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it, if he became satisfied of unfairness on the part of his client; and when a coadjutor won a case from which he had withdrawn in transitu, so to speak, he refused to accept any portion of the fee.  Such habits may not meet with the same measure of commendation from professional men[51] which they will command on the part of others; but those who are not members of this ingenious profession, contemning the fine logic which they fail to overcome, stubbornly insist upon admiring the lawyer who refuses to subordinate right to law.  In this respect Lincoln accepted the ideals of laymen rather than the doctrines of his profession.[52]

In the presidential campaign of 1844, in which Henry Clay was the candidate of the Whig party, Lincoln was nominated upon the Whig electoral ticket.  He was an ardent admirer of Clay and he threw himself into this contest with great zeal.  Oblivious of courts and clients, he devoted himself to “stumping” Illinois and a part of Indiana.  When Illinois sent nine Democratic electors to vote for James K. Polk, his disappointment was bitter.  All the members of the defeated party had a peculiar sense of personal chagrin upon this occasion, and Lincoln felt it even more than others.  It is said that two years later a visit to Ashland resulted in a disillusionment, and that his idol then came down from its pedestal, or at least the pedestal was made much lower.[53]