January 2003

Unfaltering Resolve

by Dick Manning, WSBA President

The defendant was on trial for first-degree murder. The state's star witness testified on direct examination that he had seen the defendant strike the victim in the eye with a slingshot. As the witness testified for the prosecution, the defense lawyer sat with his head back, "… a steady gaze apparently fixed upon one spot of the plain ceiling, entirely oblivious to what was happening around him and without a single variation of feature or noticeable movement of any muscle of his face."

Now it was time for cross-examination. The defense attorney rose. He stood tall and bearded. His facial features were sharp and angular. He approached the prosecution witness:

Q: Did you actually see the fight?

A: Yes.

Q: And you stood very near to them?

A: No, it was 150 feet or so.

Q: In the open field?

A: No, in the timber.

Q: What kind of timber?

A: Beech timber.

Q: Leaves on it are rather thick in August?

A: It looks like it.

Q: What time did all this occur?

A: About 11:00 at night.

Q: Did you have a lamp there?

A: No. What would I want a lamp for?

Q: How could you see from a distance of 150 feet or more, without a lamp at 11:00 at night?

A: The moon was shining real bright….

Q: A full moon?

A: Yes, a full moon.

At this point, the defense attorney drew out of his back pocket a small blue-covered almanac, opened it slowly to the astronomical table for the night in question, and placed it before the witness. He continued his cross-examination:

Q: Does not the almanac say that on August 29 the moon was barely past the first quarter instead of being full?

A: (No answer.)

Q: Does not the almanac also say that the moon had disappeared by 11:00?

A: (No answer.)

Q: Is it not a fact that it was too dark to see anything from 50 feet, let alone 150 feet?

A: (No answer.)

The defendant was acquitted. The defense attorney? Abraham Lincoln. (Quoted from Abraham Lincoln, Esq. by Irving Younger.)

Abraham Lincoln was a prodigious litigator, specializing in general trial practice. In appellate work alone, he argued 243 cases in the Illinois Supreme Court. And although he represented the Illinois Central Railroad in 40 lawsuits, he also represented many people of simple means. He was a compassionate man who would take on jury trials for little or no fee. One such case was that of the widow of a veteran of America's War for Independence, who had retained a claim agent to help her collect a widow's pension. When the claim agent kept half the pension without any agreement as to specific fees, Lincoln sued on her behalf. Outlining his summation to the jury, Lincoln penned the following note to himself: "Skin the Defendant. Close."

He abhorred the practice of slavery. Long before his Emancipation Proclamation, he argued in the Illinois Supreme Court in 1841 that a promissory note which had been given in payment for a black girl was unenforceable. To persuade the Court of his position, he argued that the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 forbade slavery in states created in the Northwest Territory (of which Illinois was one), and therefore it should be public policy for the courts of Illinois to refuse to aid anyone who sought to benefit from slavery. The Court adopted his position.

Lincoln was born in Kentucky among the poor and uneducated. His father could not read or write until after he married the woman who would become Lincoln's mother. The family drifted to Indiana and later, Illinois. Lincoln's mother, a person of exceptional intellect and character, taught him to read early in life. And read he did — voraciously — anything he could find, especially U.S. history and Shakespeare. He worked on riverboats as a deck hand and then as a clerk in a general store. In 1834, at the age of 25, he was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives and admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1836 by "reading the law."

The great debates of the century pitted the tall, lanky Lincoln, "…an abolitionist from the back woods of Kentucky and Indiana…," against Senator Douglas of Illinois, the prestigious leader of Congress who sought to extend slavery. Undaunted, Lincoln won two prizes in this David and Goliath match: he won over the conscience and votes of the people on the issue of slavery; and he won the hand in marriage of the woman both he and Douglas had been courting. Lincoln was inaugurated president on March 4, 1861.

Throughout the remainder of his life, Lincoln never faltered in his resolve that slavery would end and the Union would be preserved, even when opposed by those in his own party and administration.

"As the war dragged on in 1862 and 1863, … it was becoming a prolonged, dismal, fratricidal struggle. In July 1863, New York rioted against the draft.… The Democratic Party in the North sought to win the presidential election on the plea that the war was a failure and should be discontinued.… The tall gaunt man at the White House found himself with defeatists, traitors, dismissed generals, tortuous party politicians and a doubting and fatigued people behind him, and uninspired generals and depressed troops before him…" (The Outline of History by H.G.Wells).

Still, Lincoln pressed on. And then, the war ended. Less than two weeks after he returned from Richmond, Virginia, upon General Lee's surrender, he was dead by an assassin's bullet. It was to be another century before a new leader would appear to pick up the baton and force the issue of the plight of people of color.

If he had lived, Dr. Martin Luther King would be 74 years old today. At the peak of his short-lived career, he was truly a man of  courage and heroism. Imagine an "enlightened" nation in the 1950s and early 1960s (when many of the lawyers reading this were not even alive) where a person of color was subjected to abject humiliation and cruelty: where such a person could not dine at most restaurants; was told to sit only at the rear of a bus; could drink only from a drinking fountain, if there was one, or use a restroom, if there was one, not used by Caucasians; was permitted to live only in a segregated part of the community reserved for Negroes; and had to use separate entrances from Caucasians at places of public accommodation such as bus and railroad stations. And imagine the impact this had on the children of these people: children who were not permitted to attend any school except those reserved solely for persons of color; and who were treated with the same ignominy as their parents and families.

There was a presence and passion in Dr. King, in the marches he led in the South and Washington, D.C. He walked with and for men and women of all races and creeds who were targets of bigotry and ignorance. He was always at the head of the march, where he would be the first to suffer the taunts of bystanders, the first to expose himself to the batons of local cops, and the first to face law enforcement's angry dogs straining at the leash. And still, Martin Luther King pressed on.

To most of the public, Dr. King is best remembered for his "I have a dream…" speech. But most do not remember that — like Lincoln — there were many from his own profession who were unsupportive. While he was in a Birmingham, Alabama, jail in April 1963, he had to contend with those clergymen who denounced him for marching in protest of segregated lunch counters. He wrote them:

For years now I have heard the word "wait." It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "wait" has always meant "never." We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed towards gaining political Independence, but we still creep at a horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. When you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" — then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

This is a message that we must never forget. Powerful stuff.

And then, in a few years, like Lincoln, his life was snuffed out by an assassin's bullet.

It's up to us to carry on — to wipe the slate clean of the insidious prejudice that by stealth can so easily creep into our lives. We can do that only by first looking into our own heart and mind. Let's never forget these two heroes and their courage — Lincoln and King — whose birthdays we celebrate over the next two months.

"We have become

Not a melting pot

But a beautiful mosaic.

Different people,

Different beliefs,

Different yearnings,

Different hopes,

Different dreams."

Dick Manning's e-mail address is jmb@seanet.com; fax number 206-624-3865; telephone 206-623-6302.