{"id":163180,"date":"2026-09-18T16:03:55","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T00:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/18\/he-took-zealous-advocacy-a-fatal-step-too-far\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T16:03:55","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T00:03:55","slug":"he-took-zealous-advocacy-a-fatal-step-too-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/18\/he-took-zealous-advocacy-a-fatal-step-too-far\/","title":{"rendered":"He Took \u2018Zealous Advocacy\u2019 A Fatal Step Too Far"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed. Note:<\/span> Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Which prominent 19th-century lawyer \u2014 and one of the most notorious politicians of the Civil War era \u2014 was defending a man accused of murder, arguing that the victim had actually shot himself by accident while yanking his own pistol from his pocket. To prove it, the lawyer reenacted the scene with a gun he believed was unloaded. It wasn\u2019t. He shot himself and died the next day \u2014 but he won his client an acquittal.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hint: Before this grisly demonstration, he\u2019d been an Ohio congressman and the leader of the anti-war \u201cCopperhead\u201d Democrats \u2014 so troublesome to the Union that President Lincoln had him exiled to the Confederacy in 1863.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The post He Took \u2018Zealous Advocacy\u2019 A Fatal Step Too Far<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Which prominent 19th-century lawyer \u2014 and one of the most notorious politicians of the Civil War era \u2014 was defending a man accused of murder, arguing that the victim had actually shot himself by accident while yanking his own pistol from his pocket. To prove it, the lawyer reenacted the scene with a gun he believed was unloaded. It wasn\u2019t. He shot himself and died the next day \u2014 but he won his client an acquittal.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hint: Before this grisly demonstration, he\u2019d been an Ohio congressman and the leader of the anti-war \u201cCopperhead\u201d Democrats \u2014 so troublesome to the Union that President Lincoln had him exiled to the Confederacy in 1863.<\/strong><\/p>\n

1<\/strong> 2<\/a>Next \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day! Which prominent 19th-century lawyer \u2014 and one of the most notorious politicians of the Civil War era \u2014 was defending a man accused of murder, arguing that the victim had actually shot himself by accident while yanking his own pistol from his pocket. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":163181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}