Lincoln's Defense of Duff Armstrong: The Story of the Trial and The Celebrated Almanac

About forty years ago, the writer, a young man, and a comparative stranger in Beardstown, Illinois, heard a conversation in that city between two persons, not known to him. One of them, whom I will designate as Brown, was telling the other of the trial of Duff Armstrong in Beardstown in the spring of 1858. Brown said that he heard the trial; that a witness for the People testified that the prisoner assaulted the deceased at 10 o'clock at night; that the moon was directly overhead, and it wa...