"Mr. Lincoln's advice to his client was that Dungee agree to remit
the whole judgment, by Spencer paying the costs of the suit and Mr.
Lincoln's fee. Mr. Lincoln then proposed to leave the amount of his
fee to Moore and myself. We protested against this, and insisted that
Mr. Lincoln should fix the amount of his own fee. After a few moments'
thought he said, 'Well, gentlemen, don't you think I have honestly
earned twenty-five dollars?' We were astonished, and had he said one
hundred dollars it would have been what we expected. The judgment was
a large one for those days; he had attended the case at two terms of
court, had been engaged for two days in a hotly contested suit, and his
client's adversary was going to pay the bill. The simplicity of Mr.
Lincoln's character in money matters is well illustrated by the fact
that for all this he charged twenty-five dollars."
Justice David Davis, of the Supreme Court of the United States, said,
"In all the elements that constitute the great lawyer he had few equals.
He was great both at _nisi prius_ and before an appellate tribunal. He
seized the strong points of a cause and presented them with clearness
and great compactness. His mind was logical and direct, and he did
not indulge in extraneous discussion. Generalities and platitudes had
no charms for him. An unfailing vein of humor never deserted him; and
he was able to claim the attention of court and jury, when the cause
was the most uninteresting, by the appropriateness of his anecdotes.
His power of comparison was large, and he rarely failed in a legal
discussion to use that mode of reasoning. The framework of his mental
and moral being was honesty, and a wrong cause was poorly defended by
him. He hated wrong and oppression everywhere, and many a man whose
fraudulent conduct was undergoing review in a court of justice has
writhed under his terrific indignation and rebukes. The people where
he practised law were not rich, and his charges were always small.
When he was elected President, I question whether there was a lawyer
in the circuit, who had been at the bar so long a time, whose means
were not larger. It did not seem to be one of the purposes of his life
to accumulate a fortune. In fact, outside of his profession, he had no
knowledge of the way to make money, and he never even attempted it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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