Lincoln's autocrat

[RJNorton]

With reference to the part of Mr. Holzer's review which says:

"That Stanton rose because of his enormous legal skills is something the author does not dispute. He even puts the lie to the long-held myth that Stanton once gruffly insulted fellow attorney Abraham Lincoln when the Illinoisan traveled to Cincinnati in 1855 to serve as co-counsel in a patent case. Generations of historians have cited the story to demonstrate Lincoln’s magnanimity in appointing such a boor to his cabinet seven years later. Mr. Marvel convincingly shows why the incident could never have occurred."

Does anyone know the specifics of why this is regarded as a myth? Most books I have read say things did not go well in Cincinnati.

The web page at

http://abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abra...n-stanton/

is representative of what I have usually read. Quoting from that page:

"The relationship between Stanton and Mr. Lincoln got off to a bad start in 1855 when Mr. Lincoln was hired to work on the Manny Hanny patent case. Because the case might be tried in Illinois, a local lawyer was hired, but when the case was heard in Cincinnati, Mr. Lincoln was rudely frozen out of the company’s legal team by Stanton as lead counsel. He and his legal preparation were ignored and he was not even invited to sit at their table in the courtroom.

Both Stanton and Mr. Lincoln retained poor impressions of the other. Attorney Jeremiah Black recalled that Stanton “knew Mr. Lincoln personally and the account he gave of him was anything but favorable.” Mr. Lincoln did not remember Stanton favorably either. He told William Herndon that he had been “roughly handled by that man Stanton.” According to Herndon, "Lincoln felt that Stanton had not only been very discourteous to him, but had purposely ignored him in the case, and that he had received rather rude, if not unkind, treatment from all hands. Stanton, in his brusque and abrupt way, it is said, described him as a ‘long lank creature from Illinois, wearing a dirty linen duster for a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had splotched wide stains that resembled a map of the continent."