An "out-of-character" moment for Lincoln?

[Donna McCreary]

Frontier justice . . hmmm. . . a very risky form of punishment in my opinion. An alcoholic is unpredictible and often seeks revenge when disgraced in a public forum. To have the man's wife thrash in public would have been humiliating and may have caused the man to become more violent the next time he was in a drunken rage.
On one level, I am glad to hear that the cobbler was clobbered. On the other, I feel that the wife probably remained silent the next time she was abused.

Is the story true? I hope not.