Note ii-41 — Chapter II · TRUTH IN LAW

The authenticity of this story has been questioned. It certainly calls for confirmation, as the first case in which Lincoln appeared before the State Supreme Court, according to the printed records (Illinois Reports, iii, 456-57), was that of Scammon vs. Cline. Here he was associated with another attorney, James L. Loop, of Belvidere, and represented, not the appellant, but the defendant in error. The discrepancies are striking rather than vital. From the peculiar nature of that case Lincoln may well, at the time, have made the brief oral statement attributed to him; and, as we know, the decision which followed was, in fact, against his client. On the other hand, perhaps the scene did not take place during the argument on Scammon vs. Cline. If Judge Treat’s narrative is correct in every particular, Lincoln must have made his first bow before the Supreme Court sometime during the three and a half years of practice that preceded this hearing. And he might have done so, too, without that fact appearing in the records. For the reporter, finding the early material incomplete, and seeking to limit the size of the published volumes, did not include all the cases. It may be added that an account of this incident has, in some form, been accepted by Herndon, i, 322-23; Lamon, 321; Schurz, 16; Leland, 61; and Stoddard, 119. All these men knew Lincoln—some of them throughout almost his entire legal career. That they believed him capable of the course described in the anecdote is, perhaps, as significant as the story itself.

An essay, giving the results of careful researches into the case of Scammon vs. Cline, by Richard V. Carpenter, was printed in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society for October, 1911, pp. 317-23.