When he had thus prepared the way, he called for an almanac, and showed that at the hour at which the principal witness swore he had seen, by the light of the full moon, the mortal blow given, _there was no moon_.

The last fifteen minutes of his speech were as eloquent as I ever heard; and such were the power and earnestness with which he spoke to that jury, that all sat as if entranced, and, when he was through, found relief in a gush of tears." Said one of the prosecutors: "He took the jury by storm.

There were tears in Mr.Lincoln's eyes while he spoke, but they were genuine.
His sympathies were fully enlisted in favor of the young man, and his terrible sincerity could not help but arouse the same passion in the jury.

I have said a hundred times that it was Lincoln's speech that saved that man from the gallows." "Armstrong was not cleared by any want of testimony against him, but by the irresistible appeal of Mr.Lincoln in his favor," says Mr.Shaw, one of the associates in the prosecution.
His mother, who sat near during Lincoln's appeal, says: "He told the stories about our first acquaintance, and what I did for him and how I did it.

Lincoln said to me, 'Hannah, your son will be cleared before sundown.' He and the other lawyers addressed the jury, and closed the case.