Ed: Major funding for BackStory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

Ed: From Virginia Humanities, this is BackStory.

Ed: Welcome to BackStory, the show that explains the history behind today's headlines. I'm Ed Ayers. If you're new to the podcast, my colleagues Brian Balogh, Joanne Freeman, Nathan Connolly and I are all historians, and each week we explore the history of one top that's been in the news.

Ed: We're gonna start today in Springfield, Illinois. It's summer's end, 1859 and jury members are being selected for a murder case. Peachy Quinn Harrison, just 22 years old is on trial for Greek Crafton, stabbed after an altercation at a local drugstore.

David: The different lawyers took turns questioning prospects. "Do you know the defendant or his family? Did you know the defendant?" Or as the prosecution pointedly described Greek, "The victim, or his family.", "what is it you do to learn a living?", once even, "Are you sober?" To which came the response, "You mean right now?" "Do you consider yourself a political man?" "Have you read about this case in the newspapers?"

David: As the afternoon heated up, the jury box started to be filled.

Dan: Basically what had happened is the two of them had been friends, were no longer friends and they got into some sort of dispute, it's unclear exactly what led to the dispute, there are a number of theories to what led to it, but regardless, they start telling friends. The victim, whose name was Greek Crafton starts telling friends that he's gonna beat up the defendant Peachy Quinn Harrison, these great 1800 names, Greek and Peachy.

Dan: And he says he's gonna beat up Peachy Harrison and then Peachy then tells a friend that if he tries, he'll kill him.

Ed: That's Dan Abrams, along with David Fisher, he's written a new book on the Crafton murder case. It was a dramatic, even lurid case. Two childhood friends involved in a viscous fight that turned fatal. And the defendant had a lawyer, you might have heard of.

Dan: So Peachy goes and borrows a knife from a friend of his to carry around with him, because Peachy is much smaller than Greek. And Peachy was worried that Greek was gonna come after him. So Peachy carries this knife on him for days and then lo and behold, Peachy is sitting in a drugstore/diner, reading a paper with the proprietor. Greek's brother John Crafton is already there. Greek walks in, immediately walks up to Peachy and a fight ensues. John Crafton gets involved as well, Peachy eventually pulls out his knife, stabs John Crafton, stabs Greek Crafton, Greek eventually dies three days later, John Crafton survives and becomes the key witness against Peachy in the trial.

Transcript by Rev.com Dan: And this was a self-defense case. So Peachy was claiming that he was in reasonable fear of grave bodily injury or death and that's why he used the knife, and Lincoln was a co- council for the defense, and Lincoln actually knew the family, Peachy's family for a long time. I think it's one of the reasons he took the case, but he also knew the victim.

Dan: The victim had actually worked in his Lofts.

Ed: So it's pretty amazing, and then a lot of it turns around, a death bed, not confession but forgiveness from Greek to the grandfather of the guy charged with killing him. So how could that happen?

Dan: One of the best known people in the country at that time, preacher, was Peter Cartwright. And Peter Cartwright was also a long time political rival of Lincoln's. They really despised each other. And yet he became a critical witness for the defense. Meaning because he was such a well-known preacher, he was asked to go and council Greek.

Dan: It was unclear if he was about to die, but he was clearly not well and severely injured. And in the context of that conversation, he allegedly says "I forgive Quinn," his real name is Peachy Quinn Harrison. "I forgive Quinn, I brought this upon myself."

Dan: Now, in a self-defense case, "I brought this upon myself." You can't have a better comment than that. And there became a huge legal fight about whether that phrase should be admitted at the trial. And I think that was the most important legal argument and in fact Lincoln actually lost the argument at first and became enraged at the judge.

Dan: I mean we have firsthand descriptions from people who were there, talk about how angry Lincoln was, that he was almost climbing on the bench. People had never seen him so furious at the initial ruling. Eventually the judge allowed in that testimony.

David: With no warning, Lincoln erupted, springing from his chair and demanding in a massive voice that rattled the courtroom walls, "Your Honor, we need to see this through, every last bit of it."

David: Days later, William Herndon wrote, "I shall never forget the scene. Lincoln had the crowd and a portion of the bar with him. He was wrought to the point of madness. He was mad all over. He was alternately furious and eloquent, pursuing the court with broad facts and pointed inquiries in marked and rapid succession. When he was finished, Judge Rice glared at him. 'You finished?' 'I am, Your Honor, thank you.'"

Dan: Meaning Lincoln had both the ability to focus on statutes and words and the importance of them, but in the end, his real strength as a lawyer was his ability to bond with people. That he knew how to talk to jurors. And in fact, back then, lawyers were permitted more to talk about personal experiences, to kind of schmooze with the jurors. These days, that would be viewed as inappropriate in the context of an opening or closing.

Dan: But then, that's one of the things that really helped distinguish Lincoln the lawyer.

Transcript by Rev.com David: Lincoln walked to the jury box and took in all twelve of them with a glance. He wished them "Afternoon," and said "Hello," to those five or six men he knew by first name. He was following the first rule of good criminal lawyering. He was building a relationship with the jury. He was just Abe, their neighbor, the man who shared their values and their lives, standing here hoping they could solve this sticky problem together.

David: Years earlier, Lincoln had given practical advice about talking to a jury to a young man he was mentoring. "Talk to the jury as though your clients fate depends on every word you utter. Forget that you have anyone to fall back on and you will do justice to yourself and your client."

Ed: And they schmoozed a lot, I was kind of taken aback when I read in your book that "And then the next closing argument was three hours."

Dan: Yeah, yeah. Well, look, in a lot of high profile cases these days, closing arguments can take many hours, but there's no question that then a lot of it was schmoozing and was talking to the jurors. Because remember that these are people who are in a very discreet community, this is Springfield, Illinois in 1859 and have only white men of a certain age who are landowners.

Dan: So you have a limited pool of people. Many of them knew the defendant or knew the victim, or knew Lincoln. So the sort of casual atmosphere, when people ask me what is one of the biggest differences between courtrooms then and today? And one of the biggest differences is they were just simply more casual back then.

Dan: Of course in addition to having spittoons in the courtroom.

Ed: Dan Abrams is the chief legal affairs anchor for ABC News. He's the author along with David Fish of Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency.

Ed: Today on backstory, we're going to be looking at the legal career of the 16th President of the United States. Now Abraham Lincoln wasn't the first or the last lawyer to hold the highest office in the land, in fact there have been so many lawyers in the White House that it sometimes seems as though a background in the law is a requirement to be president. But it's fair to say that the White House had never been home to a lawyer like Lincoln before.

Ed: A backwoods lawyer who applied his trade in the circuit around Illinois, representing pretty much anyone who needed him. What kind of cases did Lincoln take on? What sort of lawyer was he? And how did his decades long legal career prepare him to run the country?

Ed: Later in the show, I'll be talking to Doris Kearns Goodwin about how Lincoln the lawyer transformed into Lincoln the leader. But first, let's find out a little more about the daily diet of legal cases that made up Lincoln's caseload.

Transcript by Rev.com Ed: We just heard about the pivotal murder trial that helped propel Lincoln into the White House. But Lincoln's resume as a lawyer extended far beyond defending accused killers.

Brian: It would be easier to try and find a type of case that he didn't litigate, but back in those days lawyers really didn't specialize as a rule because they couldn't earn a living that way.

Ed: That's historian Brian Dirck. He's written about Lincoln's law practice based on research from the Lincoln Legal Papers Project. They've uncovered thousands of documents about Lincoln's legal work.

Ed: Dirck says Lincoln was a general practice lawyer who rarely litigated criminal cases.

Brian: About half of his cases were debt collection cases. Lawyers back in those days took the place of what we have now with credit rating companies and skip tracers and the like and you'd go get a lawyer to collect your debt, and that's what he did probably about half the time.

Brian: But he also did probate, he did a lot of divorce, I was surprised at the number of divorce cases he handled. I mean it lists a little bit of everything. Petty larceny, slander. The slander cases are a blast, by the way. I mean our ancestors could throw shade better than we ever gave them credit for, you know?

Ed: In order to win these slander and larceny cases, Lincoln had to cater to a different clientele each time he stepped into the courtroom. Dirck says this is where Lincoln was more versatile and clever then people might remember.

Brian: His whole "Aw shucks, rail splitter, Honest Abe thing," I mean if you get deep into his practice, there's this great quote from one of his lawyer friends, and I forget which, I think it might be Usher or [inaudible 00:11:29], or maybe somebody else, but he said "People who mistook Lincoln for a simpleton would very soon wind up with their back in the ditch," and I thought that was a really good way to put it.

Brian: You think you got this backwards hick, and the next thing you know, he just won the case and he's walking away with a smile on his face. Lincoln was very good at that.

Ed: He used it, he knew that that was the impression that people had of him and he didn't care, right?

Brian: Oh heck yeah, I found, he didn't care, he used it. They had this one case where this guy says, I'm kind of paraphrasing here, but this guy says "God, I saw lawyer Lincoln the other day and he looks like a completely hick, I mean his shirt's undone, his boots are dusty, he looks like a farmer," and then I looked at the case and the case was having farmers. And then I saw somebody else say "Well I heard that Lincoln was a hick but he's dressed real nice," and that case involved businessmen.

Transcript by Rev.com Brian: I think he suddenly knew how to manipulate his image to get what he needed to get in a courtroom, absolutely.

Ed: So was he able to build a reputation out of this or was he seen as just sort of a lawyer dealing with small matters?

Brian: You've gotta look at the practice over the whole 25 years. When he first started, I think he struggled, the first couple of years because he was partnered with John Todd Stewart, Mary's relation at that. Stuart went to congress and kind of left Lincoln holding the bag, so to speak and he was struggling. And that's when he's got all these [Penny Enny 00:13:01] cases and all that.

Brian: But as he gets more experienced and as he changes partners, he goes to Stephen Logan and eventually Billy Herndon his last partner, he gets bigger cases for more money and then if you get into like the mid to late 1850s, he's litigating some pretty lucrative stuff, especially for the local railroad, so he gets better as he goes along, yeah.

Ed: So my understanding is that lawyers would sort of travel a circuit together, they were sort of living in the same boarding houses and eating together and traveling together, is that right, first of all?

Brian: Oh yeah, absolutely. That's one of the most fun things to write about. Because you couldn't just sit in your wall office and just wait for business to come to you, I mean lawyers still can't do that. So what they did was they had circuits where you'd have like 10 or 15 counties but only one judge because they were too cheap to buy a judge for every county.

Brian: So the judge would saddle up twice a year usually, they'd get like six or seven lawyers including Lincoln and they would travel from county to county. And all the people in that county knew what day court day was, so they'd show up the night before, next morning, some farmer might walk over to Lincoln and say "Hi Mr. Lincoln, I'm Bob, I'm really hacked off at my buddy Fred over there, I want my pig back," or whatever and then Lincoln would gin up a case and then they'd litigate it and then they'd move on.

Brian: And this was the backbone of much of his litigation, absolutely.

Ed: And so he developed a good reputation among his fellow lawyers?

Brian: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Lincoln was not a legal innovator, you don't look at his cases and go "Whoa, here is a frontier John Marshall," or something like that. No, it's nothing like that, but I concluded that he was respected by his fellow attorneys a great deal and he must have been respected by his clients because he got a lot of repeat business.

Brian: And these people just kept coming back to him over and over and that's gotta tell you something, that they trust him and they like him and as far as I know, while he was a lawyer, he was almost never accused of any legal impropriety or any ethics violations or anything like that.

Transcript by Rev.com Ed: Well that's good, given his nickname. Did he have his eye on politics along the way or was he really submerged in the legal practice?

Brian: Both, you know. I've read in some biographies that "Well, the law was just his pastime, but he really wanted to be in politics." And while I think there's some truth to that, I think that's overstating it. I think he saw them as kind of meshing together. Because think about the number of people this guy would have met, riding circuit.

Brian: I mean people said "God, everybody knows Abe," and that was the backbone of his practice and then moreover, several of these lawyers and the judge especially, David Davis whom he practiced with were instrumental in getting him the nomination in 1860 for the Republican Party. So there's like a very, very intimate relationship between what he did as a lawyer and what he did as a politician.

Ed: One of the most controversial trials in Lincoln's career is known as the Matson Slave Case. Here, Lincoln represented the slave owner Robert Matson against an enslaved family named the Bryants. Now Matson was from Kentucky but he had a farm in Illinois and he'd often bring the Bryants up to work on it.

Ed: So the Bryants sued Matson for their freedom because Illinois was a free state. Lincoln and his legal team lost the case and the Bryants were freed. The trial is sometimes used to label Lincoln, the guy we know as the great emancipator as a hypocrite on slavery. But Dirck says it's more complicated than that.

Brian: People mention the Matson case and go "Yeah, look at the guy, he's a bigot," he was defending a slaveholder. Well here's the thing, first of all, over the course of those 5000 cases, a tiny handful involved African-Americans and slavery. He didn't litigate many slave related cases, and if you look at all of the cases, not just the Matson case, they're all over the map.

Brian: I mean he also defended several men who were charged with felonies for aiding fugitive slaves. He also tried to use the Northwest Ordinance to get a slave free. He did legal work for his African-American lawyer, Billy the Barber, but then he also did the Matson case.

Brian: I mean you can't look at these cases and then say "Oh, there's the real Lincoln," no I mean, you've gotta look at the whole thing and what he believed was "Look, I'm a lawyer, my ethic is to represent my client to the best of my ability." I mean the story goes that the Matson slaves, their lawyer knew Lincoln and knew he was anti-slavery and came over to him and said "Abe, what are you doing on this side, man?" And he said Lincoln looked really sad and he kind of said "You know, I've already promised that I'm gonna defend him, I can't turn around and drop this case now."

Brian: I think he had a case of legal ethics. I have to defend these people to the best of my legal ability and there's a legend that Lincoln really threw the case, I don't buy that. I think he did the best he could, but he's a lawyer and he has a professional obligation to do these things.

Transcript by Rev.com Ed: And that echoes in many ways what he said through the Civil War, which "I have to obey the Constitution, even as we are trying to accomplish these other things."

Brian: Yes, absolutely and I don't think people adequately appreciate how hamstrung he was by the Constitution, and he couldn't just ditch it because after all, the union represented the rule of law. The rule of the Constitution, the whole argument was that the rebellion was the essence of anarchy. If he abandons, that, he has very little moral standing, especially with European powers like England and France were watching what's going on.

Ed: Brian Dirck is the professor of history at Anderson University, he's also the author of Lincoln the Lawyer. We'll hear more from Brian later about what Lincoln brought from his time in the courtroom to The White House.

Ed: Lincoln biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin's new book looks at exactly how Lincoln transitioned from a small town lawyer to a national leader. I sat down with her to discuss the lasting impact of Lincoln's legal career, on his leadership style and character.

Ed: Was Lincoln born to be a lawyer?

Doris: You know, I think he was born to try to explain things that could be understood by people, he was born to try to persuade people of things, he had a gift for language, I suppose that's the one in-born thing you have. You have a gift for language and then you have, I think he was born with empathy, another quality that could either be in-born or developed, meaning he could understand other people's points of view, he just could feel other people's feelings.

Doris: And those things happen, I think in allowing him to become a really great lawyer that he became, we forget it because he became president, we forget the lawyer part of him.

Ed: Now you tell really the heartbreaking story of his father leaving his sister and him there in a cabin with the dirt floor and sort of on their own for months, do you think that empathy comes from having been so miserable as a child?

Doris: No, I do think there was something about Lincoln's upbringing which was so difficult, I mean he had only 11 months of full schooling and he so desired to learn. So that he had to scour the countryside for books and get everything he could lay his hands on, and there was a sense in which he had such an appreciation for it, you know.

Doris: When he got a copy of the King James' Bible or Aesop's Fables, he was so excited, he couldn't eat, he couldn't sleep, there was that sense of knowing how special it was. And his father kept taking books away from him, making him feel that somehow he was useless and lazy for not working in the fields, so he somehow began to understand what other people in his circumstances were feeling. But he also wanted to escape from that, so that was the imagination that allowed him to decide, someday, if I work really hard and if I can educate myself, I won't be cutting rails, or I won't be shucking corn, the rest of my life.

Transcript by Rev.com Ed: Yeah, I think you show us it was sort of a generalized, directionless ambition that he had. It was not directed to the law very early, it seems to me.

Doris: I think the law was a way of moving upward in that society where he was. I mean there were routes for ambitious youth and I think one of them was politics and the other one was the law. And I think in some ways, you know politics almost came first, because he's only 23 years old when he decides to run for the state legislature in the little town of New Salem where he'd only lived for six months, it was an incredibly brave thing to do.

Doris: But he even talks about his ambition then, he said "Every man has his peculiar ambition, mine is to be esteemed of by my fellow man and to be worthy of that esteem," which is an unusual thing for a young person to put it in those terms, something for the greater good rather than just for himself.

Doris: But his partner and friend who he had known in that area was a lawyer, they helped lend law books to him and I think he saw that that would be what he can do and it could mix with politics as it did so well in that time and still does today.

Ed: So do you think the law ever became a goal in its own end for him, or was it always a way to get that esteem that he acknowledged in his early days?

Doris: You know, that's a really interesting question. I mean I don't think it ever became something on its own, although I think he really enjoyed it. I mean they said when he went on the circuit, two things would happen. One he was a mentor to the younger lawyers, they said he was the one who always looked after them so he had already established a certain kind of reputation and he was willing to do everything he could to educate the younger lawyers who he always treated with kindness. But even more importantly, the lawyers when they would argue against one another during the day, during these six week tours would stay at the same taverns at night.

Doris: And when anyone knew Lincoln was around, they would come from miles around to hear him tell stories. He had perfected the art of telling winding story tales. And he would stand with his back against the fire and then he would unleash these tales one after the other and some of them were simply Aesop's Fables put in the form of a tale, that he had loved so much as a child but some of them were actually just funny. Funny tales, and he honed that gift of humor and storytelling that would be his lifesaver really during the later years of his presidency. And what he would always be able to use when he needed to break up a cabinet meeting or quell somebody's anxiety.

Doris: And then he was also still educating himself, so I think there's no question that when he got to be a lawyer of more repute in Illinois, he was still moving toward politics because he was trying to understand the anti-slavery movement, what was going on in politics, and he would study the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution for the speeches that he would have to make and then that moved him much more easily into the political realm.

Transcript by Rev.com Doris: So the legal background, I think was absolutely critical to his becoming a politician and I'm not sure I had fully recognized that as much.

Ed: Well, I didn't recognize it as much until I read your book. And the other thing I discovered was that married to that storytelling impulse was this relentlessly logical approach, which people might not think would go together with storytelling. I mean it's like get to the point, we've got important business here to conduct, but I think you show us that he was at the same time that he was telling these stories, working toward a purpose, and he brings this relentless logic to everything he does.

Ed: How does he marry those two things?

Doris: People would say to him, "Why do you tell so many stories?" And he'd say "Because people remember stories better than facts and figures, that somehow a story has a beginning, a middle and an end." But embedded in those stories that he would tell, especially if it had to do with the legal issues or the political issues facing the country, would be a relentless logic.

Doris: That's why he studied [inaudible 00:24:56], that's why he studied mathematics. You know, when he was talking about the question about whether a person was black or white or tall or short, he made it a logical thing of why should we think that one person is better than the other. Suppose somebody's black, suppose somebody's blacker than black? Suppose somebody's whiter than black?

Doris: It was just brilliant to watch that logical movement. And he brought people with him, I mean that was the key, he said "You have to start where the people are and then you have to tell them where we came from, where we are now and where we're going."

Doris: So he would embed the arguments about slavery and the history of the country, he would embed the prejudices that people had in certain kinds of logical analysis and all together. But I think it was the force and the conviction of his person and how he came to believe so strongly in the need to not allow slavery to go to the western territories which was all that was really there in the 50s.

Doris: And then the legal degree also helped him, the legal arguments, when he was in the Stephen Douglas debates. And that's no question that that catapulted him into the presidency. You know those were really legal arguments against one another. You know, 6000 people would be coming, it would sometimes last six to eight hours and it would be a logical argument against one another. Philosophy would be there, history would be there, and the audiences responded as if it was a sporting event.

Doris: I love listening to the audiences' reaction sometimes, they would say "Hit him again, hit him again. Harder, harder," as if they were part of the whole sporting event.

Ed: And they were kind of marathons too, you had to have durability as an audience member as well as the speaker to last all those hours, right?

Transcript by Rev.com Doris: Right. The first person might speak for an hour and 45 minutes and then there'd be a rebuttal for an hour and 45 minutes and then there'd be another hour and another hour and at one point, Lincoln, it was great, in one of the first big debates after Douglas had taken a substantial amount of time and he knew that his part would then be running into dinner. So he asked intimately of the group, he said "Would it be alright if we break for dinner now? And I'll know you'll come back because Steven Douglas will speak after me again, I'll give him extra time so all of the Douglas people will come back and I'll have my people here."

Doris: And it just was great, it was this conversation intimately connected to the people in the debate audience and they did go on until like 11 at night, it was extraordinary, starting in the afternoon.

Ed: Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is the author of many books. Her most recent is Leadership in Turbulent Times. We'll hear more of my interview with her towards the end of the show when she reflects on how Lincoln's legal background defined his leadership style in office.

Ed: While Lincoln the lawyer changed the course of history, he didn't do it alone. Our friend Lindsay Graham, not the senator, but the host of the American History Tellers Podcast has a new audio drama. The podcast looks at how another lawyer, Edwin Stanton who served in Lincoln's cabinet, fought to preserve Lincoln's legacy after his assassination.

Ed: Lindsay, thanks for joining us on BackStory. I'm excited to hear about your new podcast, 1865. What made you focus on Edwin Stanton as your protagonist.

Lindsay: Well first of all, thank you for having me, Ed, it's a pleasure. 1865 is about a country in turmoil after Lincoln's assassination. And Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's adversary turned ally is the character who steps up and tried to take control of a reeling and wounded nation.

Steven: He is an incredibly exasperating historical figure. He is simultaneously heroic and strong and fiercely intelligent. But he's also at times morally dubious.

Ed: That's Steven Walters, the co-writer of 1865.

Steven: He's a bit of a Dick Cheney figure, right? He sort of assumes power that really isn't his, in the name of keeping the country together, he makes some really difficult choices. He declares martial law, he presides over the largest manhunt in United States history to bring John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices to justice.

Lindsay: And while Stanton perhaps seeks justice through unsavory means, Steven Walters imagines that Stanton's loyalty to his deceased president is genuine and enduring.

Steven: Stanton stands up in front of the who's who of Washington. A man who's not that comfortable giving speeches in this version of him that I've created. I'll read it to you, he says, "I thought Mr. Lincoln a dreadful litigator, a useless man and an even bigger fool-"

Transcript by Rev.com Speaker 9: "It was the first time in my career that I was wrong and it would not be the last time that I would underestimate Mr. Lincoln. Gentlemen. John Wilkes Booth is dead. But the cause which he represents did not die with Mr. Booth. Indeed, his actions have stoked the fires of rebellion all across south and given hope to those that oppose the cause of liberty for which Mr. Lincoln gave his life. The battle between the states is over, but the war for the soul of our nation is just beginning. In waging this war, we must be merciless. I leave you tonight with the words of Mr. Lincoln himself. If ever the destruction of our nation must spring up amongst us, it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. Let us heed his warning. God bless Mr. Lincoln and God preserve and keep our sacred union."

Walter: You've done a great job there of capturing Stanton's commitment to Lincoln's legacy and the emotions of that moment when the south is still chaotic.

Lindsay: And that's Walter Stahr. He's the author of the book Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary. Stahr says that Stanton and Lincoln shared a similar upbringing, even if they became ideological opposites.

Walter: So he's roughly a contemporary of Lincoln, he's born in 184 in Ohio, so like Lincoln a mid-westerner. Like Lincoln he knows poverty in his youth. His father died when he was quite young and left a widow with no money. Like Lincoln a lawyer, and like Lincoln, active in politics, but as you mentioned, an adversary, whereas Lincoln was a staunch Whig, Stanton was a staunch Democrat.

Lindsay: Stanton was prolific and had a lot of cases. One case that I am fascinated by and really hope to, I have another podcast called American Scandal, and this is perfect for that show.

Walter: I know where you're going, you're going to Daniel Sickles.

Lindsay: Yes, tell us about him, his trial, what he was accused of and how Edwin Stanton came to his rescue.

Walter: So Daniel Sickles before the Civil War was a member of Congress. He was seen as kind of a protegee of the Democratic president, James Buchanan and one fine day in Lafayette Square in Washington DC, in broad daylight, he pulled a pistol and shot and killed his wife's lover, who was at the time the district attorney for the District of Columbia, this was the OJ Simpson trial of its age.

Walter: It was covered in excruciating detail in not just the DC papers, but the New York papers and the Philadelphia papers, the courtroom was packed, its one of the first, if not the first case in which a kind of temporary insanity case was run.

Walter: Stanton would have helped with that but his key contribution at least is, you can read it in the record, is what I call the family defense, he gave a long speech which quoted more from the bible than court cases talking about how the sanctity of the family and

Transcript by Rev.com basically argued that in shooting his wife's lover, Sickles was merely defending himself and his family.

Walter: And when I say it it sounds sort of weak and pathetic, but it must have been effective because in less than an hour the jury acquitted Sickles and he was carried out of the courtroom by the cheering crowd to freedom.

Lindsay: Lincoln the lawyer and Stanton the lawyer did cross paths during a patent case in Cincinnati. At this point, Stanton was already a celebrated successful lawyer, but Lincoln was still just a small town circuit attorney. And Walter Stahr cautions that it may be apocryphal.

Lindsay: According to some accounts, Stanton's performance at the trial in Cincinnati had a lasting impact on Lincoln.

Walter: Lincoln supposedly told a friend that he was so impressed by Stanton's closing argument. He had never seen anything so finished and elaborated that he intended to go home to Illinois to study law.

Lindsay: So Stanton the lawyer, we're getting a picture of someone who is driven, obstinate and likes to win. Those sound like qualities that might have brought him into politics.

Walter: Unlike Lincoln, Stanton is not a candidate. Stanton is more the writing letters, organizing rallies, more of the backroom, rather than the candidate.

Lindsay: Is this a reason why Lincoln brings him into his cabinet?

Walter: That's part of it but he actually wanted a Democrat. He wanted to sort of send the signal that this was not just a Republican war. Remember that Lincoln is elected with less than 40% of the popular vote. He wants, if possible to unite as many people as he can in the north behind the war. And then Stanton had a reputation as a man who worked incredibly hard and effectively and that is what Lincoln felt he needed in the war department.

Lindsay: So we have two lawyers, both prosecuting a war. How did they differ in their leadership in this time?

Walter: Lincoln, famously a soft touch for widows and orphans and just ordinary folks and Stanton, kind of famously short-tempered, rude, dictatorial, you could refer to it as a good cop, bad cop routine in which Lincoln plays the good cop, "Oh, I understand but you'll have to talk to Stanton," and Stanton happily playing the role of the bad cop. "No, sorry, that can't be done. Next person."

Lindsay: But for all their differences, Stanton and Lincoln shared a common lawyerly commitment to facts, precision and reason.

Transcript by Rev.com Walter: Stanton is drafting the program for this raising of the flag in Charleston, which they want to do exactly four years after the flag was lowered at Fort Sumter. And so he sends a draft of the program to Lincoln and Lincoln writes back and says "You know, it looks fine, except I think you've got the date wrong, because I'm pretty sure that the date was one day before what you've got," and Stanton goes back by telegraph to Lincoln and says, "Well, I understand that, that's when the news came that Fort Sumter would surrender, but the actual surrender ceremony takes place on the next day."

Walter: Nobody but two lawyer, right as Lee was about to surrender to Grant would take time to debate whether something occurred on the 14th or 15th of April. But two lawyers are willing to spend a little bit of time, it's a friendly discussion but a little bit of time to get the details right.

Lindsay: To what extent do you think Stanton really was faithful to Lincoln in his prosecution of a reconstruction?

Walter: It's a big topic. In one sense, very faithful. Lincoln and Stanton were both very concerned about the fates of blacks in the south. Lincoln however was also very concerned to bring back into the fold southern whites. And indeed, just a couple days before Lincoln's death there's tension and disagreement between Lincoln and Stanton over this issue.

Walter: And he felt very strongly through his whole time in the war department that the southern resistance to occupation and reconstruction was a form of continuation of the southern side of the Civil War. To live up to Lincoln's legacy, the union, the north had to reconstruct the south into a new society, not merely allow southern whites to reimpose slavery by another name on southern blacks.

Lindsay: It's precisely this lingering question. What Lincoln could have achieved through reconstruction and what it became in his absence. That influenced Steve and Walter's writing of 1865.

Steven: We have some clues, we have some ideas, but we don't actually know because he was taken before his time. And I think Stanton felt that it was up to him to carry forward the core principles of Lincoln's presidency into reconstruction. In many cases irrespective of what Lincoln actually wanted. It's very strange that in the aftermath of a rebellion that a spirit of generosity and a spirit of unification, which I think is well-intentioned on the part of the union and certainly well-intentioned on the part of some southerners leads to a situation where the Antebellum agricultural white power structure is immediately put back into place.

Steven: And within years of the Civil War, the officials from the south, who were Confederate officers, Confederate government leaders including the vice president of the Confederacy are seated in Congress. There's tension between the rights of the states and the rights of the union, the rights of the Federal Government really are brought to bear in the reconstruction era.

Transcript by Rev.com Steven: And it's the freedmen, the four million freed slaves in the south who are trying to take their rightful seat at the table of democracy who suffered the most in the midst of this turmoil.

Lindsay: After the war, Lincoln, the former small town lawyer who could connect with anyone still believed he could appeal to the nation's better angels. That he could bring the country together to heal. But Stanton, shrewd, successful and always a lawyer believed that the union's victory could only be fully realized with the full force of unforgiving and uncompromising justice.

Lindsay: Walter Stahr is author of the book, Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary, now out in paperback. Steven Walters is the co-writer of the upcoming audio drama 1865, which premiers on December 3rd on Stitcher Premium. I'm Lindsay Graham, host of American History Tellers.

Ed: Throughout this episode, we've talked about Abraham Lincoln's triumphs and trials in the courtroom but as you may have heard, Lincoln the lawyer eventually became Lincoln the president. So what's the link between these two occupations of the great emancipator?

Ed: Earlier we heard from scholar Brian Dirck about Lincoln's law practice. I also spoke with Dirck about what Lincoln took from his days as a lawyer to the presidency.

Brian: There's several things. First of all, I think Lincoln learned how to pitch his speech to ordinary people because when he's talking to a jury, he's got a box full of farmers. He told his law partner one time, Billy Herndon, he said "When you're talking to a jury, don't aim too high, Billy, aim low, because the people up high are gonna understand you anyway, it's the people down though you wanna make sure they understand," and I think that gave him that economy of language, his ability to say a lot with a few words because he had to communicate quickly to a jury and get an idea across.

Brian: So there's that and then I also believe he learned conflict resolution. I mean he says himself, "Lawyers are at their best when they get people to negotiate their problems and they don't go into a courtroom." He's always working with his cabinet to work out compromises, find middle ground, to find solutions and this was something he was excellent at and I think he learned this while he was a lawyer.

Ed: Yeah, it's interesting how sometimes, looking back we think that that may mark Lincoln as weak, in some ways but I agree with you that that's really his strength. I think one crisis averted is worth two solved.

Brian: You've got that right, absolutely. Well, and especially when you look at the strong-willed difficult people that he had to work with. Compare that to Jefferson Davis who couldn't work with Joseph Johnston, for example because they just hated each other. Whereas Lincoln could work out a relationship and say "Hey dude, you may not like me, it's okay, let's just do your job," and I think that comes from the law practice of you don't get caught up in personalities.

Transcript by Rev.com Brian: I looked at some of the literature on modern lawyers, and modern lawyers are told "Focus on the solution to the problem, don't focus on whether you like the client or not," and I think Lincoln learned that as well.

Ed: You contrasted him with Jefferson Davis, could you sustain that a little bit because they do seem to be real different sides of that leadership coin, and you ascribe some of this to Lincoln's law practice.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. And really I don't wanna imply an insidious relationship between, you know, Lincoln was light years ahead of Davis. I mean David Potter, the historian once said "If Davis and Lincoln had traded places, the south would have won their independence." I really don't think that's true, Davis was not a-

Brian: Yeah, Davis was not a bad president, he had a lot of difficulties and he had his faults, the problem with Davis compared to Lincoln was, Davis tended to believe in a brotherhood, in a fraternity, he had to be your friend. I mean he stuck with these really awful generals, Braxton Bragg way past the point of reason because he kind of liked him.

Brian: Lincoln never did that, and I think that's a big contrast that Davis could have learned from but it was ingrained in his personality because Davis was a West Pointer, he believed in the brotherhood of the army fraternity and that kind of thing, and sometimes that got in his way.

Ed: So I think Lincoln would appreciate the fact that I would now, not out of any sense of conviction, but out of a sense of responsibility, become the prosecuting attorney in this case. So this all sounds great, right? Is there a downside to his lawyerly background when he was president?

Brian: You could argue, I suppose that maybe he tried to negotiate a little bit too much during the war. His response to the way Davis planned and his 10% plan for reconstruction, that was a very, very mild plan. Now we don't know if he would have stuck to that plan because of course he dies right after that, but you could argue that his desire to negotiate with people in good faith and his assumption that everybody wanted to negotiate in good faith might have really been a difficulty, I think.

Ed: Earlier, I referred to Lincoln by his famous nickname, the great emancipator. Now, of course that's because of his landmark executive order, The Emancipation Proclamation. Well, Doris Kearns Goodwin says that drafting that proclamation was rooted in Lincoln's legal expertise.

Doris: In the summer of 1862, when the Peninsula Campaign had gone so badly and he knew he said that we were at the end of our rope and something had to change, and he had been visiting the troops in the act of battlefield and he had begun to see that the Confederates were getting an enormous advantage, military advantage by being able to use the slaves on their side.

Transcript by Rev.com Doris: And he knew that he had no legal way, no Constitutional way to end slavery unless he could make it something that was a military necessity. And then, as commander in chief, he would have the power to say "If we free the slaves, they will no longer have the same benefit to the south, it will help the north, military necessity allows me to do this."

Doris: So he went to the soldier's home, which was three miles from the White House, that summer, to really think through the argument. Think it through legally because that's really what he was trying to do. Do I have the power to issue this executive order? And he finally came to the decision that he could do it on the ground of military necessity.

Doris: So when he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, it wasn't intended to be a fiery document to use that gift of language that he could use so brilliantly in the Gettysburg Address, or the Second Inaugural, it was intended to make the case, the case legally that he had the power to do this and that's true, what Hofstede said, it was just simply a legal document really telling the country this is what we're doing.

Doris: Of course once it was issued, however, people understood what it meant, that all of a sudden, in one document, hundreds of years of slavery would be undone, that it promised a future without slavery. It promised to take the sin of slavery out of our country.

David: "A proclamation, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim that on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, all persons held as slaves within any state, or any designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever, free."

Doris: And there was enormous rejoicing on the part of the people who were anti-slavery and of course the blacks as well, and there was enormous trepidation in the north, even as well as in the south. Legislatures were passing resolutions against it, fearing that we were only fighting for the union and not for slavery as well.

Doris: But Lincoln understood timing. He realized then that the timing was right, that the war had reached an edge where something had to be done. He realized that the soldiers had reached a point where they knew they needed help, and before that, only three in ten were fighting for slavery, the rest only for union, but he understood the timing so well because he saw ordinary people every morning. Because he never forgot the popular assemblage from which he had come.

Doris: So it was finally the right timing on January, 1863 and then when he signed that proclamation, he put his own stamp on it by saying to his best friend who came to his side, "Perhaps in this proclamation, my fondest dream of being remembered after I have lived, will be realized." But you're so right that the legal influence became so important to him because once the war was at the point where it was going to be won, he knew he needed to put the Emancipation Proclamation on more strong legal grounds and that's why he went for the 13th Amendment.

Transcript by Rev.com Doris: Because once the war was over then the military necessity wouldn't be there anymore and he would need some sort of deeper foundation in the form of an amendment, and then that became the lasting thing he gave to the country, even though it didn't fully pass until after he had died.

Ed: A theme of your book is that great leaders are made by great trials. Had Lincoln experienced anything as a lawyer, do you think that prepared him for some of these challenges as president?

Doris: Well I suppose when you're a lawyer, you're going to lose cases inevitably and you're going to win cases. And I think what he had experienced throughout his life through going through trials, by failure, I think definitely prepared him for the presidency. Even in that first race, when he ran for New Salem. And he did lose, as you pointed out, then he wins the next time around.

Doris: But when he lost the first race, he said "I don't think I probably have a great chance here, but I've been so familiar with disappointment I won't be too chagrined if the voters in their good wisdom do not select me," but then he said "But I will try again if I lose, in fact I think I'm gonna try five or six times. Only if I get so humiliated and dejected after six times, I promise you I won't run again."

Doris: So I think inevitably when you're trying cases, you learn what wins, you learn how to persuade people, you're gonna fail in some of those cases and you're gonna just go on and learn from your mistakes. I mean that was what was so key to Lincoln, he liked to say "As long as I can learn from my mistakes, I can believe I'm smarter today than I was yesterday."

Doris: But he also learned the comradery of working with a team by going around the county courthouses and he built a team that way in the White House that were different from him, had different points of view, but he somehow-

Ed: Almost a team of rivals, you could say?

Doris: Almost, you know, I might even think about that as a title for a book.

Ed: Feel free.

Doris: So, but it was so important because he knew that there different factions in the country that night when he was elected, he couldn't sleep. So he made that decision to put these three chief rivals into his cabinet. Each one of whom was more educated, more celebrated. Each one thought he should be president instead of Abraham Lincoln, and yet somehow he was able to, even though their opinions still differed on when to do the emancipation, if to do the emancipation.

Doris: When he finally made the decision, none of them spoke out against it, even if they still had private reservations, which showed that he'd created a team with a shared sense of purpose.

Transcript by Rev.com Ed: Well I think you identify resilience as a key characteristic of a great leader, and I don't think anybody had more occasion to try that virtue out than did Abraham Lincoln as president.

Doris: Absolutely, and that resilience again is gonna prove so important when he gets into the presidency. I mean the many times when the union was really using the war, and when hope had to come really from within, within the country itself and within Lincoln, and then go to that next battle and then go to that next battle.

Doris: It didn't, I mean we keep thinking that maybe Gettysburg had solved it, but even by the summer of 1864 when Grant was stuck in the east and hundreds of thousands were dead, the spirit of the north was really at a very low morale, so much so that the political bigwigs in the Republican Party told Lincoln "You'll not win this election, there's no way you'll win in November of 64, unless you're willing to have the south come to the peace table and make a compromise on emancipation," and that's the moment when that conviction really comes in, when the courage comes in.

Doris: You know, he said "I'd be damned in time and eternity if I ever turned the black warriors back into slavery." The blacks had joined the army at that point. They'd go away to disconsolate, certain that the election would be lost, but then of course, Atlanta happens and the whole mood of the north changes and he does win the election, but he wins it with union and emancipation intact.

Doris: So that kind of resilience and perseverance and conviction and keeping his word, those are the qualities that were so strong inside of him.

Ed: Doris Keans Goodwin's latest book is called Leadership in Turbulent Times. We also heard from scholar Brian Dirck, author of the book Lincoln, the Lawyer.

Ed: That's gonna do it for us today. We'd love to hear from you. You'll find us at backstoryradio.org, or send an email to [email protected]. You may follow us on Facebook and Twitter @backstoryradio. Whatever you do, don't be a stranger.

Ed: BackStory is produced at Virginia Humanities. Major supports provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation and the Johns Hopkins University. Additional support is provided by the Tomato Fund, cultivating fresh ideas in the arts, the humanities and the environment.

Speaker 11: Brian Balogh is professor of History at the University of Virginia. Ed Ayers is professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is professor of history and American Studies at Yale University. Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams associate professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University. BackStory was created by Andrew Windom for Virginia Humanities.

Transcript by Rev.com