The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases, 4 vols. (University of Virginia Press, 2008) The first chapter, "In re Bryant et al," in Volume 2 by Christopher Schnell is the best description of the trial to date. The multi-volume set is expensive, so check for it on interlibrary loan.
![]() Lincoln Apostate: The Matson Slave Trial by Charles R. McKirdy University Press of Mississippi, 2011.
In 171 pages that are well cited, McKirdy describes the trial and surrounding events from a lawyers point of view. He focuses on Lincoln and the other attorneys and concludes that Lincoln participated in the trial because of his relationship with Usher Linder. It is an excellent contribution to the resources about this trial and does a good job of explaining the legal issues involved for a layman. This site is part of Localités/Localities and/or Coles County Legal History Project. from Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, Illinois.
![]() Michael Burlingame's long-awaited Abraham Lincoln: A Life, published in 2008 by the Johns Hopkins University Press in two large volumes and nearly 2,000 pages, is believed by many Lincoln scholars to be the most exhaustively researched and fully documented biography of Abraham Lincoln ever written. He talks about the Matson Trial in Chapter 7. There are some details that he got wrong in the story, but his overall analysis of Lincoln's participation is interesting.
| ![]() D. T. McIntyre Article on Matson Slave Trial McIntyre was a Charleston lawyer who appears to have known Dr. Hiram Rutherford very well. This account was published in The Oakland Weekly Ledger on July 17,1906 (I think, it is fairly illegible) and again in the Tuscola Review on Sept. 7, 1922. It seems to represent Dr. Rutherford's telling of the story and is the most colorful account of the trial. McIntyre would have been a boy in 1847 and did not yet live in Coles County.
Abraham L
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Mr. Lincoln and Freedom The Lincoln Institute has created t
his
website
that describes some of
Lincoln's legal cases, including the Matson Slave Trial. It relies on John J. Duff's writings in A. Lincoln: Prairie Lawyer.
![]() Photographic Images and the History of African Americans in Coles County Illinois This site is an off-shoot of an exhibit at the Tarble Arts Museum at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Illinois. See page 6 of the site for the Matson trial description. |