Lincoln's Last Trial Quotes

“say only the truth. It’s been my experience that no man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“Make few statements,” Lincoln once explained, “for if I made too many the opposite side might make me prove them.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“At times he became so entangled in his thoughts that he completely forgot his destination. He wandered, but used the time well.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“He had seen a scribbled copy of a letter Lincoln had written to Justice of the Peace John King, who had been elected only a year earlier and had turned to him for advice on the administration of justice. The letter had been circulated by friends eager to push Lincoln’s political prospects, and Hitt had been so taken with it he’d made a copy for himself. He’d figured it was pretty good advice: “Listen well to all the evidence,” Lincoln had written, “stripping yourself of all prejudice, if any you have, and throwing away if you can all technical law knowledge, hear the lawyers make their arguments as patiently as you can, and after the evidence and the lawyers’ arguments are through, then stop one moment and ask yourself: What is the justice in this case? And let that sense of justice be your decision.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“His craft had enabled him to perfect the art of dispassion,”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“But say only the truth. It’s been my experience that no man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“It is good policy to never plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you cannot.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“The right to a trial by jury probably became the bedrock of the legal system in May 1215, when landowners, barons as they were known, forced King John at knifepoint to sign the Magna Carta on the meadow at Runnymede. One clause of it read, “(N)o freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or seized or exiled or in any way destroyed...except by the”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“In 1832, in Lincoln’s first attempt to win public office, the good Reverend Cartwright had defeated him for a seat in the Illinois state legislature. They met a second time in the congressional election of 1846, an especially nasty campaign. Running as a Whig, Lincoln objected strongly to Cartwright’s insistence on bringing his religion into the public square. The Democrat Cartwright responded by tarring Lincoln as “an infidel,” a man unfit to represent good Christians. Lincoln had won that election, and neither of the men had seen fit to apologize.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“When I have a particular case in hand, I have that motive and feel an interest... in ferreting out the questions to the bottom, love to dig up the question by the roots and hold it up and dry before the fires of the mind.” At times, he had found, if he did not try to focus his thoughts on one point or another, his mind took him to unexpected places and showed him a different path.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“The difficulty in finding a truly impartial jury in this too common situation was stated accurately by the young humorist Mark Twain, who said, “We have a... jury system which is superior to any in the world, and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“people like the concept of a trial by jury, but they liked it best when they didn’t have to serve on the jury.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“it was not the surroundings that made the law, but rather an adherence to the process.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“No client ever had money enough to bribe my conscience, or to stop its utterance against wrong and oppression.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“He began, in a florid style that he would learn through the years to whittle down, by urging “every American (to) pledge his life, his property and his sacred honor...” to maintaining the law. “Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother,” he continued, “to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and (in) colleges; let it be written in Primmers, spelling books and in Almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls and enforced in the halls of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“to retreat, but may pursue his adversary until he has secured himself from all danger; and if he kill him in so doing, it is justifiable self-defense. But if the party killing had reasonable grounds for believing that the person slain had a felonious design against him, although it should afterward appear that there was no such design, it will not be murder, but will be either manslaughter or excusable homicide, according to the degree of caution and the probable grounds for such belief.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“While there was some question about whether the doctrine of self-defense was proper in a manslaughter case, and how strongly Selfridge had actually made this claim, the Grand Jury had decided, “A man may repel force by force in defense of his person against anyone who manifestly intends, or endeavors by violence or surprise, feloniously to kill him. And he is not obliged”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“This was a Theodore Roosevelt the nation already knew well. One of the most recognizable and celebrated Americans alive, the former 26th president of the United States, the hero of San Juan Hill and the daring leader of the legendary Rough Riders. The Republican progressive who as president broke the industrial trusts, regulated the railroads, set aside 230-million acres for national parks and forests and preserves, and who had fought to give the workingman “a Square Deal” through his eight years in the White House.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“on occasion lawyers had tried to quote the Ten Commandments in summations, but they had often been stopped from doing so, as judges had pointed out people were being tried in this world, whatever plans the Lord had for them was His business.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“It’s been my experience that no man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“Herndon, William H., and Jesse William Weik. Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life. Chicago: Belford, Clarke, 1889.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“Lincoln’s own words: “I do mean to say that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force...they should be religiously observed.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“And when necessary lawyers were expected to be truthful in their memories.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“Before the twelfth century the legal system depended primarily on Church-established ecclesiastical courts, which believed that God protected the innocent and so relied in criminal cases on “ordeal,” a physical test like carrying a red-hot iron a certain distance without blistering, to determine guilt or innocence. Civil cases were resolved through “compurgation,” in which the litigant producing the most witnesses willing to take an oath in support won the case.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

“Hitt knew Lincoln to be a man who carried most of what he needed in his mind, although when necessary he actually carried his legal papers in his tall hat, and spent as little time as possible on the mundane chores that chewed up the day.”
― Dan Abrams, Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency