Abe Lincoln and the case of Peachy Quinn Harrison
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A central Illinois museum and a theater group next month will stage a play about Abraham Lincoln's last murder trial.
"The Affray: Lincoln's Last Murder Case" will be staged July 15th through 17th in a historic courtroom at the McLean County Museum of History in Bloomington. The play will be performed by the Illinois Voices Theatre.
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More on the Peachy Quinn Harrison caseThe play was written by Robert Bray and Jared Brown. It tells the story of Lincoln's successful defense of Peachy Quinn Harrison of Springfield. The trial happened a few months before Lincoln accepted the Republican nomination for the presidency.
Brown is a former director of the School of Theatre Arts at Illinois Wesleyan University and the author of six books. Bray is an English professor at the university.
According to a 1989 article in the New York Times "In the summer of 1859... Abraham Lincoln spent four sweltering days, from Aug. 31 to Sept. 3, in the Sangamon Circuit Court ... successfully defending a young man named Peachy Quinn Harrison against a charge of murder.
"A nearly 100-page handwritten transcript of that trial has just come to light, the only one known to exist among the thousands of civil and criminal cases that engaged Lincoln in his 24 years as a circuit-riding lawyer. It reveals a shrewd courtroom advocate nothing like the rustic rail-splitter of Lincoln mythology.," the Times reported.
The case, "People of the State of Illinois v. Peachy Quinn Harrison," claimed that Quinn thrust a four-inch, white-handled knife between the 11th and 12th ribs of one Greek Crafton in an argument in a drugstore in Pleasant Plains, 15 miles northwest of Springfield. Mr. Crafton died three days later," the Times article said.
