

  The delegates rise and give me an unspirited ovation. I study their staid expressions, laced with worry. After I descend from the platform, Leonard Swett, my Maine-bred, Logan County lawyer-friend, greets me. He strokes his wiry beard and scowls. “Nothing could have been more unfortunate or inappropriate.”

  I let out a heavy sigh.

  The next day, newspapers report sharper criticism from the national Republicans. Greeley responds, You have repelled Douglas who might have been conciliated and attached to our side. Now go ahead and fight it through. He’s been courting Douglas to join the Republican ranks since President Buchanan set about cutting the Little Giant down to size.

  Billy’s warning echoes through my thoughts when an editor for The National Era writes, Lincoln is a man of inflexible political integrity. He is too open and honest to succeed.

  An even less sympathetic opinion comes from the Peoria Daily Telegraph—Honorable Abe Lincoln is undoubtedly the most unfortunate politician that has ever attempted to arise in Illinois. In everything he undertakes, politically, he seems doomed to failure.

  I press the heel of my hand against my forehead. “What does Providence have against me?”

  Later that evening, I sit by the home fire, reflecting on William Cullen Bryant’s Thanatopsis and settle on these lines:

  What if thou shalt fall, unnoticed by the living,

  and no friend take note of thy departure?

  All that breathe will share thy destiny.