Abraham Lincoln, who made no speech at all, was the one who derived the most benefit in the end from this lawsuit. It not only aroused his ambitions, but gave him his first big fee--$1,000. This money came to him at the precise moment when he needed it most, to enable him to enter into the famous debate with Douglas--the debate that made him the inevitable candidate of the Republican party. It is interesting to note how closely the destinies of Lincoln and McCormick were interwoven. Both were born in 1809, on farms in the South. Both struggled through a youth of adversity and first came into prominence in Illinois. Both labored to preserve the Union, and when the War of Secession came it was the Reaper that enabled Lincoln to feed his armies. Both men were emancipators, the one from slavery and the other from famine; and both to-day sleep under the soil of Illinois. No other two Americans had heavier tasks than they, and none worked more mightily for the common good. Of all McCormick's lawsuits, and they were many, the most extraordinary was the famous Baggage Case, which lasted for twenty-three years--from 1862 to 1885. It was probably the best single instance of the man's dogged tenacity in defence of a principle. The original cause of this trial was a comedy of mishaps. A McCormick family party of six, with nine trunks, boarded a train at Philadelphia for Chicago. The train was about to start, when the baggage-master demanded pay for 200 pounds of surplus baggage. The amount was only $8.70, but McCormick refused to pay it. He called his family out of the train and ordered that his trunks be taken off. The conductor refused to hold the train, and the trunks were carried away. Mr. McCormick at once saw the president of the railroad, J. Edgar Thompson, who telegraphed an order for the trunks to be put off at Pittsburg. The McCormicks set out for Chicago by the next train. At Pittsburg they learned that the trunks had been carried through to Chicago. And the next day, in Chicago, when McCormick went to the Fort Wayne depot, he found it a mass of smoking cinders. It had caught fire in the night, and the nine trunks had been destroyed. McCormick sued the railroad for $7,193--the value of the trunks and their contents. Repeatedly he won and repeatedly the railroad appealed to higher courts. After twenty years the worn and battered case was carried up to the nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court. They decided for McCormick. But even then the railroad evaded payment for three years, until after McCormick's death. Then the president of the road signed a check for $18,060.79, which was the original value of the nine trunks plus twenty-three years' interest.