Lincoln's Court Cases

Lincoln's Court Cases. Looking for Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln visited Shelby County to argue law cases during his journeys around the Eighth Judicial Circuit., Although Shelby County comprised a part of the circuit in the 1840's, Lincoln would forego visiting Shelbyville in favor of Charleston, where his father lived. He mostly attended court in Shelbyville between 1849 and 1853. Lincoln handled at least thirty-five cases in Shelby county. Mirroring his larger practice, he argued mainly debt cases, including defending seventeen Shelby County residents who failed to make stock payments to the Terre Haute and Alton Railroad. In three separate cases, he also defended a dozen men who used vigilante justice against a man who assisted a jailbreak. In another case, he represented a woman in a divorce case. Lincoln also argued a significant number of slander cases in Shelby County. Even though many slander cases had large judgments against defendants, ranging from $300 to $1,000, most of the winning plaintiffs remitted, or returned, that award. The winning party was not interested in the money but only wanted his or her good name restored. Nearly one out of every five cases that Lincoln handled in Shelbyville involved slander. , In this 1878 picture of Main Street looking east, the courthouse stands in the middle of the street, as it did in Lincoln's day. The courtroom, in which Lincoln argued cases and debated Anthony Thornton, occupied the entire first floor. County officers worked on the second floor. The building was forty feet square, topped with a cupola, and designed in the federal style. This particular style was commonly referred to as "coffee mill" since the entire building resembled a coffee grinder., In 1852 Abraham Lincoln assisted in the defense of John Crockett for murder in neighboring Moultrie County. A jury found the Shelby County resident guilty of the reduced charge of manslaughter and sentenced him to two years in the state penitentiary. Lincoln helped with the successful effort to obtain a pardon for the "feeble minded" young man, as shown on the last page of Anthony Thornton's letter to Governor Augustus French. Elliott Crockett - John Crockett's father and nephew of the frontiersman and hero of the Alamo, Davy Crockett - gave Lincoln a promissory note for legal services but died before paying the debt. In 1857, Lincoln hired Thornton and sued Crockett's estate to recover the debt. The court ruled for Lincoln and awarded him $64.12, as shown in Thornton's letter to Lincoln sending the payment.