By the time Hitt had packed his supplies and readied to leave, the clamor had subsided. He had watched as Harrison had left the courtroom in a circle of his friends, who had remained respectfully low-key. After the commotion of the last few days, the echoes in the almost deserted courtroom were unsettling. Before departing, Hitt shook hands with Judge Rice, who praised his work and told him he was a welcome presence in his courtroom anytime, then each of the attorneys. Lincoln also thanked him and said he looked forward to working with him sometime in the future. Hitt almost wished him well in the upcoming election but thought it might make him uncomfortable and so said nothing about it.
The next train to Chicago was scheduled to depart the following morning, so he spent a final night at the Globe putting the finishing touches on his transcript.
He would be at the telegraph office when it opened the following morning and, thanks to the miracle of rapid rail transportation, back in Chicago by that evening.
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The village of Pleasant Plains was ripped apart by the verdict.
While Harrison’s supporters were pleased at what they considered a just outcome, Crafton’s family and friends were furious at what they believed was a terrible injustice. Subsequently, probably to satisfy them, shop owner Ben Short was arrested and charged with being an accessory to the murder of Greek Crafton. His actions in trying to prevent the tragedy somehow were construed to have assisted Harrison in the outcome. It was a charge with weak underpinnings and eventually was dropped long before it could be brought to trial.
The tensions and even the outcome did not affect the deep friendship between Lincoln and John Palmer. In fact, less than two months after the end of the trial, Lincoln sent a note to Peachy Quinn Harrison asking him to support John Palmer in his quest to fill a seat in Congress left vacant by the death of four-term representative Thomas L. Harris. “I have no doubt that our friends are doing the best they can about the election,” he wrote. “Still, you can do some more, if you will. A young man, before the enemy has learned to watch him, can do more than any other. Pitch in and try. Palmer is good and true, and deserves the best vote we can give him. If you can make your precinct 20 votes better than it was last we probably shall redeem the country. Try. Yours truly, A. Lincoln.”
Perhaps Lincoln hoped Harrison might rally those friends of his still angry at the prosecutor for his work in the trial. Lincoln’s efforts in support of the Republican candidate failed, and Palmer was defeated by John A. McClernand.
Still, within months Palmer was able to return that favor. While Lincoln remained a dark horse candidate for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination, his victory in this trial contributed to his increased visibility. Freed, mostly, from the “Press of business in the courts,” as he described it, he began speaking throughout the Midwest, seeking to establish that region as his base to support him during the convention. He was testing the political waters, while at the same time denying interest in the presidency, writing to a supporter, “In regard to the matter you spoke of. I beg you will not give it further mention. Seriously, I do not think I am fit for the presidency.”
Only weeks after the conclusion of the trial, he received an invitation to speak at New York City’s Cooper Institute the following February. His speech there was widely reprinted in its entirety. Publisher Horace Greeley wrote in his New York Tribune, “No man ever made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience.”
Lincoln had no organization, no campaign funds and little political experience. His opposition was Senator William Seward, who had all of these things. At the Republican convention in May, Judge David Davis, Stephen Logan and John Palmer, working together, helped secure the nomination for him. But it was another member of the prosecution team who claimed credit for it.
As a member of the Illinois delegation, which was hosting the Republican convention in Chicago, young Norman Broadwell was assigned the oft-thankless task of arranging the seating of the delegations. As he explained to his son, Rufus, he put the state delegations committed or leaning to Seward at the front, delegations favoring Lincoln in the center and whenever possible those committed to other candidates or in doubt in the rearmost seats. Seward led after the first ballot, but his supporters were separated from those in the back who had voted for a third candidate, while the Lincoln people moved easily among them. By the third ballot his missionaries had done their work, and thanks at least in part to Broadwell’s seating chart, Lincoln had captured the nomination.
Lincoln was not in Chicago when he was nominated; instead he had spent the day throwing a ball around with his sons, then sitting in the telegraph office awaiting the results. The following November he was elected the sixteenth president of the United States. He guided this nation through the most devastating war in our history and survived only long enough to taste a great victory. He had held the Union together through the worst times and cemented his position as one of America’s greatest leaders. For more than 150 years his life and his deeds have represented the best of this nation.
But, many other participants of the trial also went on to lead long and distinguished lives. John Palmer rose to the rank of brigadier general of the Union army in the Civil War and afterward served as military governor of Kentucky where, as promised, he drove “the last nail in the coffin” of “that abominable institution.” Following the war, he was elected governor of Illinois and in 1890 was sent by that state to the U.S. Senate. Two years later he was considered a serious candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. He did make a run for it in 1896 but at seventy-nine years old really had no chance.
The wealthy Stephen Logan offered substantial financial support to Lincoln’s presidential run, but after being asked by President Lincoln to serve as a member of an 1861 delegation to an unsuccessful peace conference with Confederate representatives, he essentially retired. As a speaker at an 1865 memorial for his former partner after Lincoln’s assassination, Logan lauded him as a man who “when he believed his client was right, especially in difficult and complicated cases, he was the strongest and most comprehensive reasoner and lawyer he ever met—or if the case was somewhat doubtful but could be decided either way without violating any just, equitable or moral principle, he was very strong—but if he thought his client was wrong he would make very little effort.”
Lincoln’s law partner, William Herndon, left the small sign announcing the firm Lincoln and Herndon hanging outside their office when his partner assumed the presidency, as Lincoln had requested. Herndon continued the practice of law after the assassination, with some moderate success, but eventually published a long and controversial biography of Lincoln that remains in print today.
The youngest member of the defense team, Shelby Cullom, went on to have a distinguished political career; in addition to serving as governor of Illinois, he was elected to three terms in the House of Representatives and five terms as a United States senator from that state. As a senator he championed significant legislation, including the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, which guaranteed fair treatment to all customers of America’s railroads. John Alexander McClernand, another member of the prosecution, served in the Civil War as a brigadier general. He saw action in several of the great battles of the war, including Shiloh and the siege of Vicksburg, but his contentious relationship with General U. S. Grant eventually caused him to resign from the army.
After a long and distinguished judicial career, Judge Edward Y. Rice served as a delegate to the state constitution convention and in 1870 was elected to Congress. He served one term and, after being defeated for reelection, returned to the practice of law. The Reverend Peter Cartwright continued with his popular ministry, and perhaps due to Lincoln’s stalwart work in his grandson’s trial, came full circle in his appreciation of the man. At an 1862 dinner with the president’s political opponents he told them, “Once we (Lincoln and Cartwright) were opposing candidates for a seat in Congress, and, measured up in the ballot-box, I went down in defeat. But it was defeat by a gentleman and a patriot. I stand here tonight to commend to you the Christian character, sterling integrity, and far-seeing sagacity of the President of the United States.”
Dr. John Million eventually became one of Springfield’s leading citizens. Although it was not mentioned during the trial, it appears that during this time he was courting Mary Crafton, Greek’s sister, whom he eventually married.
Given a chance to live a fulfilling life, Peachy Harrison could never seem to find satisfaction. In 1867 he married Emeline LaMothe Guillet, the widow of a Confederate officer. But his volatile personality caused a rift, and he left their marriage bed for years at a time, often disappearing into the untamed west. They had two children, but he became estranged from them, as well. Ironically, while he was absent, his younger brother Peter shot and killed a local farmer named William Kelly after a long feud. Peter fled to Texas where he was captured and returned to Springfield for trial—and like his older brother was acquitted by a jury.
Peachy made news once again in 1885, when a dispute with his sister Sarah over their father’s missing will became violent. He called her “a ghoul” for her actions at this time of grief. When she challenged him, he pushed her backward and she fell over a couch, breaking a rib. The Springfield newspapers claimed she had been thrown violently and was near death, using the opportunity to reprise the story of Abe Lincoln’s last great criminal trial. Sarah made a rapid and full recovery while Peachy became known for the fanciful stories he told about his adventures in the old west and the time Lincoln saved his life.
This drawing of the Honorable Robert Roberts Hitt appeared in Harper’s Weekly in 1894, long after his amazing transcription had led to him becoming a key aide to President Ulysses S. Grant and eventually a beloved twelve-term member of the House of Representatives.
“The Honorable R.R. Hitt, Illinois,” halftone print of a drawing, George William Breck, Harper’s Weekly, May 5, 1894, Collection of the of U.S. House of Representatives
Among the most successful participants in the trial in later years was, ironically, the steno man, Robert Roberts Hitt. As was noted in the Congressional Record honoring his long service, “All during the Civil War and later, Mr. Hitt was employed in many confidential capacities and his abilities and proficiencies were so well recognized that his services were constantly sought by commissions, by committees of Congress, by military courts and by the Executive departments.” After the end of that war he accompanied General Grant on a notable world tour. In 1874 President Grant appointed him First Secretary of the American Legation in Paris, during which time he also served as Chargé d’Affaires. Returning to this country, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of State under James G. Blaine during the administrations of President James A. Garfield and President Chester A. Arthur. He was elected to the first of his twelve terms in Congress in 1882, eventually becoming Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Among his many contributions was his bold stand against the Chinese Exclusion Act, arguing, “Never before in a free country was there such a system of tagging a man, like a dog to be caught by the police and examined, and if his tag or collar is not all right, taken to the pound or drowned and shot. Never before was it applied by a free people to a human being, with the exception (which we can never refer to with pride) of the sad days of slavery...” He served as Regent of the Smithsonian Institution and was elected a member of the National Geographic Society. In 1906 he was mentioned as a possible candidate for the vice presidency, but died in September of that year.
At some point Hitt’s original transcript of the trial was bound with a ribbon and put aside, only to be discovered in 1989 in a shoebox stored in a garage of the Fresno, California, home once owned by Quinn Harrison’s great-grandson. And from that meticulous transcript so perfectly stored over the years, we are left with the final direct link to the last great trial of Abraham Lincoln’s legal career, an event that helped propel him to the presidency.
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