Customer Reviews

Moonlight: Abraham Lincoln and the Almanac Trial

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Walsh provides a great service by re-examining the best-known case in Lincoln's law career, and shows how it has often been misunderstood. But his thin book draws conclusions far beyond his ability to support them. And Walsh doesn't help his criticism of historians by misspelling every occurrence of the victim's name as Metzger (it appears as Metzker in his reproductions of the original handwritten documents).

In the almanac trial, Lincoln supposedly showed that a key witness could not have witnessed an assault by moonlight because the moon had already set. Walsh corrects the record: the bright moon was simply lower in the sky at the time of the attack. By having the witness confidently repeat, a dozen times, that the moon was directly overhead, Lincoln "floored" the witness when the almanac showed that the moon was on the horizon.

Walsh is at his best here, showing Lincoln's skill in taking a fact that actually helped the prosecution and making it appear that it helped the defense. But beyond discrediting the main witness, Walsh shows that Lincoln had two other important arguments. A doctor testified that another man's blow to the back of the head could have caused the frontal fracture, attributed to Lincoln's client. (The judge thought Lincoln won the case with this testimony.)

Lincoln's other defense involved the weapon, and this is where Walsh falls into his most specious reasoning. Walsh's claims are based on a letter from a juror some 50 years after the event. The juror had by then himself forgotten the gist of the moonlight argument and in the letter also gets it wrong (p.113-114). Walsh ignores this part of the letter, but extrapolates wildly from another sentence in the letter to claim that Lincoln suborned perjury. It is not persuasive.

Just to give you a flavor of his standard of proof: Walsh claims that he can prove that Lincoln *never* talked about the almanac case with law partner Billy Herndon. He then analyzes the few sentences about the case in Herndon's Life of Lincoln, where Herndon makes the common mistake, and from this Walsh concludes that his own assertion is "sufficiently proved" (p 79).

This would be a better book without the chip on Walsh's shoulder, criticizing historians and accusing Lincoln of nefarious wrong-doing. But just ignore the occasional shrillness. This book is well worth reading for the wealth of detail on a fascinating case that ties Lincoln, on the brink of national celebrity, with his humble Illinois beginnings with Jack Armstrong and the Clary Grove boys.

"Moonlight" by John Walsh is an embarassment to honest Lincoln scholarship. It is a book with enormous potential to illustrate one of Abraham Lincoln's most famous legal cases, but instead it weaves a narrative feculent with specious logic; the factual assertions of unknown, unknowable and unproveable theories; and assumption after assumption after assumption. Walsh proves some important points, and makes good use of some primary and secondary sources. He offers a detailed account of the murder, the trial and the outcome that cannot be found elsewhere. However, the positive attributes of the book become overshadowed by Walsh's outrageous assertions of supposition as fact, his assertions without qualification or citation, and his complete reliance, as unassailable proof and fact, on the second-hand interview of a trial juror 50 years after the trial. More than once Walsh makes unknowable and unproveable assertions, then admits he can't prove them, then dismisses this serious circumstance as unimportant. For example: "That the charge was levelled during Lincoln's senatorial campaign of 1858 is stated in many sources but I have not been able to document it." (p 155) "Moonlight" is a lost opportunity. The frighteningly childish writing quality, the fanciful indulgences, suppositions, specious logic, appearance of questionable sources and Walsh's own obvious insularity in his investigative objective, make this book a sham, and an insult to the field of historical research.

If John Walsh had set out to write historical fiction he would have been most successful. Mr. Walsh narration of the trial in the third chapter is superb and most believable.

However, as Mr. Walsh repeatedly points out himself, few other historians agree with him. According to Mr. Walsh, all other Lincoln scholars are either wrong or have been too lazy to gather the evidence that he has. What is more likely is that they refrain from the same wild conjecture that is put forth in Moonlight.

Moonlight is a worthwhile read on a topic of Lincolnia that is obscure indeed. Read it, but read is with a skeptical mind.

Just as Lincoln was about to take on Douglas in a race for Senate, he received a desperate death-bed request that he defend the son of a friend, a friend from many years ago. The son was charged with murder; Lincoln's sense of loyalty caused him to accept the task without fee. Lincoln's success as a criminal (as distinguished from civil) attorney was spotty, and, worse, the eye-witness accounts of the murder clearly supported guilt. Indeed, the co-defendant had been handily convicted by the same evidence facing Lincoln. Walsh's short, readable account of the trial is immediately engaging. Apparently he has unearthed detail of the trial never before published. The reader comes away with a clear sense of Lincoln's uniquely pursuasive skills before a jury, and his use of the tactics of surprise, and emotion, to win a case. Walsh also raises the possibility that Lincoln crossed an ethical line, and may have permitted perjury, by allowing a witness to tesify falsely. That suggestion does not ring true to me. The witness apparantly implied privately to Abe that he knew more than what Lincoln wished him to testify to. However, Lincoln closed off the conversation and limited the discussion,and the subsequent testimony,only to a limited detail (whether the witness owned the sling-shot weapon and what happenned to it) and left unmentioned his apparant eye-witness account. That tactic is, as I understand it, proper and ethical...and is to be distinguished from permitting false testimony. This is a good read...for those who care about Lincoln's trial skills, for those who are intrigued by the process of historical research (the appendix is quite thorough), and for those who simply like a straight-forward courtroom drama. The ethical issues raised by Walsh are a bit of a stretch...but interesting to contemplate.

Walsh certainly comes up with an interesting topic that has been bypassed by other historians. The case involves Duff Anderson and his use of a deadly weapon in killing a large man. Because of his friendship with the family, Abe Lincoln defended Duff in court and got him acquited of the charge of murder. In the trial itself, Abe may have used an incorrect almanac, and this was not challenged by the prosecution. Because of this, a guilty man may have went free. Walsh also questions other Lincoln cases in the book. This is all interesting reading, even though unproven.
I give the author credit in writing about a topic that has not been explored in great detail. He writes this as history, but there is not enough evidence here to convict Lincoln. Lincoln used the full extent of his powers to defend his client. At this stage, there is not enough documentation to prove he doctored the almanac. This is a quick short interesting read.

I think this book is an interesting evocation of the ethical scruples of Lincoln as lawyer. Contrary to the conclusion drawn by the author, the sources he relies upon demonstrate that Lincoln was ethical in the zealous representation of his client, an accused murderer. Even under today's legal standards, Lincoln would have been correct to instruct a witness that he was only interested in the witness's ability to testify on a single factual aspect of the trial and to instruct the witness to tell him nothing else except the truth about that single fact. During his preparation for trial, when the witness tried to stray from his instructions and inform Lincoln of other observations, Lincoln would have been within his right to interrupt and remind him that he mustn't offer additional observations beyond the fact requested.

Even today we instruct juries that they may believe all, part, or none of a witness's testimony. Lawyers are held to no different standards in their use of witnesses at trial except lawyers may not offer a witness whose testimony the lawyer believes would commit a fraud upon the court. Lincoln never placed this witness on the stand to elicit any testimony other than what the witness stated to be the truth. Thus the claim that Lincoln "suborned perjury" is naive and insulting. For all that, I enjoyed the underlying research, and the author's exposition of it. It does strike me that consultation with an attorney would have vastly improved the history and dampened the sensationalism.

Walsh does diligent spadework with the original sources and clears up many misconceptions about the famous "Almanac Trial." Unfortunately he engenders a few misconceptions himself. The greatest misconception he engenders is his portrayal of Lincoln as behaving in an ethically challenged fashion. Not so.

Walsh reports that Lincoln, in his investigation, told a witness not to tell him about inculpatory evidence against his client and then goes on to have the witness manufacture exculpatory evidence. Not so. Walsh serious misinterprets what was going on. One of Armstrong's friends stood ready to testify that the slunshot found at the crime scene was his, that he had set it aside and forgotten it at the scene, and that insofar as he knew, Armstrong never had it. The slungshot was allegedly used by Armstrong to beat the victim. The witness also would have testified that he saw Armstrong hit Metzger with a wagon hammer, not a slunshot, but Lincoln didn't inquire into this evidence and didn't present it at trial. Lincoln did nothing unethical. As the representative of the defendant, who has a Fifth Amendment Privilege, Lincoln was under no duty to disclose inculpatory evidence. He was quite possibly foolish in calling the witness because the prosecution might have wheedled the information out of the witness on cross, but that didn't happen.

Walsh then speculates that Lincoln told the witness to testify that he mislaid the slunshot and the witness obliged. This speculation is contrary to the probabilities. The witness was afraid he would be asked on cross if he saw Armstrong hit Metzger. If he had been asked, he would have admitted it. If he was such a liar as to make up a story about mislaying the slungshot, he would not have stuck at lying and saying he never saw Armstrong hit Metzger.

Walsh then claims that when the star witness for the prosecution disappeared, Lincoln personally had him hauled into court so he could cross examine the man. Not so. Lincoln would have been happy to have the witness, one Allen, not appear, because he was the heart and soul of the state's case. Without him, there was no testimony that Armstrong hit Metzger with anything more than his fist, which could not have produced the injury. Lincoln retrieved the wayward witness because he learned that Armstrong's family had hidden him to keep him from testifying. If Allen had failed to appear on his own, Lincoln would have been under no obligation to go get him. But that is not what happened, Lincoln's "allies" spirited the witness away and he could not be party to such a circumvention of justice. When he found out about the maneuver, he ordered them to bring Allen back.

Then Walsh claims Lincoln lied in final argument. Judging by the eyewitness reports, Lincoln said some things that would never be said in a modern courtroom, but the 1800's were a time of bombastic oratory. What Lincoln supposedly said was nothing more than that, bombast aimed at stirring up sympathy.

Walsh's book shows that Lincoln comported himself strictly within the bounds of legal ethics, but you have to ignore Walsh's off-the-mark analysis to see it. I'd give the book two stars if it weren't such a goldmine of information on the trial.

This is nearly a very good book. Walsh has done credible research and his bibliography is helpful. He clarifys the issues in the almanac trial and provides a picture of Lincoln at work as a defense attorney as few have. BUT.. In his introduction Walsh says, "no fictional coloring has been added" and eveything "rests squarely on documented sources." If only that were so. The tone of the book is like an over-ripe romance novel. I counted two !s and five usues of italics for emphasis in the introduction alone. He virtually admits he can not prove any of his more florid conclusions. A defense attorney is not on a quest for the truth. He or she need only make the prosecution's case look uncertain, which is what Lincoln did. Walsh states that Lincoln could not help the man convicted of killing Metzer, "without endangering Duff [Lincoln's client.]"
Duff had already been aquitted. He could not have been tried for the same crime twice. It is a shame that with all the good work he did Walsh did not present the case in a factual matter. he could have raised very interesting ethical questions about the role of a defense attorney with a very probably guilty client. He did not.