His ethical sense of things, his companionableness, the utterly
non-censorious cast of his mind, his power to evolve yarns into
parables--all these made him irresistible with a jury. It was a saying
of his: "If I can divest this case of technicalities and swing it to the
jury, I'll win it."(10)

But there was not a trace in him of that unscrupulousness usually
attributed to the "jury lawyer." Few things show more plainly the
central unmovableness of his character than his immunity to the lures of
jury speaking. To use his power over an audience for his own enjoyment,
for an interested purpose, for any purpose except to afford pleasure,
or to see justice done, was for him constitutionally impossible. Such
a performance was beyond the reach of his will. In a way, his nature,
mysterious as it was, was also the last word for simplicity, a terrible
simplicity. The exercise of his singular powers was irrevocably
conditioned on his own faith in the moral justification of what he was
doing. He had no patience with any conception of the lawyer's function
that did not make him the devoted instrument of justice. For the law as
a game, for legal strategy, he felt contempt. Never under any conditions
would he attempt to get for a client more than he was convinced the
client in justice ought to have. The first step in securing his services
was always to persuade him that one's cause was just He sometimes threw
up a case in open court because the course of it had revealed deception
on the part of the client. At times he expressed his disdain of the
law's mere commercialism in a stinging irony.

"In a closely contested civil suit," writes his associate, Ward Hill
Lamon, "Lincoln proved an account for his client, who was, though he did
not know it at the time, a very slippery fellow. The opposing attorney
then proved a receipt clearly covering the entire cause of action. By