Prairie Defender: The Murder Trials of Abraham Lincoln

The conventional wisdom says that most of Lincoln’s practice involved collecting debt and representing railroads; that he only practiced law as a platform for his political career; that criminal law was only a minuscule part of his practice; and that he was particularly bad at defending homicide cases. A survey of Lincoln’s murder cases demonstrates that he was first and foremost a trial lawyer, that the trial of criminal cases was an important part of his practice, and that he was not only a very good criminal trial lawyer, he was very capable of defending murder cases. Dekle devotes a chapter to each of Lincoln’s well-documented criminal cases, paying particular attention to homicide cases. He consolidates cases for which we have little reference material into a single chapter and ends with an overall assessment of Lincoln as a criminal trial lawyer.