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An illustration features a court scene with William “Duff” Armstrong and Abraham Lincoln. Armstrong was the defendant in an 1858 murder prosecution in which he was defended by Lincoln, two years before Lincoln was elected president. Armstrong was found not guilty due to a witness claiming to see the crime in the moonlight. Lincoln produced an almanac showing the moon on that date was not bright enough for the witness to see anything clearly.
lessAn illustration features a court scene with William “Duff” Armstrong and Abraham Lincoln. Armstrong was the defendant in an 1858 murder prosecution in which he was defended by Lincoln, two years before
... more
An illustration features a court scene with William “Duff” Armstrong and Abraham Lincoln. Armstrong was the defendant in an 1858 murder prosecution in which he was defended by Lincoln, two years before Lincoln was elected president. Armstrong was found not guilty due to a witness claiming to see the crime in the moonlight. Lincoln produced an almanac showing the moon on that date was not bright enough for the witness to see anything clearly.
lessAn illustration features a court scene with William “Duff” Armstrong and Abraham Lincoln. Armstrong was the defendant in an 1858 murder prosecution in which he was defended by Lincoln, two years before
... moreAfter gaining admission to the bar in September 1836, Abraham Lincoln practiced law across the state.
In Morgan County, he had a small, but intriguing, number of cases.
In all, Lincoln had connections to at least 26 cases in Morgan County. He filled a variety of roles in the county’s cases, and argued some of them in person. In other instances, he was retained by local parties to handle appeals in the Illinois Supreme Court.
Sometimes, Lincoln’s law partners were retained, not necessarily the future president himself. Still, those cases would have passed through Lincoln’s Springfield law offices, and he would have earned a share of the fees in the partnership.
One Morgan County case was particularly salacious. Cabot v. Regnier, which originated in Menard County in May 1843, was a slander case involving a schoolmistress, Eliza Cabot Torrey, and one of the two doctors of New Salem, Francis Regnier.
Cabot sued Regnier for $5,000, alleging that he had publicly stated that she “committed fornication” with another man. She retained a heavy-hitting counsel, including Lincoln, Jacksonville’s Murray McConnel and Edward D. Baker, a former Carrollton resident who later would be elected U.S. senator from Oregon.
Also arguing for the plaintiff was Thomas Harris, a four-term Congressman from Petersburg, for whom the Macon County village of Harristown is named.
At the time, Lincoln was only seven years removed from his former home of New Salem, which was largely abandoned by 1838. Though Regnier, a French descendant, was one of the more cultured residents of New Salem, his character was certainly in question. Cabot, meanwhile, was described by one modern writer as “almost friendless.”
Regnier claimed innocence, but the court rejected a “special plea of justification, that the spoken words were true.” The jury founded for Cabot, but awarded only $12.
Still, the court later allowed Cabot a new trial, citing partiality on the jury. A change of venue to Morgan County was also allowed, and the case was filed in Jacksonville.
A total of 70 witnesses testified in both proceedings, and in the new trial, the jury sided with Cabot and awarded $1,600 in March 1844. This time, Regnier appealed to the state Supreme Court, claiming that the court had refused to allow evidence on Cabot’s poor character.
The appeal was filed in Springfield and Cabot retained Lincoln, Harris, and Stephen T. Logan, Lincoln’s law partner from 1841 to 1844.
However, the high court upheld the judgment and the award in December 1845. Supreme Court justice Norman Purple declared that the Morgan County court had acted properly in the exclusion of part of Regnier’s evidence, but had not prohibited him from proving Cabot’s character issues.
Citing three Regnier witnesses, Purple stated his doubt that the opinions of three people accurately reflected the views of the community. He added that, “character is too valuable to permit it, in a court of justice to be destroyed, or even sullied by a report derived from a majority of three persons only.”
However, the dispute continued. Regnier had not paid the judgment, which had increased to $2,013.77, and had conveyed 190 acres of his property, plus two lots in Petersburg, to his brother, Felix, a former Jacksonville resident.
Believing Regnier conveyed the lands to avoid paying the judgment, Cabot sued once again in Menard Circuit Court through her husband, and Torrey et ux v. Regnier & Regnier was on.
Once again, Cabot retained an impressive legal team, including Lincoln, Baker, Harris, and Albert Bledsoe of Springfield, who later served as assistant secretary of war for the Confederacy.
Regnier claimed that he had not committed fraud in the conveyance, but he had expected a lower judgment on the slander suit. He argued that the conveyance was intended to settle debts from a failed store in Jacksonville, as well as his earlier medical education. Eventually, the parties settled, finally bringing a close to the matter in October 1848.
Though Lincoln was normally unflappable, he apparently held Regnier in low esteem. After the president’s death, his former law partner, William Herndon, researched a biography of Lincoln, and received a letter from one man concerning the case. The letter claimed that Lincoln offered a “denunciation” of Regnier that was “as bitter a Phillippic as was ever uttered.”
Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville. He can be reached at ilcivilwar@yahoo.com.
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Abraham Lincoln had role in dozens of Morgan cases - Jacksonville Journal Courier
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