This picture play illustrates an episode in President Lincoln's life prior to his election for Congress. It is historically accurate in every particular. It is the day before his final address to the electors and his success depends upon his final speech, which he has positively promised his political managers to make. A letter arrives from a poor mother whose boy is to be tried for murder, and she begs Lincoln to appear in his defense and save her child. Despite the protestations of his political managers, he determines to chance losing the election, in order to save the child. He tramps to the little courthouse, and in an impassioned plea to the jury tells them how this woman befriended him when he was a poor boy, and how he had held the accused in his arms as a baby, and by appealing forcibly to their paternal feelings, he succeeds in having a verdict brought in of not guilty.