The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [33]
The Coles County judges insisted that the case involved the law, not “the abstract question of slavery.” Slavery, they continued, echoing Ficklin’s argument, was a local institution, and except for fugitives from other states, the moment a slave arrived in free territory “the rights of the master cease, and the slave becomes free.” (Since Matson had brought the Bryants into Illinois, the Constitution’s fugitive slave clause did not apply to them.) The Bryants’ two years in Illinois far exceeded any conceivable right of transit, but even if they had remained “but a day,” their status as slaves ended. The judges also dismissed Matson’s suit against the abolitionists. Thus, thanks to Orlando B. Ficklin, not Lincoln, the Somerset principle came to Illinois. Ironically, Lincoln’s position—that residence in a free state did not automatically make a slave free—was adopted, to widespread dismay in the North, by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in the Dred Scott decision ten years later. Eventually, the Bryant family made its way to Liberia, an outcome that may have affected Lincoln’s subsequent belief that emancipated slaves would be willing to be colonized outside the United States.33
Overall, in his few cases involving blacks, Lincoln stuck to the facts and the letter of the law rather than seeking to establish antislavery principles or make a political point. In the Dungey slander case, Lincoln argued on the basis of the evidence; he did not challenge the Black Laws, but in effect got his client exempted from them. In the Bailey case he concentrated on the lack of evidence that Legins-Cox was a slave. The Matson case remains perhaps the most controversial of Lincoln’s career. Lincoln not only sought to return a woman and her four children to slavery, but also represented a client who claimed damages under the Black Laws from those who had assisted the family. Lincoln did not mind working with Linder, an extreme anti-abolitionist, as co-counsel. He took a position at odds with recent precedents throughout the northern states. As Frederick Douglass noted about this case (without mentioning Lincoln by name), “We should suppose that this whole subject had been rendered so clear by repeated decisions, all going to confirm the same principle, that not another case of the kind would ever again come up.”34
Lincoln’s willingness to represent Matson does not mean that he was a supporter of slavery. Dr. Rutherford later recalled that he sought out Lincoln, “his views and mine on the wrong of slavery being in perfect accord.” Yet unlike antislavery lawyers such as Lyman Trumbull and Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln made a sharp distinction between his personal outlook and his practice of the law. Of course, lawyers frequently represent clients whose beliefs and interests are at odds with their own sentiments. The adversary system depends on every person called to court enjoying legal representation. On the other hand, nothing required Lincoln to take this particular case. In an effort to exonerate him, Lincoln’s late-nineteenth-century biographer Jesse W. Weik claimed that the future president, uncomfortable with his role, in effect threw the case, presenting a weak argument on Matson’s behalf. If true, this would represent a serious violation of legal ethics. In fact, the court’s opinion noted that on both sides, counsel had presented their arguments “with unusual ability.” In any event, if Lincoln represented Matson because he needed to pursue his livelihood, he ended up disappointed.