INSIDE THE ALMANAC TRIAL COURTROOM

Nobody really knows how the courtroom was set up when Lincoln tried his famous case there. It is believed that the judge's bench is the same as it was in 1858, and maybe the rail which divides the audience from the working area. They have tried to recreate the layout, and it looks like a fairly reasonable setup for a courtroom. When you walk in the door, here is the first thing you see:

 



Why they would have a witness stand on both sides of the judge's bench is somewhat of a mystery. It seems that the witness stand on the right would better be set up as a clerk's workstation. On the left side of the courtroom sits a row of six chairs, which I assume represents the jury box:

The jury box panel is missing, and there are only half enough chairs. In Lincoln's day all juries consisted of 12 jurors. On the wall behind the jury box you see a painting of Lincoln showing the famous almanac to the jury.

Looking to the right you see a table surrounded by chairs. This is probably where the clerk sits when the courtroom is used to hear cases. On the wall on the right side, you see a reproduction of the ambrotype photograph which was taken of Lincoln on the afternoon of the trial. The original ambrotype is now located at the University of Nebraska. This ambrotype is unique in that it is the only known photograph of Lincoln wearing a white suit.

If my memory serves me correctly, I believe that our guide, Corky Kinstle, told me that the seats in the audience were discarded pews from a local church. On the back wall of the courtroom hang a number of exhibits, including a reproduction of the derringer used by John Wilkes Booth to assassinate Lincoln. A more pertinent exhibit is a framed 1857 almanac turned to the page showing the moon wasn't where the eyewitness said it was. You will also see a reproduction of Norman Rockwell's painting of Lincoln holding the almanac as he cross-examines the eyewitness.

In the files of the Library of Congress, I found a 1937 photograph which gives us a possibly more accurate layout of the courtroom:

 

 

The bench and rail look the same as in the current layout, but the jury box looks much more like a jury box, with more seats and a panel in front of the seats. On the right is the clerk's workstation, which looks much more functional than the table which now sits in the right corner of the courtroom. There is only one counsel table, probably because the jury box and clerk's work station take up too much room to allow for two tables. In my early days as a lawyer, I tried many cases in a courtroom which easily accommodated only one large counsel table. It was somewhat awkwark to be sitting at the same table as your opponent, but we adjusted and made do. Finally someone realized that we could sit at separate tables if the one large counsel table was removed and replaced by two smaller tables. This was probably how the courtroom was set up when Lincoln defended the Almanac Trial--two smaller counsel tables rather than the one large table in the photo. Eyewitnesses to the trial described the lawyers as sitting at separate tables.

 

There are a number of websites devoted to the courtroom:

Lincoln Courthouse & Photos Page

LincolnInBeardstown.org

"Lincoln Courtroom Museum" at Illinois State Bar Assn.

 

THE BEARDSTOWN COURTHOUSE THROUGH THE YEARS

Before we go into the courtroom, let's take one more look at the outside of the courthouse. In addition to the photographs that I took of the courthouse, I found two others which showed the courthouse in earlier years. One photo comes from an article written by J.N. Gridley in 1910. The other comes from the Library of Congress, and was taken in 1937.Here are the three pictures:

The structure which looks like a cupola in the two earlier photos is not a part of the courthouse. It is on the façade of a building behind it. From 1910 to at least 1937 the building served as the Beardstown city hall. The most visible changes are: (1) The elimination of the chimneys sometime between 1910 and 1937. (2) The paving of the road in front of the courthouse, from dirt to brick to asphalt. (3) The buildings surrounding the courthouse. (4) The flagpole, which appears to be a wooden shaft with a square cross section in the 1910 & 2013 photos, but is a typical flagpole in the 1937 photo. Apparently the flagpole was changed to make it more like the one over the courthouse when Lincoln litigated the Almanac Trial.

If Lincoln were to see the courthouse today, he would probably have no trouble recognizing it as the courthouse where he defended Duff Armstrong, but he would probably recognize little else about the building's surroundings.

THE BEARDSTOWN COURTHOUSE

When Lane (my wife) and I arrived at the courthouse in Beardstown, it was a Saturday and the courthouse was closed. I was disappointed that I wasn't going to be able to see the courtroom, because we had a busy schedule during our time in Illinois and weren't going to be able to come back. I decided that I could at least take a photo of the plaque that the Beardstown Woman's Club had put on the front of the building.

 

Plaque commemorating the Almanac Trial

 
The plaque reads "The Beardstown Woman's Club erected this Tablet February 12, 1909, In Memory of ABRAHAM LINCOLN Who for the sake of a mother in distress, cleared her son, Duff Armstrong, of the charge of murder, in this Hall of Justice, May 7, 1858."

We were getting ready to leave when Lane suggested that she take  photo of me standing at the front door of the courthouse.

 

Me in Front of the Cass County Courthouse

I am a compulsive reader, so while I was at the front door, I read the signs taped inside the window. I learned that the courthouse museum was open on Saturdays, but that we were just too early. We waited for the museum to open. Around 9:00 a gentleman by the name of Corky Kinstle soon arrived to unlock the door and we followed him in. He gave us the full tour of all the exhibits in the museum, most of which dealt with the history of Beardstown. It was interesting, but I couldn't help becoming impatient to go ahead and get upstairs to the courtroom.

Then he took us down and showed us the jail, which was a dungeon-like room at the rear of the courthouse. It was here that Duff Armstrong was housed from November 1857 until May 1858 awaiting trial. Mr. Kinstle told us that Armstrong didn't spend all his time in the cage. The sheriff granted him trustee status and let him out to go work doing odd jobs at the sheriff's home. It is likely that this helped Duff get acquitted. The people of Beardstown, twelve of whom would eventually serve on Duff's jury, likely became familiar with him and decided that he couldn't be that desperate a criminal if the sheriff was letting him out to do odd jobs.

Mr. Kinstle said that an effigy of Duff was on the bed in his cell. The dummy of Duff had been there for many years, and scores, if not hundreds, of visitors to the museum had gotten their pictures taken with "Duff." I declined to get my picture taken with him, but I did take a photograph of him lying on his jail bunk bed.

 

The Beardstown Courthouse Jail Cells

As you can see from the photograph, accommodations for prisoners have improved in the last century and a half. It is said that while Duff was in jail there was also a school teacher serving time there, and that he taught Duff to read. After looking at the jail, our guide decided it was time for us to go upstairs and see what they had up there.

One room of the upstairs was called the "Black Museum," which made me think of Scotland Yard's Black Museum in London. The Beardstown Black Museum was nothing like the one in London. London's Black Museum, which is not open to the public, contains evidentiary exhibits from various criminal investigations over the years. Back in the heyday of old time radio, Orson Welles narrated a radio show called "The Black Museum." At the beginning of each episode, Welles would describe one of the evidentiary exhibits from the museum, and then you would  hear a dramatization of the case in which the exhibit was collected. The Beardstown Black Museum was a collection of antiques and curios donated by a man named Black. Outside the courtroom and the jail cell, this was my favorite part of the courthouse museum. Mr. Black collected antique firearms, and the display of guns was quite interesting.

After looking at the Black Museum, it was time to go into the courtroom itself. I will save a description of the courtroom for a future post.

NEW BOOK ABOUT THE ALMANAC TRIAL

Before he became president, Abraham Lincoln made his living as a lawyer trying cases in the courts of Illinois. Of all the cases he tried, none is more famous than the case that history remembers as the Almanac Trial. The trial was contested in this courthouse in Beardstown, Cass County.

Old Courthouse at Beardstown 

Although Beardstown is no longer the county seat of Cass County, the courtroom is still in use. Most days the courtroom serves as an exhibit in the museum which is housed in the old courthouse, but once every week or so it is used to hear cases. It is the only active courtroom in Illinois where Lincoln actually tried cases. Across the street in the park there are two stones commemorating the places where Lincoln and Douglas gave speeches during their campaign for the Senate. The speeches were not technically a part of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates because the candidates gave their speeches on different days, and they stood on different sides of the park to give them.

Douglas’s stone stands out.

Stone Commemorating Stephen A. Douglas's speech at Beardstown

 

But Lincoln’s is overgrown with vegetation. In the upper right hand corner of the photograph you can see my finger as I held a branch back to expose the stone.

 

Stone Commemorating Abraham Lincoln's Speech at Beardstown

 

The story of the Almanac Trial became an issue during Lincoln’s run for the Presidency, and in the process the story became so twisted and garbled that it is hard to separate fact from fiction. I am in the process of writing a book which seeks to untangle the many different versions of the story and ferret out the probable course of the trial. When untangling the story, I tried to rely as much as possible on the letters, statements, and reminiscences of those who were involved in the case, and also upon the actual court records. I think that I have recovered a story which is different from the popular memory, but I think it is every bit as compelling. The trial was basically a high-stakes chess match between Lincoln and the prosecutor, Hugh Fullerton, and the maneuvering Lincoln did to win the case was little short of brilliant.

I just finished what I hope will be the final draft of the manuscript, and Praeger Books, an imprint of ABC-CLIO, should have it in print sometime next year. I learned a lot of interesting details about the trial and its background, so many that I could not get everything to fit within the publisher’s word limit. I began this blog so that I could share these details with the public. When the book comes out in print, I will begin posting periodic stories about the aspects of the trial which I couldn’t fit into the book. Stay tuned for future posts.