ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S ALMANAC TRIAL: A LECTURE ABOUT THE TRIAL

Last week I went to Illinois to give a lecture to the Second Annual Abraham Lincoln's Legacy--Lessons for Today's Lawyers Seminar, which was put on by the Illinois State Bar Association (ISBA). What was really neat about the seminar was that it was held in the very courtroom where Abraham Lincoln tried his famous Almanac Trial. And the topic that I was going to speak on? The Almanac Trial, of course.

The less said about the airplane trip the better. The cheapest ticket I could find was a flight out of Orlando with a change of planes in Chicago. I got up at 6:00 AM, drove 2 1/2 hours to Orlando, got on the plane, flew for 2 1/2 hours to Chicago, and discovered that my connecting flight had been cancelled. I wound up sitting in O'Hare Airport for over 9 hours waiting on another connecting flight which kept being changed and postponed. I didn't get into the hotel in Springfield until 2:00 AM. It would have taken less time to get to the hotel if I had driven straight through from home. The only bright side of the flight was that I was able to polish off a 300 page book while sitting in O'Hare.

The next day I gave a lecture on Lincoln as a lawyer at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. Christian McWhirter, the Research Historian at the library was a gracious host and made me feel very much at home.

One thing that struck me was that they had on display a replica of a statue of Lincoln which is located in Beijing, China. Instead of trying to describe it, I'll just show a picture I took of it and also a picture of the plaque describing it:

 

After the presentation I went down to Books on the Square and renewed acquaintances there. They had just gotten in a huge shipment of books on Lincoln and were in the process of uncrating the books and sorting them out. I managed to get out of there without buying too many books. I only bought four books--"Lincoln's Generals," "Lincoln and his Generals," "American Iliad," and "Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant." If I had more room in my suitcase, I probably would have gotten more. I slept like a log at the hotel that night.

The next day Judge Ron Spears, who acted as my unofficial host during my stay in Illinois, gave me a ride to Beardstown for the lecture to the ISBA. I was disappointed to find that my old friend, Corky Kinstle, was no longer manning the gift shop on the first floor of the old courthouse. He had recently fallen ill and was still recuperating. This did not prevent him, however, from coming to the courthouse for a brief visit, and I got the opportunity to thank him again for all the help he had given me when I was researching my first book on Lincoln the lawyer.

The old courthouse is mostly a museum of Illinois history, but they still hold court in the courtroom on the second floor. I actually got to meet the judge who holds proceedings in the old courtroom--Judge Bobby G. Hardwick, who was the program coordinator for the seminar.

I thoroughly examined the museum's collection of antique firearms, both long guns and handguns, and sorely regretted that they were locked behind glass where I couldn't get the feel of some of the weapons. One weapon in particular intrigued me. It was a wagon gun--a huge long gun with a massive bore designed to fire scrap metal. The gun would be placed on the tail gate of a Conestoga wagon and used as artillery for the protection of wagon trains.

Wagon Gun

The pictures hung on the walls of the courtroom had almost all been changed, and there was a photograph of Duff Armstrong that I had never seen before.

Duff Armstrong

He certainly looked more presentable in the picture than he does in the more common picture of him in his uniform as a Union soldier.

Armstrong in Uniform

I was the first speaker of the morning, and I gave them my interpretation of the conflicting eyewitness reports of the course of the Almanac Trial. I think the presentation was well-received. At least nobody threw rotten fruit at me.

The second hour I gave a lecture which surveyed all of Lincoln's murder trials--at least all of those murder trials for which we have enough information to say something about. After delivering that lecture I joined the audience and spent the rest of the day listening to the other presentations.

The gift shop downstairs had stocked up on my books on Lincoln. When I got there that morning, I saw a table which was "chock-a-block" full of the books. When I went downstairs at the end of the day, I saw that the table was almost empty. I spent some time signing books that some of the attendees had bought, and then it was time to go back to Springfield. 

Judge Spears drove me back and treated me to supper at Smokey Bones Barbecue, and then he took me back to the hotel. I fell into bed and slept like a log until it was time to get up and go back to the airport. There were more delays at the airport, but I got home in time to see the second half of the Gator game. I might as well have been delayed a little longer.

All-in-all, it was an enjoyable trip despite the troubles at the airports. I met a lot of nice people, and I learned a lot about Lincoln's law practice from the other presenters.

ATTORNEY-GENERALS OF THE CIVIL WAR: BORING WITH TOO BIG AN AUGER

It's been a while since I posted to this blog, so I thought I'd update. It seems like the last century when I decided to write a book about the lawyer-generals of the Civil War, and I actually began by writing some mini-biographies of a few generals, but I soon found that I had two huge problems. First, I didn't know enough about the Civil War. Second, there were too many lawyer-generals. Four things have happened since I made these twin discoveries.

First, I have boned up on the Civil War, and I am continuing to study it as much as possible. It is a depressing study.

Second, my study has destroyed my working hypothesis that lawyers had unique skills which made them good generals. I still think that trial lawyers have skills which could translate to military leadership, but I see now that they also have major defects (arrogance is one) which make it difficult to overcome a lack of military education. As a result most lawyer-generals were miserable failures as generals, and the successful lawyer-generals had military educations (e.g. Henry Halleck, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Patrick Cleburne).

Third, I have scaled back my ambition. As we say in the North Florida Piney Woods, I'm boring with too big an auger. I need to put it down and get a smaller one. I can't write about all the lawyer-generals without the book becoming a multi-volume encyclopedia. I have lowered my aim to write only about the lawyers who were colleagues of Lincoln. The working title will be "Lincoln's Attorney Generals: The Eighth Circuit Goes to War."

Fourth, I have embarked upon another project which is consuming my time--a professional biography of Francis L. Wellman, the author of "The Art of Cross-Examination." I've got to finish with Wellman before I get back to "Lincoln's Attorney Generals." It may be a while. Several of Wellman's cases merit treatment as stand-alone books.

Wish me luck with my literary endeavors. I'm going to need it.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S ALMANAC TRIAL: WHEN WAS THE FAKE ALMANAC ALLEGATION FIRST MADE?

There's an old saying that a lie can go around the world before the truth gets its boots on, and that is certainly true about the charge that Lincoln used a forged almanac in his cross-examination of the prosecution's star witness against Duff Armstrong. The witness said he saw the murder by the light of the moon high overhead, and the almanac showed the moon was on the horizon at the time of the murder. The false charge has been rebutted and refuted numerous times over the years, but it never seems to die.

Beginning of the 1860 Campaign Article on the Almanac Trial

I wrote in "Lincoln's Most Famous Case" and again in "Prairie Defender" that the charge was first made in the 1860 presidential campaign after an account of the Almanac Trial was published as campaign literature under the title "Thrilling Episode in the Life of Abe Lincoln." This account was soon rebutted with the fake almanac allegation. As I was preparing for my visit to Illinois next week, I discovered that there was a tradition which held that the fake almanac allegation was made against Lincoln in his 1858 senatorial campaign against Stephen A. Douglas. I doubt that the allegation was made this early, and here is why:

The story of the trial hit the papers immediately after Lincoln was nominated. It played as a heartwarming human interest story but it was exaggerated to make the almanac show no moon at all when actually the moon was on the horizon. It’s hard to see why Lincoln’s handlers would have gone with the story if they knew of the fake almanac allegation. Second, the story was immediately answered by a sneering rebuttal entitled "Sensation Story Spoilt." It was supposedly written by someone who had intimate knowledge of the case, but he made no mention of the fake almanac. Third, there would be no suspicion of a fake almanac until someone fact-checked the no-moon detail of the pro-Lincoln propaganda against an almanac, which likely happened after the publication of "Sensation Story Spoilt." If the fake almanac allegation had already been made in 1858, it would have been featured in "Sensation Story Spoilt." None of the references I have seen which say the allegation was made in 1858 have footnotes or endnotes, so we don't know where they got their information.

Until I can see contemporary evidence of faked almanac allegations being made in the 1858 campaign, I’m going to believe that fading memories of long-ago events retrojected the 1860.

If anyone knows of a contemporary reference which supports the allegation being made in 1858, please bring it to my attention. I'd like to see it.

The Rebuttal to the 1860 Campaign Article

RON DeSANTIS'S CASE OF FOOT-IN-MOUTH DISEASE

A while back I was making a point that nobody is indispensable, and I used an old North Florida aphorism: "Don't one monkey make a show." One of my listeners chimed in and said that she was going to be using the saying in the future. I cautioned her that she should make sure that she added "You need some giraffes and elephants, too," to make it clear that she was referring to the circus and not making a racist comment. You can never be too careful about word choice. 

Too bad Ron DeSantis wasn't a party to my conversation. If he had been, I'm certain he would never have said Andrew Gillum would "monkey up" the state's recent economic success with his socialist agenda. An obviously innocent remark aimed at the economic system championed by Gillum has been twisted to make evidence of racism, and the news media is having a field day over a poor choice of words.

Why don't we talk about the real issue: whether socialism is preferable to free-labor capitalism? 

TRANSCRIBING THE LINDBERGH KIDNAPPING CASE

I have completed the transcript of the testimony of Frank J. Wilson, the 27th LKC prosecution witness. You can access the transcript here: FRANK J. WILSON.

You can access an index to transcripts of all the transcribed witnesses here: ***LINK TO INDEX OF ALL WITNESSES***