The antebellum circuit courts were casual. Occasionally, drunks would shatter courtroom decorum; judges would have the offending parties jailed till they sobered up. The informality of court proceedings was illustrated by an incident in Champaign County. There, as Lincoln was addressing a jury, he lost a button from his suspenders. He paused, inspected the damage, and said to the jury: “Excuse me, gentlemen, for a moment while I fix my tackling.” He ambled over to a woodbox near the stove, selected a large splinter, whittled it to a sharp point with his pocketknife, used it to repair his suspenders, then told the jurors: “Now, gentlemen, I am ready to go on.”67
From 1848 to 1862, Lincoln’s good friend David Davis presided over the Eighth Circuit, succeeding Samuel H. Treat. Born in Maryland in 1815, Davis attended Kenyon College and Yale law school before settling in Bloomington, Illinois. There he quickly acquired a reputation as an outstanding business lawyer. A faithful Whig, he was only modestly successful in politics; he did manage to win a seat in the General Assembly for one term and election as a delegate to the 1847 Constitutional Convention. Both his body and his personality were large. He weighed around 300 pounds and had a forceful character and executive talent. Ambitious, vain, fun-loving, industrious, and genial, he eagerly acquired friends and money.
Davis’s traits as a jurist were inseparable from his personality. The judge reminded one friend of “a greyhound [who] takes the scent. He never relied on his knowledge of authorities, and never allowed his legal lore to smother his common-sense perception of equity and justice.”68 He ignored technicalities in pursuit of equity. On the bench he usually set a genial tone that put attorneys at ease. Occasionally, however, he could erupt in anger. His affability, conversational skills, and love of good stories made him popular with lawyers and residents of the circuit alike.
An example of Davis’s tendency to take the law into his own hands occurred one day in Bloomington, where the docket was full of debt claims cases. To the assembled attorneys and clients eager to make collections, Davis announced: “this court is loaded with cases arising out of the [financial] panic. I know these men, they will pay as soon as they can. Court is adjourned to the next term.”69 To one journalist Davis seemed like a man “perfectly cut out for a Judge” because he was “completely at his ease in the seat of justice. With the greatest unconcern he goes through his duties, and succeeds in keeping a swarm of lawyers within the bounds of reason; and that, too, without losing his temper—a marvelous performance for a Judge.”70
After court adjourned for the day, Davis would usually gather the attorneys in his room for a merry evening of storytelling and scintillating conversation. Efficiently and willingly, he promoted harmony among the lawyers on the circuit, authoritatively settling minor disputes. His manners and sense of propriety were exemplary, and he could be a good friend as well as an outspoken enemy. His strong acquisitive streak and keen business sense made him rich.
Davis’s principal weakness was vanity, making him unusually susceptible to flatterers. If he took an interest in a young man, he demanded “unremitting and persistent adulation and servitude.”71 But while he insisted on deference from some, he gave it to others, above all to Lincoln. In dealing with his flock of them, Davis strove to be impartial, never intending to display favoritism to any lawyer. But as one of the riders of the Eighth Circuit put it, “such was the marked deference he showed to Mr. Lincoln that Lincoln threw the rest of us into the shade.”72 Such partiality did not manifest itself in the judicial record, however; of the eighty-seven cases Lincoln tried before the judge without a jury, he won only forty.
Sessions of the circuit court enlivened the dull life of rural Illinois, in effect providing farmers with the equivalent of entertainment that city-dwellers enjoyed in theaters, opera houses, lecture halls, and concert auditoriums. “The courthouse was the center of interest for the mass of people who were generally uncultured and ignorant,” Herndon recounted. “When court commenced people flocked to the county seat to see and to hear and to learn. Eloquence was in demand,” for “the people loved to hear talk—talk. The lawyers knew this and it stimulated them—made them ambitious to succeed and conquer.” Most of them were “young and ambitious, struggling each in his way to acquire glory.” They resembled stars of the stage, with loyal fans. “If a young lawyer made a fine speech and tickled the crowd—was eloquent and gained his case he got the hearty applause of the people & glory too. His fame was fixed at once.”73 Court sessions also took the place of newspapers, bringing the locals up to date on the wider world.
In 1859, a journalist described the scene in Urbana when court was in session: “during the past week, nearly every resident of the county has been in our beautiful city—Courting. The streets have been literally thronged with every imaginable specimen of the genus homo. Lawyers, judges, clients, honorables, prisoners of all bars, and so forth, besides others, have been in attendance at our Circuit Court. Some think, perhaps, that they have not received justice, while others believe they have a little too much of it. Altogether they have had a lively time.”74
Arriving in town, the dust-covered lawyers would immediately be accosted by potential clients needing help in preparing pleas, filing demurrers, drawing chancery bills, or defending themselves from litigious neighbors or officers of the law. Amid this confusion, the legal crew had to be quick-witted and flexible. Sometimes they would find themselves enlisted to try a case on very short notice, even as the jury was being empaneled.
Generally, circuit lawyers would arrive on Sunday in order to be ready for the opening of court at noon the next day. Monday afternoons were usually consumed in summoning and swearing in the grand and petit jurors and having the grand jury consider indictments. In election years, the afternoon and evening of the first court day would be devoted to political speeches by the attorneys. The sheriff chose jurors, who were often the same men from one term to the next. Some of them were David Davis’s friends, whose intelligence and integrity guaranteed that their verdicts would hold up on appeal. Cases in default, where one party failed to appear, were quickly disposed of, and testimony was taken in ex parte cases, like uncontested divorces. Around 4 P.M. the court adjourned, to reassemble Tuesday morning. For the rest of the day, lawyers would amuse themselves by taking walks, playing cards, writing verses for each other’s amusement, drinking whiskey, fighting, wrestling, racing on foot and on horses, and even holding dances. Occasionally, a humorous mock trial would be conducted at which an attorney would be indicted for a ludicrous “crime.” When convicted, he would have to accept the absurd punishment good-naturedly. Egalitarianism prevailed, for the sociable attorneys put on no airs in their dealing with colleagues or townspeople.
Killing time could be difficult when there were few clients. Reminiscing about his early experiences on the circuit, Lincoln said that in Urbana “I listened to a French street peddler’s antics … half a day once, simply because I had not one particle of business.”75 He also recalled a time when, in a country town during a court session, a rustic was startled to find several attorneys lounging about the courthouse. Upon asking if they all had business there, he was told: “No, they have not come to court because they have any business here, but because they have no business anywhere else.”76
On Tuesday mornings the attorneys buckled down to work, which was often boring and tedious. An Urbana newspaper lamented that the court dealt with such unimportant matters as “a dog suit, a wood-stealing Irishman, [and] a half-crazy horse thief.”77 The editor of the Vermilion County Press similarly complained that the Danville court was swamped by minor cases involving liquor law violations whose “wearying, troublesome littleness drags out the time of the court, and prevents application to cases of more importance.”78
In the early years of the circuit, most cases involved assault and battery, unpaid debts, minor squabbles, slander, horse trades, petty larceny, and occasionally manslaughter. In the 1830s and 1840s Illinois was lightly populated, society relatively uncompli
cated, land plentiful, employment widespread, and litigation quite simple, requiring little sophistication on the part of the lawyers. Cases originating in debt often generated other actions. Creditors would say of debtors who failed to repay loans, “I’ll take it out of his hide.” During the ensuing combat, spectators would comment freely on the contestants, spawning slander suits. Occasionally, someone would for convenience dismantle a neighbor’s fence and fail to put it back up, leading to fisticuffs that might eventuate in a murder trial. Henry C. Whitney thought it “strange to contemplate that in those … primitive days, Mr. Lincoln’s whole attention should have been engrossed in petty controversies or acrimonious disputes between neighbors about trifles; that he should have puzzled his great mind in attempting to decipher who was the owner of a litter of pigs, or which party was to blame for the loss of a flock of sheep, by foot rot; or whether some irascible spirit was justified in avowing that his enemy had committed perjury; yet I have known him to give as earnest attention to such matters, as, later, he gave to affairs of state.”79
Such cases yielded little financial reward. Cash-strapped pioneers would usually pay a little and write IOUs for the remainder or else give some livestock in lieu of money. In 1840, David Davis complained that after several weeks on the circuit with “considerable business to do,” he had “realized in money but little from it. The practice of the Law in Illinois nowadays, is not a very easy business, and withal not very profitable. I am satisfied that no professional man ought ever to locate himself in a country purely agricultural. It is only where manufacturing or commercial business is done, that a lawyer can expect always to have plenty to do.”80 Four years later Davis noted that practicing law in Illinois did not provide “much profit or personal comfort.”81
Personal comfort was scarce indeed for circuit lawyers in the 1830s and 1840s. They traversed the prairies on horseback or in home made conveyances over muddy roads that were little better than trails. Often the mud became so thick that wagons bogged down, forcing the passengers to use fence-rails as pries to help the horses pull them out of the muck. Unbridged streams had to be swum. Once when the caravan of lawyers and judges approached a shallow creek, Lincoln puckishly warned that it was deep and advised his colleagues to strip off their clothes and ride their horses across it. Shivering in the cold air, they complied and rode into the water, which barely reached their mounts’ fetlocks. Lincoln enjoyed his prank hugely and remarked, “I don’t think a bridge across the stream would interfere with navigation!”82
Accommodations were also primitive. Gibson W. Harris complained about the “wretched,” “cheerless and uncomfortable” taverns, where the “food, though commonly of good material, was often badly cooked and poorly served.” Travelers could not even count on protection from the elements; sometimes they found miniature snowbanks on their beds. The rooms seldom contained more than a bug-filled bed, a chair or two, and a spittoon. Guests washed up outdoors in tin basins and counted themselves lucky to have soap. Towels were so scarce that anyone who slept in would have a hard time finding a dry one. When taverns were unavailable, lawyers would stay at a farmer’s home. The host usually declared that his guest’s company was compensation enough; the attorney would often pay indirectly, surreptitiously slipping a quarter to one of the household’s children. Two attorneys often had to sleep in the same bed, and there would be as many as eight staying in one room. Lincoln frequently shared a bed with Usher Linder or Leonard Swett. Many beds were not long enough, the morning coffee was usually burnt, and the breakfast indifferent.
Most accounts of life on the circuit are reminiscent, but Judge David Davis wrote numerous letters describing it vividly. In 1848, he complained: “This thing of traveling in Illinois, and being eaten up by bed bugs and mosquitoes … is not what it is cracked up to be.” In 1851, he reported to his beloved wife that the “tavern at [Mt.] Pulaski [population 350] is perhaps the hardest place you ever saw. A new landlord by the name of Cass, just married—every thing dirty & the eating Horrible. Judge Robbins, Lincoln, Stuart & every body else from Springfield [ were there]. The old woman looked as we would suppose the witch of Endor looked. She had a grown daughter, who waited on the table—table greasy—table cloth greasy—floor greasy and every thing else ditto.… Waiting among greasy things. Think of it. I wonder if she ever washed herself. I guess the dirt must be half an inch thick all over her.” From Clinton, Pekin, Metamora, Paris, Charleston, and other towns Davis reported “plenty of bedbugs,” “sand a foot deep,” “the place horribly dusty.” He called one hostelry “the meanest tavern you ever saw” with floors that “don[’]t look to have been scoured for a quarter of a century.” The food on the road was “wretched.… This Kentucky cooking, just as the middling classes in Kentucky know how to prepare, is hardly fit for the stomach of a horse.”
Weather could be a torment. When the oppressive summertime heat lasted into the fall, Davis observed that “Holding Courts in such weather has exhausted lawyers, jurors, witnesses & Judge too. If such weather continues, … the prospect in Pekin will be anything but agreeable. Mosquitoes prevail there, and a body will have to be in a constant state of warfare.” Rain made life miserable. One day in 1852, Davis told his wife how he and his companions waited for a ferry to convey them over the Sangamon River: “Could not cross. For 2 hours staid in rain, waiting for Ferryman. Swam the horses, took the buggy over straddle a canoe.” Davis informed his brother-in-law that “[b]ad roads, broken bridges, swimming of horses, & constant wettings, are the main incidents in Western travel.”83 Especially bothersome were the slews, “miniature swamps, miry and sticky, and extremely difficult to cross with teams and wagons.”84
Unlike his colleagues, Lincoln bore these hardships without complaining. Herndon recalled that his partner cared little about food: “he sat down and ate as it were involuntarily, saying nothing.” He was a “most perfect gentleman” to his hosts and their families and servants. “Others would growl—complain—become distressed, and distress others—with the complaints and whine about what they had to eat—how they slept—and on what and how long—and how disturbed by fleas, bed bugs or what not.”85 Only rarely Lincoln would voice displeasure with the food. He once remarked wryly, “Well—in the absence of anything to Eat I will jump into this Cabbage.”86 Allegedly he told a waiter, “if this is coffee, then please bring me some tea, but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”87
Lincoln complained so little because he loved life on the circuit. He turned down an offer to become a partner with the Chicago attorney Grant Goodrich because, he explained, “he tended to Consumption—That if he went to Chicago that he would have to sit down and Study hard—That it would Kill him—That he would rather go around the Circuit … than to sit down & die in Chicago.” David Davis believed that “Mr Lincoln was happy—as happy as he could be, when on this Circuit—and happy no other place. This was his place of Enjoyment. As a general rule when all the lawyers of a Saturday Evening would go home and see their families & friends at home Lincoln would refuse to go home.”88 Even after railroads connecting Springfield with most of the county seats were completed in the mid-1850s, Lincoln seldom returned home on weekends.
Lincoln was also one of the very few attorneys who traveled the entire circuit each spring and fall. While most of them stayed close to home, attending only circuit courts in counties adjacent to their own, Lincoln, Swett, Lamon, and Davis covered it all, becoming in essence a family. “We journeyed together along the road,” said Swett, “slept in the same cabin or small hotel at night, breakfasted, dined, and supped together every day, and lived as intimately and in a manner as friendly as it is possible for men to live.”89
Despite bad food, dirty hostelries, and other irritants, life on the circuit had its charms. “If the business on our circuit was meagre, the good cheer and conviviality were exuberant,” Whitney remembered; “and if we did not make much money, our wants ‘were few and our pleasures simple,’ and our life on the circuit was like a ho
liday.”90
Lincoln’s intelligence, geniality, and humor made him exceptionally popular on the circuit. As Usher Linder recalled, everywhere he went “he brought sunshine. All men hailed him as an addition to their circle.”91 A resident of a county seat on the Eighth Circuit remembered that whenever Lincoln arrived for a court session, “as he alighted and stretched out both his long arms to shake hands with those nearest to him, and to those who approached—his homely face, handsome in its broad and shunshiny smile, his voice touching in its kindly and cheerful accents—everyone in his presence felt lighter in heart and became joyous. He brought light with him.”92
Often at night the attorneys and village men would gather in the courtroom and double over in laughter as Lincoln related jokes and stories from his inexhaustible supply. In 1883, Herndon reported that “Judges—Jurors—Witnesses—Lawyers—merchants—&c. &c have laughed at these jokes &c in the night till every muscle—nerve and cell of the body in the morning was sore at the whooping & hurrahing exercise. Such was Lincoln’s past-time & glory on the circuit: it was his Heaven and his home his Hell. No human being can describe these nightly revels. Such amusements—such sports & tricks would not be tolerated now in any American society, & yet for us on the circuit at that time in those places it drove away the Devil for awhile.”93
Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1 Page 58
