Part 9 (2/2)
The men recoiled; but one voiced the general sentiment in:
”This is cowardly on your part, Lincoln, presuming on your rank!”
”If any of you think that, let him test it here and now!” was the reply, equally as oblivious of military decorum.
But they flinched, for he was larger and l.u.s.tier than anybody else.
”You can level up,” he said, guessing their reasoning; ”choose your own weapons.”
The more sane roared with laughter at this monstrous offer on the superior's part, and the good feeling was renewed between chief and file.
GENERAL McCLELLAN'S OPINION OF LINCOLN AS A LAWYER.
The whirligig of time brings about strange revenges, for a truth.
General McClellan was chosen to visit the seat of the Crimean War to study the siege operations about Sebastopol. Returning and seeing no prospects in the air--of his professional line--he became superintendent of the Illinois Central Railroad Company. He was acting for its president in December, 1855, when a bill was laid under his eyes. It was the demand of Abraham Lincoln, of the law firm of Lincoln & Herndon, Springfield, Illinois.
The firm had offered in October to act for the company to defend a suit brought by McLean County. Lincoln had won it. To prevent any demurrer about the fee of one thousand dollars, a fourth of that having been paid for the retainer, he had six members of the bar append their names to testify the charge was usual and just.
Nevertheless Superintendent McClellan refused to pay, alleging that:
”This is as much as a first-cla.s.s lawyer would charge!”
You see, Mr. Lincoln was still but ”the one-horse lawyer of a one-horse town.”
KENTUCKIANS ARE CLANNY.
Senator John C. S. Blackburn, of the United States Supreme Court, began his life as a lawyer at the age of twenty. This should have won him sympathy in his first case. It was before Justice McLean. Opposed to Mr. Blackburn was the chief of the Chicago bar, I. N. Arnold, afterward member of Congress, and author of the first biography of Abraham Lincoln. Blackburn was a Kentuckian, but the stereotyped reputation for courage does not include audacity in a court of law. He was nervous with this first attempt and made a mull of his presentment, when a gentleman of the bar, rising, and extending a tall, ungraceful figure, intervened and laid down the case on the young Kentuckian's lines so feebly offered and entangled that the hearers might be glad to be so disembarra.s.sed of a feeling for the novice floundering. The bench sustained Blackburn's demurrer. Arnold was so vexed that he objected to the volunteer intervener, whereupon the befriended man learned it was one Abraham Lincoln, as unknown to him as he was to fame. Lincoln defended himself against the senior's spite, by saying he claimed the privilege of giving a newcomer the helping hand. No doubt the fellow States.h.i.+p backed his prompting.
--(Related by Judge Isaac N. Arnold, member of Congress.)
NOT TO BE THOUGHT OF!
<script>