MOONLIGHT

The true significance of the “Almanac Trial” is revealed by historical detective and novelist Walsh (Midnight Dreary, 1998, etc.) in this engrossing account of how history is made and lost.

In November 1857, less than a year before the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the lawyer and would-be senator from Springfield, Illinois, received a request he felt he had to honor. It was the dying wish of an old friend, James Armstrong, that Lincoln represent his son, who was on trial for murder. Lincoln was not, in fact, an especially good criminal defense attorney: Walsh documents that, prior to the Armstrong case, when faced with a client’s certain guilt, Honest Abe would either pull out of the defense or end up doing such a half-hearted job that the accused would get convicted anyway. One defense witness in the Armstrong case hinted broadly at the guilt of the defendant by stating that “he knew too much” to be of much use and, after the trial, told a juror that he had seen the defendant commit the crime. (This last delicious tidbit was uncovered by an amateur historian 50 years later, but it has been hitherto ignored.) No one knows if Lincoln thought his client was guilty, but if he did, it didn’t show. He gave his client a tough, artful defense, which included consulting an almanac to discredit a prosecution witness who claimed that he saw the murder clearly because the moon was high in the sky. (The almanac showed that the moon was lower on the horizon.) In considering what Lincoln might have known about the case, Walsh wonders, “which is more in order for what he did, censure or sympathy?” But his telling of the conflict between honesty and loyalty that Lincoln likely faced is clearly sympathetic. Perhaps it is simply the contemporary climate that leads Walsh to ask this question—as if the story he has told is not interesting enough.

A fascinating study of an intriguing case. (15 pages of photos)