The Almanac Trial
In May 1858, Lincoln served as the defense attorney in the murder trial of William “Duff” Armstrong. Armstrong’s father, Jack, was an old family friend who had died the previous year. His widow, Hannah, traveled to Springfield and pleaded with Lincoln to save her son from a murder conviction. Lincoln agreed to do so but would accept no fee for his efforts. The entire case against Armstrong rested on the testimony of just one individual, Charles Allen.
The Case … For The Moon
He was the main prosecution witness and claimed that around 11 p.m. on the night of Saturday, August 29, 1857, at a religious camp meeting in Virgin’s Grove, Illinois, he saw Armstrong kill James Preston Metzker. Allen said that Armstrong used a “slungshot”–a kind of blackjack made of a lead weight sewn into a leather strap. Despite being a considerable distance away from the fatal fight–150 feet–Allen claimed he had a perfect view of the incident, thanks to the light of an almost full Moon “nearly in mid-heavens” (a reference to the Moon’s “southing” or meridian passage). The prosecutor thought he had an airtight case.
