How did Lincoln meet Father Chiniquy?
Abraham Lincoln as an attorney, before running for the presidency represented a Catholic priest, who was Charles Chiniquy.
Peter Spink brought suit against the Catholic priest Chiniquy for slander, for in his church sermon, Father Chiniquy said that Spink committed perjury because Spink accused Chiniquy of immoral behavior.
Fr. Chiniquy hired Lincoln as one of his attorneys, and there were two mistrials. When the case came up the third time, Lincoln negotiated an out-of-court settlement.
In that settlement, written by Lincoln, Fr. Chiniquy swore that he had never accused Spink of perjury, except by repeating a secondhand story that he personally did not believe; furthermore, he said that he believed Spink had never committed perjury. Spink and Fr. Chiniquy then split the court costs.
From the Abraham Lincoln Association:
"Despite this legal finding, the village priest, Father Chiniquy continued to allege publicly that Spink was a perjurer, that is, he lied.
....Incensed by this double jeopardy after having been found innocent, Spink sued for $10,000 in damages caused by this slanderous attack against his integrity.
The trial ran for three days in Urbana in late May of 1856 with Lincoln defending Father Chiniquy, and a friend of Lincoln’s, Oliver Davis, acting as counsel for Peter Spink.
The jury was unable to reach a decision after eleven hours of deliberation, and the judge declared a “hung jury.”
The case was carried over to the fall term.It was then, in October, that Lincoln reached his own verdict that
this was not a viable argument.
Somehow he was able to convince his own disputatious client ( Father Chinquy) as well as the offended plaintiff to abandon the case, pay their own costs, and go back to
L’Erable. The order for dismissal still exists, drafted in Lincoln’s own hand, reflecting his effective, yet direct and terse style, to wit:
Peter Spink
vs.
Charles Chiniquy
This day came the parties and the defendant denies that he has ever charged, or believed the plaintiff to be
guilty of Perjury; that whatever he has said from which such a charge could be inferred, he said on the information
of others, protesting his own disbelief in the charge; and that he now disclaims any belief in the truth of said
charge against said plaintiff. It is therefore, by agreement of the parties,ordered that the suit be dismissed,
each party paying his own cost—the defendant to pay his part of the cost heretofore ordered to be paid by said
plaintiff.'
Chiniquy became an unfrocked priest, (and was excommunicated by the Catholic Church) probably by the hand of the bishop of the diocese. Later, he found he was
predestined to serve as a Presbyterian minister.
Twenty year's after Lincoln’s martyrdom, Chiniquy published a concocted tale of how he had visited Lincoln in
the Executive Mansion where Lincoln made him privy to "a Jesuit plot" to assassinate him in Baltimore, and the
Roman Catholic plotters would try again.
In the anti-Catholic temper of the times, his fictitious allegations found many responsive listeners. Later
scholarship (Joseph George, Jr.,Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, February 1976) makes clear
the perfidious nature of Chiniquy’s claims. Spink v. Chiniquy, in contrast, did actually happen and is available to be read in hundreds of libraries forthose who wish to explore it further.
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link to www.abrahamlincolnassociation.org]