Years ago a kidnapping/hostage situation arose when a
bank robbery went wrong. An armed confrontation outside the bank led to a high
speed chase, which ended when an officer used his patrol vehicle to knock the
kidnapper’s car off the road. When the kidnap vehicle came to rest, officers
scrambled to the wrecked car and subdued the kidnapper before he could harm his
hostage. It was an event which would cause the adrenalin to flow. I happened to
be in the radio control room at the time the kidnapping occurred and got to
listen to the police radio transmissions from the beginning of the chase until
the arrest. I must confess that my heart was pounding by the time the chase was
over.
Despite video surveillance footage from the bank and the
testimony of the victim and a dozen or more officers, the defendant entered a
plea of not guilty and went to trial. Being a young, inexperienced rookie, I
did not try the case, but I did get to sit in on it. As the prosecutor prepared
for the trial, he spoke to four or five officers, each of whom steadfastly
maintained that, alone and unaided, he took the kidnapper into custody. This
presented a problem for the presentation of the evidence because most jurors
realize that five officers could not each single-handedly arrest one man. As I
recall, the prosecutor solved his problem by getting the officers together,
explaining the problem to them, and telling them he was going to leave the room
and let them figure which one of them actually made the arrest. At the end of
their private conference none of them were happy but they had all agreed on one
officer as the person who made the arrest. Problem solved.
This is a common problem with memory. We are each the hero
of our own life story, and we tend to remember ourselves as being more
important to a particular event than we actually were. I ran into this problem
researching the Almanac Trial. Lincoln is usually remembered as trying the case
alone and unaided. That is how the earliest published version of the trial told
the story, and that is how most histories remember the trial. Actually, he was
not alone in the trial of the case. Armstrong had three lawyers defending him.
Other than allowing his campaign biographies to say that he was sole counsel,
Lincoln never really talked or wrote about the trial. His co-counsel did.
William Walker carried on an extensive correspondence with various people about
the trial. In his recollection, he acted as lead counsel and Lincoln simply
assisted him. According to Walker, Lincoln merely took notes, made suggestions,
and made the final argument. Most of the others who attended the trial remember
Lincoln doing much more than Walker seemed willing to admit. At least Walker
was willing to admit that Lincoln was involved in the defense of the case. He
never mentioned Armstrong’s third lawyer, Caleb Dilworth. Dilworth wrote less
about the trial than Walker, and he was willing to give Lincoln more credit.
If, however, his correspondence were our only evidence of the trial, the only
thing that we would know about Walker’s involvement would come from a remark at
the end of Dilworth’s letter that “I believe also William Walker of Havana was
in the defense.”
When I was researching the original sources for the trial, the
first papers I read were William Walker’s letters. I came away from my reading
of those letters thinking that Lincoln did almost nothing in defense of
Armstrong. Further reading of the letters and reminiscences of others at the
trial changed my mind, and I now believe that he was the de facto leader of the
defense team.
The problem I just described is but one of the man problems
that researchers and investigators confront when dealing with the reminiscences
of participants in an event. It is something that we must be careful to guard
against.
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