It being clear to him that full-time pursuit of a law degree was impossible, besides already planning another run for office in 1834, Lincoln needed to find a paying job. From Stuart and Green, he learned that the position of postmaster might be open. The current occupant, Samuel Hill—a friend of Lincoln’s—was widely suspected of having committed fraud. Initially, Lincoln demurred when his companions suggested he take the position. He didn’t want to become a candidate unless he could be sure he wouldn’t be pushing a friend out of the office. Once it was clear that Hill would be ousted because he had neglected his duties, Lincoln allowed his name to be put forward.
Ironically, the person making the appointment was Andrew Jackson. Lincoln did not worry that his vote for Clay would cost him the job. His Democratic friends had vouched for him with the administration, knowing the appointment was going to be made based on their recommendations. It didn’t hurt that there was no competition for the position. Over the next three years, Lincoln handled his responsibilities meticulously, as his friends expected of a man they regarded as trustworthy, diligent, and friendly.
III
* * *
Less than a year after his loss in his first race for the state legislature and only a month after becoming the local postmaster on May 7, 1833, Lincoln announced his second run for the Illinois House. Sessions were short, usually three to four months long, and paid less than $200 per session. He had turned twenty-four just two months before, but two paying jobs, as postmaster and land surveyor, supported his studying law in his spare time. If he won, he would be beginning his political career and have a third paying job, but more important, he would be on track to make a difference in the world.
This time, Stuart did not leave matters to chance. He took an even greater strategic role in helping Lincoln’s candidacy. Both men understood that it had not been effective for Lincoln to just go around the county giving speeches. Instead, he set out on what a friend described as “his hand-shaking campaign, traveling all around the county to talk face-to-face with the voters.”24 Another friend said Lincoln was determined to curry favor with “all persons, with the rich or poor, in the stately mansion or log cabin.”25 Yet another contemporary recalled Lincoln had “great faith in the strong sense of Country People and he gave them credit for greater intelligence than most men do.”26 Lincoln figured, as he had seen in Stuart’s campaigns, that personal connections were more important than party. He and Stuart shared Clay’s vision of resilient, hardworking people who made their way through the world under their own steam. While he cozied up to the Whigs who had power and money, Lincoln did not forget where the actual votes came from. Bowling Green, a staunch Democrat, encouraged Lincoln to make the second run even though Lincoln was a Whig. At the same time, Browning decided to make a second run for office.
Lincoln’s 1834 campaign, however, quickly ran into an unexpected problem. He learned that the Democrats were plotting to defeat Stuart by splitting the Whig vote. Lincoln told Stuart that Bowling Green and other Democrats had told him that they “would drop two of their men and take [Lincoln] up and vote for him for the purpose of beating [Stuart].”27 Stuart devised a plan almost immediately. He thanked Lincoln for disclosing the plot to him and advised Lincoln that he “had [such] great confidence in [his own] strength” that “Lincoln [should] go and tell [the Democrats who approached him that] he would take their votes.”28 “I and my friends,” Stuart recalled, “knowing their tactics, then concentrated our fight against one of their other men . . . and in this [way] elected Lincoln and myself.”29 Stuart suggested Lincoln’s part was to keep his mouth closed on what he and Stuart were planning to do, and Lincoln did. Stephen Logan, later a law partner of Lincoln’s, said Lincoln never pretended to be anything but the Whig he was. He believed that “he made no concession of principle—whatever. He was as stiff as a man could be in his Whig doctrine.”30 Yet Lincoln gave no speeches for this election, allowing himself to ride the current of support from his friends on both sides of the aisle. This time, he won—his first victory in elected politics. He learned the lesson that sometimes silence works better than saying too much.
IV
* * *
Years later, after Lincoln’s death, William Herndon wrote, “His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.”31 In the next few years, following his first election to the Illinois House, as Lincoln began to rise in Whig leadership in the state legislature, his ambition became more apparent to all around him, as it would simultaneously power his pursuit of a law license and successful completion of his term as postmaster.
As Lincoln’s star kept rising and eventually reached the presidency, Stuart was fond of saying, to anyone who would listen, that he (Stuart) would be remembered “as the man who advised Mr. Lincoln to study law and lent him his law books.”32 But while Stuart took credit for Lincoln’s formal licensing as a lawyer, there were others, such as Bowling Green, who had helped by allowing Lincoln to observe his work as justice of the peace. Just how much truth there was in Stuart’s later claims to have helped Lincoln’s education was eventually almost beside the point. Stuart may not have been the only Lincoln friend who crafted his story in a manner most advantageous to his own reputation, just as Lincoln did. John Scripps, who wrote the first published biography of Lincoln, in 1860, said that Lincoln had studied law with “nobody.”33 Lincoln often said so himself to emphasize that he had taught himself law by reading classic legal texts, closely observing lawyers argue their cases in various local courts, and discussing the law with Stuart, Green, and other local attorneys and judges. In 1855, Lincoln responded to a young man asking him about apprenticeship by saying that “I did not read with anyone.” He told his correspondent, “Get the books, and read and study them till, you understand them in their principal features, and that is the main thing.” Lincoln emphasized “your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.”34
That said, Stuart had indisputably been instrumental in guiding Lincoln in taking several important early steps in law and politics. Stuart found in Lincoln someone whose ambition, intellectual curiosity, and natural intelligence fit well with his need for a partner to both oversee his legal affairs and take up the mantle of his leadership in the Illinois House when he left to make a run for the U.S. House of Representatives. In turn, Lincoln demonstrated his own “resolution to succeed,” which drove him to learn not only the law but also the business of practicing law, which he was finally able to do on September 9, 1836, when the justices of the Illinois Supreme Court agreed to admit him to the bar. Lincoln moved to Springfield to begin his practice with Stuart. He was twenty-seven.
In Springfield, the two men spent nearly all their time together. They roomed together, even slept in the same bed for a while, and Stuart introduced Lincoln to the other Whig leaders who lived in Springfield. Several had also served in the Black Hawk War, and one even described Lincoln as “a very decent looking fellow,” appropriately dressed in loose trousers, which was then the Whig uniform.35
Stuart was grooming Lincoln to take over his responsibilities as the leader of the Whig minority in the Illinois house, so he could devote all of his attention to his own run for Congress. Where Stuart went, Lincoln followed. As Stuart’s political partner and protégé, Lincoln became quickly known around Illinois “as one of the most Devoted Clay whigs in all the State.”36
Stuart did much more than introduce Lincoln to politicians—he introduced him to politics as it was actually practiced. He schooled Lincoln in the art of logrolling—trading favors for votes—so men of differing views or with different agendas could both get what they wanted. Thomas Ford, a Democrat who was governor of Illinois when Lincoln first entered the statehouse, confirmed that the Sangamon delegation was unusually large and included “some dexterous jugglers and managers in politics” and had a “decided preponderance in the log-rolling system in those days.”37 Lincoln once described the plight of the legislator in having to find solutions to a variety
of disputes:
One man is offended because a road passes over his land, and another is offended because it does not pass over his; one is dissatisfied because the bridge for which he is taxed crosses the river on a different road from that which leads from his house to town; another cannot bear that the county should go in debt for the same roads and bridges; while not a few struggle hard to have roads located over their lands, and then stoutly refuse to let them be opened until they are first paid the damages. Even between the different wards and streets of towns and cities we find this same wrangling and difficulty.38
Yet here Lincoln stood out, as Stuart recalled, for “refus[ing] to be sold. He never had a price.”39
When Lincoln made proposals of his own or on Stuart’s behalf, they almost always followed standard Whig Party policies and therefore aligned with those that Clay championed on the national stage. Indeed, the first bill Lincoln introduced proposed public financing of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. Initially, Lincoln had wanted the canal to be built from the proceeds of sales of government lands (a popular Whig strategy), but he switched strategies when it became clear that his fellow Whigs actually favored having the state pay for the canal. He then worked with his fellow Whigs, as well as Gurdon Hubbard, a former legislator who had pushed hard for the canal in 1832 and failed but who helped Lincoln behind the scenes. After passing the bill, Lincoln dedicated its passage “to the untiring zeal of Mr. Stuart,” whose “high minded and honorable way” had secured “the accomplishment of this great task.”40 Hubbard was not happy Lincoln failed to thank him, but Lincoln needed Stuart’s help more.
For all the talk of his devotion to Clay, Lincoln did not always follow his lead. Sometimes he followed Jackson instead. In 1834, Andrew Jackson’s threat to veto the rechartering of the Second Bank of the United States reopened a debate over establishing state banks in Illinois. Though Democrats believed that Whigs would oppose state banks, as Clay had, Lincoln saw the virtue of a state bank that “could allow the surplus capital of the rich to be invested and available to the industrious poor person so he might get ahead.”41 Lincoln joined a coalition of Whigs and Democrats to send instructions to their two senators back in Washington to remove states’ funds from the national bank and place them in state-chartered banks.
Two years later, Lincoln again followed Jackson’s lead. This time, he was running for his second term in the Illinois house. Because of reapportionment, the state legislature had increased the number of Sangamon County’s representatives to seven. Unsure of how many people were running for the state legislature in 1836, the Sangamo Journal invited all the candidates running to “show their hands.” Lincoln quickly wrote back, “Agreed. Here’s mine!”42 He then outlined the principles he was running on. Among the first, he said, “I go for all sharing the privileges of government, who assist in bearing its burthens. Consequently I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms [serving in the state militia], (by no means excluding females).” In the prior session of the legislature, 1834–1835, Lincoln had supported a successful move to ensure that the right to vote be extended to all white males of the age of twenty-one years and not just to those who owned real estate.43 Such proposals echoed Jacksonian principles for empowering ordinary Americans with access to voting (even though the state constitution already had extended the vote as Lincoln and others were now lobbying for).
In another important early legislative success, Lincoln joined with a group of eight other legislators known as the Long Nine, a name given to them because they were all at least six feet tall and were Whigs who shared similar political principles. The Long Nine were instrumental in supporting various internal improvements throughout the state in exchange for moving the capital from Vandalia to Springfield, a growing center of business in the state. Such investments in infrastructure could be complex because they involved benefits like roads and canals that were specific to particular areas. Lincoln was disposed to strongly favor them, as such improvements were a central tenet of the Whig philosophy espoused by Henry Clay. Because Lincoln’s delegation from Sangamon County was the largest in the state assembly, it had significant leverage when its members voted as a bloc. On January 24, Browning, with both Stuart’s and Lincoln’s input, took the lead on Springfield’s behalf by introducing the bill in the Senate for the legislature to move the capital to a new permanent location. After a few weeks of debate and delay, the Senate approved the bill 24–13.
In February 1837, Lincoln introduced the proposal in the House. The leader of the opposition was a newly elected Democratic member, Stephen Douglas, an ardent supporter of Andrew Jackson. Douglas preferred that the capital stay where it was or move to Jacksonville. With Stuart’s help behind the scenes to leverage the sizable Sangamon County coalition, Lincoln and his fellow members of the Long Nine traded votes to ensure that, after four rounds of voting, the legislature formally approved relocating the state capital just before the end of the legislative session. The Long Nine, Douglas said, “used every exertion and made every sacrifice to secure the passage of the bill.”44 As one of the Long Nine, Robert L. Wilson, later recalled,
In these dark hours, when our Bill to all appearances was beyond recussitation [sic], and all our opponents were jubilant over our defeat, and when friends could see no hope, Mr. Lincoln never for one moment despaired; but, collecting his Colleagues to his room for consultation, his practical common Sense, his thorough knowledge of human nature, then made him an overmatch for his compeers and for any man that I have ever known.45
If Wilson’s recollections lapsed too much into romanticizing Lincoln’s role, Orville Browning, never one quickly to give praise to others, credited the Long Nine, including Lincoln, in less mellifluous prose for “their judicious management, their ability, their gentlemanly deportment, their unassuming manners, their constant and uniting labor.”46
Throughout, Stuart closely watched as Lincoln observed floor leaders wheeling and dealing. The record indicates further that there was no occasion on which Stuart and Lincoln were both absent from the legislature. He voted independently of Stuart on twenty-six out of one hundred and twenty-six votes, but overall, Lincoln hewed closely to the Whig party line.
Under Illinois law, the new capital would not become official until two years later, when the building projects were to be completed. Originally called Calhoun to honor the then senator, and later vice president John Calhoun, the town of roughly 1,300 changed its name to Springfield in 1832 when its namesake fell out of favor because of his increasingly fiery defense of states’ rights and slavery. By 1836, the town became a Whig stronghold within a state that leaned Democratic. Unsurprisingly, after the state capital opened there officially in 1839, Springfield secured its place as the center of law and politics in Illinois.
Just as important for Lincoln, Springfield was Stuart’s home and was where, in the same year as the vote to relocate the capital from Vandalia, the two friends began their law partnership. Besides the bond that Lincoln and Stuart had formed during the Black Hawk War, they were both from Kentucky. Stuart was a graduate of Centre College and already a fixture in Springfield as its best-known lawyer. He was popular with local judges and juries and instrumental in introducing Lincoln to a wider circle of people who became lifelong friends, supporters, and political allies. The firm—Stuart and Lincoln—had a modest but steady practice involving many trivial legal contests, such as neighborhood quarrels, livestock disputes, crop damage, replevin of large animals, and some divorces.47 Because Stuart’s focus was increasingly on his congressional contest against Stephen Douglas for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, Lincoln learned on his own how to interview clients, identify and apply the relevant law, draft legal documents, and collect fees. Lincoln grew comfortable with being his own boss.
With the contest between Stuart and Douglas looming, Lincoln pushed the practice of law aside to help. This provided him with a front-row seat to assess the matchup. Douglas was known
as the Little Giant, because he was a man of small stature but gigantic, ruthless ambitions. Stuart often asked Lincoln to substitute for him in debating Douglas throughout the district and to write letters on his behalf to the local newspaper, the Sangamo Journal, and to Whig leaders in the district who were critical of Stuart’s foe. His deputation was so entrenched that at one point Lincoln joked, “We have adopted it as part of our policy here, never to speak of Douglas at all. Isn’t that the best way to deal with such a small matter?”48
In the middle of the campaign, Stuart and Lincoln found themselves on opposite sides of a murder case prosecuted by Douglas. The trial and the campaign confirmed their polar opposites in personality. Stuart liked to ridicule his opponents through deftly worded taunts (as well as through anonymous letters he authorized Lincoln and other supporters to publish that attacked Douglas’s political views and ethics—or lack thereof). Douglas used words the way other people used fists, to bluntly humiliate and pound his opponents into dust. Sometimes it went beyond words: the debates between Stuart and Douglas occasionally ended in physical confrontations, the last of which included Stuart’s grabbing Douglas in a headlock that Douglas broke by savagely biting Stuart’s thumb. Stuart proudly displayed the scar for the rest of his life. Lincoln, unsurprisingly, was determined to avoid such confrontations should he ever stand against Douglas.
Douglas had his nickname, and Stuart did, too. He had become so well known for his unctuous politicking, indolence, and underwhelming campaigning (thus the need for him to rely so much on his law partner) that his fellow legislators took to calling him Jerry Sly, a moniker that followed him for the rest of his life. Democrats, unimpressed by the energy of his campaigning, gave Stuart a different name, Sleepy Johnny, and enjoyed comparing him to Rip Van Winkle awakening from his long slumber. “The last we saw of him, he was rubbing his eyes open at the corner of the street, with his arms raised above his head, giving a most portentous yawn,” the Democratic paper said of him during his campaign against Douglas. “After all of his boasting that he was sure of six thousand majority,” it said, “without stirring from home, we marvel much, that he should have had energy to arouse himself from his lethargy, and sufficient condescension to visit the people at all.”49
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