Lincoln's Last Trial--The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

"Makes you feel as if you are watching a live camera riveted on a courtroom more than 150 years ago." Diane Sawyer The true story of Abraham Lincoln's last murder trial, a case in which he had a deep personal involvementand which played out in the nation's newspapers as he began his presidential campaignAt the end of the summer of 1859, twenty-two-year-old Peachy Quinn Harrison went on trial for murder in Springfield, Illinois. Abraham Lincoln, who had been involved in more than three thousand casesincluding more than twenty-five murder trialsduring his two-decades-long career, was hired to defend him. This was to be his last great case as a lawyer.What normally would have been a local case took on momentous meaning. Lincoln's debates with Senator Stephen Douglas the previous fall had gained him a national following, transforming the little-known, self-taught lawyer into a respected politician. He was being...