[2] Lincoln seems to have come into the case late in the term of court when he assisted Elihu H. Powell and William F. Bryan in their efforts to obtain a new trial.
[3] Aquilla Wren accused his wife of committing adultery with four men in the year the couple lived in Springfield, of committing adultery with his Peoria store clerk Jacob Darst, of peeping through a keyhole to "see a young man undress and go to bed", and of asking a neighbor where another man "got his skin now that his wife was dead".
[6] Aquilla Wren was granted a decree after a finding by a jury that his wife Clarissa had been guilty of misconduct.
[7] Attorneys argued that according to Illinois statute, a wife divorced for fault or misconduct lost those rights.
Because of the doctrine of coverture, in which the wife's legal personality was subsumed into that of her husband, Amaziah Hart became a party to the case.
[3][7] On December 29, the attorneys for Moss, Frye, and Thomas Wren filed a petition for rehearing, which the court denied.
[3] Between 1839 and 1861, Lincoln or his legal partners were involved in seventeen similar cases where husbands sued their wives and accused them of adultery.