Lincoln as a Lawyer ... Lincoln and the Republican Party

THE BUZZ  ...

THE CASE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
A Story of Adultery, Murder and the Making of a Great
President
Reviews and opinions --

"A real page-turner, bringing alive Lincoln’s world
before his national fame.  Fenster transports us to
1856 Illinois, describing the colorful life of Lincoln and
his fraternity of circuit riding lawyers as they try cases
and help birth the Republican Party.   The suspense
and storytelling are remarkable. Interwoven is a
murder mystery -- the story of an adulterous wife, the
murder of her blacksmith husband and Lincoln’s
defense.  Looking for the emergence of Lincoln ?  Look
here."
-- Richard E. Hart, President, Abraham Lincoln Association

A star is assigned to books of unusual merit, determined by the editors of Kirkus Reviews.

Through the lens of a sensational 1856 Springfield, Ill., murder case, a historian focuses on
Abraham Lincoln the lawyer and politician, four years before his election to the presidency.

Was blacksmith George Anderson slowly poisoned by his adulterous wife before her lover, Anderson's
own impatient nephew, finally finished him off with a bloody hammer? The local citizenry certainly thought
so. After declining an offer to aid the beleaguered state's attorney, Lincoln joined the defense and
devised the crucial strategy that kept questions about possible adultery out of the trial, destroying the
prosecution's theory about motive and ultimately freeing the defendants. This lurid case was one of many
in the prairie lawyer's crowded practice, and Fenster (Race of the Century: The Heroic True Story of the
1908 New York to Paris Automobile Race, 2005, etc.) follows Lincoln and other colorful members of the
Illinois Bar as they trail after the traveling Circuit Court. Simultaneously, the author charts a second, more
fateful, track: the speech-making tour that resuscitated Lincoln's political career. Following the passage
of the Kansas-Nebraska Act—which nullified the Missouri Compromise and destroyed the Whig Party—
and beginning with his stirring "Lost Speech" at the state's Anti-Nebraska Bloomington Convention,
Lincoln traveled throughout Illinois on behalf of John C. Fremont, candidate of the nascent Republican
Party, attempting to thread the needle among outright abolitionists, pro-slavery Buchanan Democrats
and the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party headed by former President Millard Fillmore. He
couldn't persuade the critical swing state to go for his candidate, but this tour turned him into the Party's
premier Western spokesman, put him first in line to challenge popular Senator Stephen A. Douglas and
ultimately led to his nomination for president. Already a successful, mature attorney whose talent and
insight tipped the balance in People v. Anderson and Anderson, Lincoln began in 1856 his
transformation into a master politician whose deep understanding of our founding documents and whose
genius at translating their meaning for his fellow countrymen would make an even greater difference for
the nation.

An unexpected, odd-angle approach to Lincoln that proves marvelously insightful.
Ask for THE CASE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN at your
local bookstore.

Buy it at Barnes & Noble

Buy it at Amazon
From Kirkus Reviews Magazine, August 1, 2007 issue:
[LIBRARY JOURNAL, AUGUST 2007 - Starred Review]



     Fenster, Julie M. The Case of Abraham Lincoln: A Story of Adultery, Murder, and the Making of a Great
President. Palgrave Macmillan. Nov. 2007. c.256p. illus. bibliog. index. ISBN 978-1-4039-7635-2. $24.95.
HIST

Fenster uses the new complete edition of Lincoln's legal papers, as well as newspapers, letters, and
memoirs, to weave a spellbinding tale of alleged adultery, murder, legal practices, personal rivalries, and
political ambitions in the mid-1850s—and of Lincoln's emergence as a national political figure. In doing so,
she brings us as close to the social and political culture of the day as possible. Although she relies too
much on memoirs to depict a Lincoln much admired as a lawyer of ready wit, unimpeachable integrity, and
astute judgment, she also mines the sources deeply to discover a small-town America unsure about male-
female relationships, strangers in town, and "truth." As in Brian Dirck's Lincoln the Lawyer, among other
recent works, she shows how Lincoln's studying of human nature, reading, and time on the legal circuit
prepared him for public life. More important, she makes the most persuasive case yet that Lincoln's
argument on the need to face down Southern threats of disunion was essential to holding together the
disparate elements of the rickety new Republican Party and gave Lincoln national prominence before the
Lincoln-Douglas debates. Her analysis of Lincoln's "lost speech" of 1856 is simply brilliant. The verdict: a
captivating and compelling book that's highly recommended for public and academic libraries.—Randall M.
Miller, Saint Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia
[From Library Journal EDITORS' PICKS, September 1, 2007]

Local Lawyer

The Case of Abraham Lincoln: A Story of Adultery, Murder and the
Making of a Great President by Julie M. Fenster. Palgrave Macmillan.
Nov. ISBN 978-1-4039-7635-2. $24.95.


“When working on this book,” Julie Fenster recalls, “I happened to speak at a
school and was asked what sort of people I like to write about. I said I preferred
obscure, unknown people. That way, I'm bringing fresh stories to readers. A
student asked, 'What obscure person is your next book about?' I said,
'Abraham Lincoln.' The kids roared with laughter.”

But Fenster wasn't contradicting herself: “The thing is…Lincoln was basically
unknown in 1856. That's how he's treated in the book.” Relying on
contemporary sources, she takes us to a town on the prairie 151 years ago,
population 7250 “and only about 15 blocks square”—Springfield, IL, where “an
everyday lawyer” named Abraham Lincoln lived. “He was not a general, not an
elected official, not a statesman,” Fenster reminds us. He lived in Springfield,
riding the district and circuit courts, from 1837 to 1861, when he moved on.

With Fenster, we “tail Lincoln for nine months of 1856” so that we can “pause
over the bits that make up the rhythm of a life,” she explains. Fenster allows us
to encounter tempos we hardly recognize—townspeople flocking to a political
speech that will last two or three hours—and events that deliver a familiar
shock—a blow to the head, a dead body, evidence of poison, the stir over
who'll be brought to justice.

At the time, through the crisis of slavery's spread, the splintered Whig Party
was giving way to new supporters (and a new name). Fenster turns this political
evolution into bracing history played out in local meeting halls and newspaper
offices. Meanwhile, over on Springfield's Monroe Street, blacksmith George
Anderson was murdered, and Lincoln ultimately participated in the trial. “Amid
the many debt-collection and trespassing cases that Lincoln handled, we have
this case,” says Fenster. “Lincoln's legal work was neither philosophical nor
sanitized; when need be, he was in the gutter or the alley.” Yet his involvement
proved crucial to both the trial's verdict and the national rise of the Republican
Party.

Fenster's rhythms have Twain-like timing. For example, when Lincoln's law
partner William H. Herndon “wrote to a friend about Senator Stephen Douglas,
'You may think I hate the man. I can say I do not; yet I do loathe him,'” Fenster
adds, “at least he cleared that up.” While her Lincoln is affable and much
admired, he was, she writes, “a friend to everyone, a best friend to no one.”
Fenster further explains that, “for all of his approachability—in person or in
history—there is a dignified reserve. So I think it's refreshing to see him, at one
point, hurl a pot of hot molasses against a fence in anger. That made me like
him more.”

Her book reminds us that this was Abraham Lincoln in his prime, doing what he
spent most of his adult life doing, while feeling political ambitions stir and
hoping for personal and professional rewards to come. “After all, he didn't know
how his life was going to turn out,” she says. Her narrative is a page-turner
without grandiloquent statements or dark adumbrations of the tragedies with
which Lincoln is inescapably entwined. Fenster knew they weren't necessary.—
Margaret Heilbrun