Can be found online here Nostalgia Library: The Trailor Murder Mystery

This short story is one I'd never heard of and only bumped into it when I was going through the various short stories that the Nostalgia Library has posted. Interesting for the author's sake, as well as the history, and the unexpected end. I also liked that Lincoln didn't suppose himself to be a great writer, noting in the second to last paragraph:

"Thus ended this strange affair and while it is readily conceived that a writer of novels could bring a story to a more perfect climax, it may well be doubted whether a stranger affair ever really occurred."

From the introductory paragraphs by Bob Gay:

"...In the mid-1800s, at the time Lincoln was a practicing law, it was common for lawyers to write an overview of a case and present it as fiction. These true crime pieces were very popular with the public and, apparently, were not considered to be a breach of ethics on the parts of the lawyer/authors. Lincoln was no exception to this formula and based his story, which was originally titled, "A Remarkable Case of Arrest for Murder," on a the case in which he defended the Trailor brothers in 1841.
...And one final note: history records that the Trailors never paid Lincoln for his defense.

Not that it was probably easy on Lincoln to lose his fee, but at least he had a great story to tell of the case.

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