o as "a case lawyer,"
that is to say, a lawyer who studies each case as it comes to him simply
by and for itself, a method which makes the practitioner rather than the
jurist. That Lincoln was ever learned in the science is hardly
pretended. In fact it was not possible that the divided allegiance which
he gave to his profession for a score of years could have achieved such
a result.[50] But it is said, and the well-known manner of his mental
operations makes it easy to believe, that his arguments had a marvelous
simplicity and clearness, alike in thought and in expression. To these
traits they owed their great force; and a legal argument can have no
higher traits; fine-drawn subtlety is undeniably an inferior quality.
Noteworthy above all else was his extraordinary capacity for statement;
all agree that his statement of his case and his presentation of the
facts and the evidence were so plain and fair as to be far more
convincing than the argument which was built upon them. Again it may be
said that the power to state in this manner is as high in the order of
intellectual achievement as anything within forensic possibilities.

As an advocate Lincoln seems to have ranked better than he did in the
discussion of pure points of law. When he warmed to his work his power
over the emotions of a jury was very great. A less dignified but not
less valuable capacity lay in his humor and his store of illustrative
anecdotes. But the one trait, which all agree in attributing to him and
which above all others will redound to his honor, at least in the mind
of the layman, is that he was only efficient when his client was in the
right, and that he made but indifferent work in a wrong cause. He was
preeminently the honest lawyer, the counsel fitted to serve the litigant
who was justly entitled to win. His power of lucid statement was of
little service when the real facts were against him; and his eloquence
seemed paralyzed when he did not believe thoroughly that his client had
a just cause. He generally refused to take cases unless he could see
that as matter of genuine right he ought to win them. People who
consulted him were at times bluntly advised to withdraw from an unjust
or a hard-hearted contention, or were bidden to seek other counsel. He
could even go the length of leaving a case, while actually conducting
it, if he became satisfied of unfairness on the part of his client; and
when a coadjutor won a case from which he had withdr