Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  In New Salem, Lincoln drafted legal documents for his neighbors without charge. He was notably willing to help the poor, including Isaac Burner, for whom he wrote a deed.

  Lincoln once pettifogged before Justice of the Peace Samuel Berry, uncle of Lincoln’s ill-starred business partner, William F. Berry. The case involved a young woman impregnated by a swain who refused to marry her. Lincoln compared her plight with that of her seducer, likening the young man’s honor to a white garment that, if soiled, could be washed clean; but the young woman’s honor resembled a glass bottle that, once broken, was gone. Lincoln reportedly won a $100 judgment for his client.

  As early as 1832, Lincoln had considered studying law in earnest but hesitated because of his meager education. His trepidation was understandable, for the most widely used legal text, William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, recommended that the prospective law student should have “formed both his sentiments and style, by perusal and imitation of the purest classical writers, among whom the historians and orators will best deserve his regard”; should be able to “reason with precision, and separate argument from fallacy, by the clear and simple rules of pure unsophisticated logic,” and to “steadily pursue truth through any of the most intricate deductions, by the use of mathematical demonstrations”; should have “enlarged his conceptions of nature and art, by a view of the several branches of genuine, experimental philosophy”; should have “impressed on his mind the sound maxims of the law of nature, the best and most authentic foundation of human laws”; and, finally, should have “contemplated those maxims reduced to a practical system in the laws of imperial Rome.”8

  By 1834, however, Lincoln was far less intimidated by the mysteries of Blackstone’s Commentaries, a copy of which he bought at an auction. This change in attitude could have resulted from his experience in Springfield in April 1833, when he served as a witness in two cases and as a juror in three others. Over half of the members of the bar whom he might have observed in these proceedings had attended neither college nor law school. Even the presiding magistrate was probably unimposing. In 1835, a New York attorney observed Judge Stephen T. Logan of the Sangamon Circuit Court “with his chair tilted back and his heels as high as his head, and in his mouth a veritable corn cob pipe; his hair standing nine ways for Sunday, while his clothing was more like that worn by a woodchopper than anybody else.” If Lincoln beheld such a jurist, he may have overcome his self-consciousness about his own appearance.9 Around that time he told Lynn M. Greene that he “had talked with men who had the reputation of being great men, but could not see that they differed from other men.”10 Perhaps some of those “great men” were Springfield lawyers. Lincoln may also have been encouraged by his experience as a pettifogger before Bowling Green and Samuel Berry.

  With his powerfully analytical mind, Lincoln might well have been drawn to lawyers as a class, for they were reputedly the most intelligent members of frontier society. Lawyers also had an advantage over nonlawyers in the political arena, and after his 1834 electoral victory Lincoln’s appetite for politics grew stronger. A student who worked with Lincoln observed that he “took up the law as a means of livelihood, but his heart was in politics” and that he “delighted” and “reveled in it [politics], as a fish does in water, as a bird disports itself on the sustaining air.”11 Lincoln’s third law partner, William H. Herndon, varied the metaphor, declaring that politics was “his life and newspapers his food,” while the law merely served “as a stepping stone to a political life.”12

  Further stimulating Lincoln’s ambition to become a lawyer was encouragement from a sophisticated, dignified, college-educated attorney, John Todd Stuart. The tall, slender Stuart was exceptionally handsome and enjoyed a reputation as one of the best jury lawyers in the state. His easygoing, cheerful, good-natured personality and polished, gentlemanly manners won him many friends and favorably impressed numerous jurors. In his law practice he played the role of peacemaker. A Springfield woman who spent much of her youth in Stuart’s home deemed him “a type of a gentleman of the olden times, so gentle and courteous—with as fine and gallant a bow for his laundress as for a Duchess.”13

  A Kentuckian like Lincoln, Stuart graduated from Center College in 1826 and studied law with Judge Daniel Breck. Soon thereafter he settled in Springfield, where in 1833 he formed a partnership with Henry E. Dummer. The previous year he had run successfully for the legislature, quickly rising to become a Whig leader in the House of Representatives. There he was known as “Jerry Sly” for his mastery of legislative intrigue. William Herndon thought him “tricky” and a “dodger.”14 Political opponents denounced him as “indolent and inefficient,” condemned his “low cunning,” and bestowed upon him the sobriquets “sleepy Johnny” and “the Rip Van Winkle of the Junto.”15

  During the Black Hawk War, Stuart came to admire Lincoln so much that he decided to take him under his wing. In a third-person autobiographical sketch, Lincoln wrote that during the election campaign of 1834, “in a private conversation he [John Todd Stuart] encouraged A[braham to] study law. After the election he borrowed books of Stuart, took them home with him, and went at in good earnest.”16 Whenever Lincoln expressed anxiety about the difficulties standing in his way or doubts about entering the legal profession, Stuart reassured him. Without Stuart’s mentoring, Lincoln probably would not have become a lawyer. (Years later Stuart predicted that he would be remembered only as “as the man who advised Mr. Lincoln to study law and lent him his law books.”)17

  Although Stuart became Lincoln’s mentor, he did not, like Green, play the role of surrogate father. (He was, after all, only a year older than Lincoln.) Jesse W. Fell, who observed the two men during the legislative session of 1834–1835, called them “congenial spirits not only boarding at the same house but rooming and sleeping together. Socially and politically they seemed inseparable.” David Davis believed that Lincoln and Stuart “loved one another.” Indeed, Fell said, they were “boon companions,” though totally different in temperament and appearance. Stuart, who had “all the adornments of a polished gentleman,” provided a startling contrast to Lincoln: “raw-boned, angular features deeply furrowed, ungraceful, almost uncouth; having little, if any, of the polish so important in society life.”18

  Under Stuart’s guidance, Lincoln began his legal studies by wading through Blackstone’s Commentaries, the work most widely read by aspiring attorneys, though some authorities found it unsuitable for Americans. Lincoln went at his task industriously, claiming to have mastered forty pages of the Commentaries on his first day. He recalled, “I began to read those famous works, and I had plenty of time; for, during the long summer days, when the farmers were busy with their crops, my customers were few and far between. The more I read the more intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them.”19

  When Lincoln began to “go at” the law “in good earnest” following the 1834 election, he once again “studied with nobody,” save Stuart. In those days it was not difficult to become a member of the Illinois bar. “Men in the west are admitted to practice much less qualified than they are in the east,” a resident of Champaign County reported. “An ordinary intelligent man with a moderate education can be admitted in about one year.”20 Still, as an autodidact, Lincoln was unusual, for in the 1830s and 1840s most lawyers learned their craft in an attorney’s office. By pursuing his studies virtually alone, Lincoln may not have missed much, however. As Joseph Story maintained, “the dry and uninviting drudgery of an office” was “utterly inadequate to lay a just foundation for accurate knowledge in the learning of the law.”21 Josiah Quincy painted an unflattering picture of a typical law office: of “[r]egular instruction there was none; examination as to progress in acquaintance with the law,—none; occasional lectures,—none; oversight as to general attention and conduct,—none.”22

  Lincoln followed a regimen that he would prescribe twenty-four years later to a youn
g man who asked him how to gain “a thorough knowledge of the law.” Lincoln replied: “The mode is very simple, though laborious, and tedious. It is only to get the books, and read, and study them carefully. Begin with Blackstone’s Commentaries, and after reading it carefully through, say twice, take up Chitty’s Pleading, Green-leaf’s Evidence, & Story’s Equity &c. in succession. Work, work, work, is the main thing.”23 Two years earlier he had indirectly recommended the same course of study to another would-be attorney: “When a man has reached the age that Mr. Widner has, and has already been doing for himself, my judgment is, that he reads the books for himself without an instructer. That is precisely the way I came to the law.”24 In 1855, he told yet another potential law student: “If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with any body or not. I did not read with any one. Get the books, and read and study them till, you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New-Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places.… Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.”25

  Lincoln, whose “resolution to succeed” was strong indeed, preached what he practiced. In 1860, he urged a young friend who had been rejected by Harvard not to despair: “It is a certain truth, that you can enter, and graduate in, Harvard University; and having made the attempt, you must succeed in it. ‘Must’ is the word. I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age, and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you resolutely determine, that you will not.… In your temporary failure there is no evidence that you may not yet be a better scholar, and a more successful man in the great struggle of life, than many others, who have entered college more easily.”26

  Some of his neighbors in New Salem were nonplussed by Lincoln’s resolute study of law. Before he began preparing himself for a career at the bar, he seemed a rather happy-go-lucky fellow. Parthena Hill told a journalist, “I don’t think Mr. Lincoln was overindustrious.… He didn’t do much. His living and his clothes cost little. He liked company, and would talk to everybody, and entertain them and himself.”27 Others remembered Lincoln in the period before his law studies “as a ‘shiftless’ young man, who worked at odd jobs,” and “a sort of loafer.”28

  But once Lincoln devoted himself to legal studies, he became a different man, much to the consternation of his friends and neighbors. When Russell Godbey initially noticed him with a law book in hand, he asked: “Abe—what are you Studying?” “Studying law,” Lincoln replied. Godbey exclaimed: “Great God Al-mighty!”29

  So it was that for the first time since his arrival in New Salem, Lincoln became antisocial. In the summer he often sought solitude in the woods in order to read and study undisturbed. Some New Salemites even thought him deranged. Henry McHenry remembered that when Lincoln “began to study law he would go day after day for weeks and sit under an oak tree on [a] hill near Salem, and read—moved round [the] tree to keep in [the] shade—was so absorbed that people said he was crazy. Sometimes [he] did not notice people when he met them.”30 He quit reading poetry to focus on his law tomes. Henry McHenry and others joshed Lincoln because they found it strange that he walked all the way to Springfield for books. When they also teased him about his first name, he began signing letters and documents “A. Lincoln.”

  Lincoln enjoyed his informal legal training. Many years later, when his son Robert expressed a desire to attend Harvard Law School, Lincoln said: “If you do, you should learn more than I ever did, but you will never have so good a time.”31

  After moving to Springfield in 1837, Lincoln continued to “work, work, work” at mastering the law. Herndon testified that he “was not fond of physical exercise, but his mental application was untiring.” Sometimes he would “study twenty-four hours without food or sleep, … often walking unconscious, his head on one side, thinking and talking, to himself.”32

  In 1836, Lincoln took some necessary formal steps to become a lawyer. In March he obtained a certificate of good moral character from Stephen T. Logan, and six months later he received his license from the Illinois Supreme Court. After another six months, a clerk of that court officially enrolled him as an attorney. No record survives of the required examination that Lincoln took, but it probably resembled the one administered to John Dean Caton in 1835 by Justice Samuel D. Lockwood of the Illinois Supreme Court. The judge asked Caton what books he had read and how long and with whom he had studied. Then he “inquired of the different forms of action, and the objects of each, some questions about criminal law, and the law of the administration of estates, and especially of the provisions of our statutes on these subjects.” The exam lasted no more than half an hour, after which Lockwood told Caton that he would approve his application, though the young man had much to learn if he wanted to become a good lawyer.33 Lincoln’s exact contemporary Gustave Koerner remembered undergoing a similarly casual examination, after which he and another candidate for the bar treated their examiners to a round of brandy toddies. Koerner found this quite a contrast to the bar exam he had taken in his native Germany, where leading jurists grilled him for four hours in Latin.

  Freshman Legislator

  In December 1834, legislative duties interrupted Lincoln’s self-education in the law. Until taking his seat in the General Assembly, he had been indifferent about clothing. He often wore trousers with one leg rolled up and the other down. Overcoming his sartorial insouciance, the freshman legislator decided to purchase new garments. He asked his friend Coleman Smoot: “Smoot, did you vote for me?” When Smoot said yes, Lincoln replied: “Well, you must loan me money to buy suitable clothing for I want to make a decent appearance in the Legislature.”34 Smoot obliged with a generous loan, which Lincoln used to purchase “a very respectable looking suit of jeans,” garb that made an ideological as well as a fashion statement. The Whig champion Henry Clay once wore similar apparel to demonstrate support for protective tariffs and encourage the consumption of American-made goods. The outfit was probably inexpensive; much later Lincoln said, “I have very rarely in my life worn a suit of Clothes costing $28.”35

  In the capital city of Vandalia, a primitive village of about 800 souls located 75 miles south of Springfield, Lincoln and three dozen other newcomers joined nineteen returning veterans in the House of Representatives. Three-quarters of the legislators were, like Lincoln, Southern-born. The second-youngest member of that chamber, he belonged to the minority anti-Jackson contingent, which numbered only about eighteen in the lower house; the Democrats were more than twice as numerous. The factions had not yet become formal parties. “It is difficult to catch the hang of parties here,” an Illinoisan remarked, “for altho’ there is considerable party feeling there is very little party organization.”36 Legislative business was conducted primarily through personal influence. The anti-Jackson forces in Illinois did not officially coalesce to form the Whig Party until 1838.

  The Illinois House of Representatives that Lincoln entered was a rudimentary body. Most of his colleagues were farmers, many of them unsophisticated. Representative Alfred W. Cavarly pronounced the word “unique” “you-ni-kue”; when someone asked for a definition, one wag quipped that it was the “female of the unicorn.”37 (A Springfield lobbyist remarked on Cavarly’s “very inordinate enlargement of the organ of self-esteem. This is shown in the pomposity of his delivery and the elevation of his ideas, which are sometimes so ‘dape and so profound,’ as Paddy O’Flanagan said of the preacher, ‘that the divil a word can you untherstand.’ ”)38 Representative Jesse K. Dubois said “imbroligo” instead of “imbroglio,” and, as a synonym for it created the neologism “embrigglement.”39 In 1840, David Davis observed, perhaps generously, that the “politicians of the State, of both parties, are of a
medium order of intellect.” After serving in the General Assembly, Davis commented at the close of one session, “I do not think that the legislature has done much harm. We never inquire, whether it has ever done any good.” In 1847, he flatly denounced the General Assembly as “the great source of evil in this State. If there had been none in session for 10 yrs. Ill[inoi]s w[oul]d have been a very prosperous state.”40 An observer of the 1840–1841 House of Representatives said that it “appeared to be composed all of young Men, some of them mere Boys; they forcibly reminded me of a Debating School of Boy Students.”41

  Thomas Ford, governor of Illinois in the 1840s, took a more charitable view of the state’s legislators, most of whom were, in his opinion, simply gladhanders. The “great prevailing principle upon which each party acted in selecting candidates for office was, to get popular men,” he recalled. “Men who had made themselves agreeable to the people by a continual show of friendship … who were loved for their gaiety, cheerfulness, apparent goodness of heart, and agreeable manners.” Though unlearned, the members of the General Assembly were, Ford said, “generally shrewd, sensible men, who, from their knowledge of human nature, and tact in managing the masses, are amongst the master spirits of their several counties.”42 Not all legislators were amiable conciliators, however; some hotheads challenged opponents to duels.

  The state capitol where Lincoln first served was unprepossessing. A leader of the senate, William Lee Davidson Ewing, called the decade-old building—with its falling plaster, sagging floors, cracked and bulging walls, and crumbling bricks—“manifestly inconvenient for the transaction of public business.”43 The plainness of both the architecture and the furnishings made it resemble a Quaker meetinghouse. Members sat on hard benches instead of cushioned chairs. The speaker of the House of Representatives presided from an armchair resting on a small platform; before him was a primitive desk made by placing a board on some sticks. Built hurriedly on low, wet ground, this statehouse was replaced in 1836 with a more substantial, if no more attractive, edifice.