That in the foregoing
list there were better and greater lawyers than he is unquestionable;
that he was primarily a politician and only secondarily a lawyer is
equally beyond denial. He has been described also as "a case lawyer,"
that is to say, a lawyer who studies each case as it comes to him simply
by and for itself, a method which makes the practitioner rather than the
jurist. That Lincoln was ever learned in the science is hardly
pretended. In fact it was not possible that the divided allegiance which
he gave to his profession for a score of years could have achieved such
a result.[50] But it is said, and the well-known manner of his mental
operations makes it easy to believe, that his arguments had a marvelous
simplicity and clearness, alike in thought and in expression. To these
traits they owed their great force; and a legal argument can have no
higher traits; fine-drawn subtlety is undeniably an inferior quality.
Noteworthy above all else was his extraordinary capacity for statement;
all agree that his statement of his case and his presentation of the
facts and the evidence were so plain and fair as to be far more
convincing than the argument which was built upon them. Again it may be
said that the power to state in this manner is as high in the order of
intellectual achievement as anything within forensic possibilities.
As an advocate Lincoln seems to have ranked better than he did in the
discussion of pure points of law.
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