IN THE SPRING OF 1837 Lincoln received his license as a lawyer. Although a fine achievement for a young man with no family connections and little formal education, this accomplishment brought with it its own kind of terror. True, he had won his way in politics, but central Illinois was filled with outstanding lawyers. It was one thing to receive a license to practice; it was quite another to be able to make a living. How could a young lawyer like Lincoln, with no capital, open an office and obtain clients?
Lincoln’s first turn of good fortune occurred when John Todd Stuart told him he needed a new law partner. Any young lawyer would have jumped at the opportunity to become the junior partner of one of Springfield’s most successful lawyers. Stuart had had plenty of opportunity to observe Lincoln in the Illinois legislature. In the spring of 1837, he invited Lincoln to join his practice.
Lincoln felt privileged to settle in to Stuart’s law office on the second floor in Hoffman’s Row at 109 North Fifth Street. The office was not ostentatious; it was furnished only with a couch, table, chair, bench, and what passed for a bookcase.
Lincoln became a junior partner with Stuart just as the national financial crash of 1837, brought on by unbounded speculation and cheap credit, wreaked havoc across Illinois. Thousands of people lost their jobs and homes. As a legislator, Lincoln had been a leading advocate of internal improvements; as a new lawyer, he sought to collect what was due on uncompleted contracts for projects suddenly halted.
The firm of Stuart and Lincoln pleaded cases of libel, trespass, and assault. Lincoln’s early cases included collecting for damages to a cooking stove; reclaiming a debt of three dollars for a hog; arguing for the quality of superfine flour; representing the owner of a boat loaded with corn that had been obstructed by fishermen in the Sangamon River; and pleading the authenticity of numerous land titles.
After little more than a year as a lawyer, Lincoln participated in his first criminal case. On the evening of March 7, 1838, Jacob Early, a physician and Methodist preacher, sat before the fireplace in the Spottswood’s Hotel in Springfield reading the Sangamo Journal. The register of the U.S. Land Office in Galena, Henry B. Truett, entered the room and promptly accused Early of writing a set of resolutions at a recent Democratic convention in Peoria that criticized him and called for his removal from office. Surprised, Early wanted to know who had made this charge. Truett, enraged, began calling Early a “damned coward.” Early, feeling threatened, tried to protect himself with a chair. Truett drew a pistol from his coat and, as the two men moved about the room, was able to get off a clear shot and hit Early. Truett ran from the hotel. Early died three days later.
Truett was indicted for murder on March 14, 1838. He retained one of Springfield’s most senior lawyers, Stephen Logan, as lead counsel—along with Lincoln, Stuart, Edward D. Baker, and Cyrus Walker—to defend him. Stephen Douglas was appointed to represent the people as prosecuting attorney. The case involved two prominent Democratic politicians, and passions were running high. Lincoln, who would become the master of delaying tactics, helped get the trial adjourned from July to October to help dissipate both passion and prejudice.
The trial began on Monday, October 8, 1838, in the Sangamon Circuit Court located directly below Stuart and Lincoln’s office. The lawyers for both sides examined 215 prospective jurors before settling on a final twelve. All of the evidence seemed to point to the guilt of the defendant. Early had even given a dying declaration in which he accused Truett. Prosecutors pointed out that Truett had entered the hotel armed and had fled after the incident.
The novice lawyer Lincoln was entrusted with the closing argument. The defense maintained that Truett had a right to demand whether Early was the author of the Peoria resolution that had so wounded his character. Furthermore, Early had a deadly weapon—a chair—with which he intended to strike Truett. Stephen Logan characterized Lincoln’s appeal to the jury as “a short but strong and sensible speech.” At the close of Friday, October 12, 1838, Judge Jesse B. Thomas, Jr., gave instructions to the jury, who retired to Stuart and Lincoln’s office above the courtroom to deliberate.
On Saturday morning, before a packed court, the jury announced their verdict: not guilty. People rushed to congratulate Lincoln for his closing argument. The Springfield community understood the verdict within the context of frontier society; juries were willing to convict an assassin but not a person caught up in a passionate conflict with another. Lincoln received the large fee of $250 for the case. More important, Lincoln’s fame grew as people lauded him as a capable lawyer adept at persuading juries.
AS THE JUNIOR PARTNER AT THE OFFICE on Hoffman’s Row in Springfield, Lincoln prepared the legal pleadings and briefs. From the first he was a fine draftsman, writing in a neat hand. When comparing Lincoln’s legal writing to that of his peers, one is struck by his absence of corrections. Whether writing a declaration or plea, by the time Lincoln put pen to paper he knew what to say and how to say it. Despite what must have been his anxiety at his new challenge, a calm confidence was evident in his fine writing.
Lincoln could be flexible with his spelling in an era when the art of orthography was not as exact as it would become in later years. He wrote “colateral” and “colatteral” for collateral, and varied his spelling between “prossecution” and “prosecutor.” Compared to his contemporaries, however, his spelling was mostly free of peculiarities.
Stuart gave Lincoln the task of keeping the financial records for the firm. One has only to look at the fee book to see that Lincoln was not always adept at this assignment. There are long intervals between entries, and the entries themselves are sometimes quite casual; for example, “I have received five dollars from Deed of Macon, five from Lewis Keeling, five from Andrew Finley, one-half of which belongs to Stuart and has not been entered on the books.”
John Todd Stuart decided to make a second run for a seat in Congress within a year of inviting Lincoln to become a partner. He had run in 1836 and lost to Democrat William L. May. His Democratic opponent in 1838 would be Stephen Douglas. The contest between Stuart and Douglas epitomized a campaign on the frontier. The candidates often traveled together, ate meals together, and now and again “slept in the same bed.” Stuart and Douglas “debated the issues of the election from the same platform” across the expansive Third Congressional District, which made up one-half of the state’s territory. The election took place in August, but it was not until September 1, 1838, that Stuart was declared the winner over Douglas by 36 votes out of 36,495 total.
After Stuart left for Washington in November 1839, Lincoln wrote in their fee book, “Commencement of Lincoln’s administration 1839 Nov 2.” Lincoln would now miss Stuart’s mentoring, yet with his absence, he gained the opportunity to plead a wider variety of cases. In doing so, he was forced to fill in the gaps of his theoretical knowledge. Even more important, he had to stand alone, in small village courtrooms, and before the district court and the Illinois Supreme Court, both of which met in Springfield. During this time, Lincoln seldom sought the advice of other lawyers. He learned early on in law, as in politics, to trust his own counsel.
Lincoln and Stuart’s caseload had increased when they decided to expand the territory they would serve. When Lincoln first joined the firm in 1837, both he and Stuart traveled what was then the First Judicial Circuit. In 1839, the legislature divided the state into nine judicial circuits, each circuit presided over by one of nine supreme court judges. Samuel H. Treat served as judge of the new Eighth Judicial Circuit, which included fifteen counties. With Stuart away in Congress, it fell to Lincoln to travel the new circuit, which he did twice a year.
Lincoln journeyed by horseback in the early spring on mud-covered roads and across swollen streams. Bridges were in short supply. The roads usually ran right through the middle of the prairies. There would be stretches where the lawyers could travel nearly all day without meeting anyone. Nearly everyone on the circuit had a latch-string hung on their homes for hospitality for traveling lawyers.
James C. Conkling, Lincoln’s Springfield neighbor and a fellow lawyer, described those early days of traveling the circuit. The hotel accommodations were meager. “The rooms were generally crowded with jurors, witnesses, parties litigant” and lawyers. The fortunate slept in beds, sometimes two or three together, but frequently the occupants slept on the floor. The coming of the circuit court to these small towns became the center of a community celebration. Farmers and people from adjoining villages flocked to town “not merely to attend court, but to witness a horse-race, or a circus, or some theatrical performance, which were generally the side-shows of a Circuit Court in those primitive places.”
Anna Hyatt Huntington’s sculpture Life on the Circuit depicts Lincoln as a young lawyer on horseback, studying as he traveled across the Eighth Judicial Circuit in central Illinois.
Lincoln shone not only by day in court, but also in the evening around the fireplace in a local hotel or tavern. While on the circuit, the lawyers had plenty of time for conversation, cards, music, and playing practical jokes on one another. Lincoln “seemed to possess an inexhaustible fund” of stories and anecdotes. “No one could relate a story without reminding him of one of a similar character.” In these sessions, Lincoln also became known for his laughter, taking pleasure in his own humor as well as that of others. There was something about “the heartiness of his own enjoyment” that drew others to him.
Life on the circuit combined politics and law. In traveling the huge Eighth Judicial Circuit, Lincoln was building a name for himself that would translate into votes. The fall term often took place in the midst of political campaigns. Lawyer politicians moved directly from the courthouse to the town square for political debate. As Lincoln learned to practice law inside numerous small-town courtrooms, he came to know and be known by farmers and merchants by staying in their homes and trading in their stores. He also sowed friendships and alliances with other lawyer politicians that he would harvest in future years.
IN SPRINGFIELD, his friendship with Joshua Fry Speed, the store clerk, continued to grow. At twenty-two, Speed was five years younger than Lincoln. He was a fellow Kentuckian, but their backgrounds were very different. Named after his mother’s father, Speed was born into a wealthy family on a large estate called “Farmington,” five miles southeast of Louisville. His father, John Speed, was a plantation proprietor who owned more than seventy slaves. Young Joshua had attended private schools to prepare him for a professional career. After working for several years in a store in Louisville, he moved to Springfield in 1835. Both young men sought their own identity by leaving their fathers and their fathers’ vocations and making fresh starts in a new city.
Speed realized quickly that Lincoln, despite his position in the Illinois legislature, was “almost without friends” in Springfield. Lincoln considered attending a church in Springfield, but remarked, “I’ve never been to church yet, nor probably shall not be soon. I stay away because I am conscious I should not know how to behave myself.” Lincoln, shy in ordinary social relationships, was grateful to Speed for becoming a conduit to new acquaintances. That first winter, Lincoln began to break through some of his social inhibitions. Eight or ten men—“choice spirits”—would gather “by a big wood fire” in Speed’s general store to talk, laugh, debate, and carry on a running conversation about many topics. They came night after night “because they were sure to find Lincoln” and his stories and wit. Speed observed the paradox of seeing this reserved man at the center of attention. “Mr. Lincoln was a social man, though he did not seek company; it sought him.” After talking politics and sharing stories around the fire, when the others left, Lincoln and Speed would talk for hours into the night.
A SOCIETY ORIENTED AROUND the spoken word rewarded those who learned its ways. In his constant drive for self-improvement, Lincoln sought out opportunities to enhance his speaking ability. In January 1838, he accepted an invitation to speak to the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield. The Lyceum began in 1835, and by Lincoln’s arrival in 1837 occupied a leading cultural place in the community.
On a wintry Saturday evening, the twenty-eight-year-old Lincoln stood to address the Lyceum meeting at the Second Presbyterian Church on “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.” He began by offering praise to the founders of the republic. He evoked the inheritance passed down to his generation. The young Lincoln, still learning the art of rhetoric, often used more words than necessary, thus, “We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.” If the major melody in his address was honor to the founders, a contrapuntal theme was the role of Lincoln’s generation, just now coming into their maturity, in shaping the nation’s future. Their task was much more limited, Lincoln concluded; “’tis ours only, to transmit these” values “to the latest generation.”
Underneath Lincoln’s towering language we hear a lament. A half century after the election of George Washington as the nation’s first president, Lincoln had become convinced that the epic labor of putting together the country had already been consummated. Instead of builders, Lincoln and his generation were conferred the lesser role of transmitters, or custodians.
He did acknowledge his generation’s commission to protect the nation’s hard-won freedom. Lincoln, always attentive to his social context, spoke of the threat of a “mobocratic spirit” seen in an outbreak of mob violence that had “pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana.” The immediate occasion of the address may have been the murder two and a half months earlier of Elijah Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister and editor killed defending his abolitionist newspaper in Alton, Illinois, across the river from St. Louis. Lincoln, in embracing the Whig Party in the 1830s, believed that a departure from tradition and order had taken place on the watch of the Democratic Jacksonian administrations.
Lincoln predicted that the danger to “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions” would not come from “some transatlantic military giant,” but rather from foes and forces that “must spring up amongst us.” In words that would be remembered, Lincoln declared, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
ONE MONTH LATER, on February 24, 1838, Lincoln announced his intention to run for a third term in the Illinois legislature. His championing of internal improvements, followed by the disastrous economic recession of 1837, did not seem to dampen his reelection prospects. By now he had won the trust of an ever-widening part of the public. On August 6, Lincoln received the highest vote total of sixteen candidates.
On a cold Friday morning, November 30, 1838, Lincoln boarded the stage to take his seat in the Eleventh General Assembly, the last to be held in Vandalia. As an indication of how far and fast he had traveled, the Whigs nominated Lincoln for Speaker of the lower house of the legislature. As the candidate of the minority party, Lincoln was defeated on the fourth ballot in a close vote: 43 to 38.
At the beginning of the session, legislators talked incessantly about the status of the internal improvements legislation and program. John J. Hardin of Morgan County brought a resolution calling for an investigation of internal improvements, which he and others called disdainfully the “grand system.” In the course of the ensuing debate, Lincoln reaffirmed that “his own course was identified with the system.” He was not about to back away now. “We have gone too far to recede, even if we were disposed to do so.” Reporting for the Finance Committee on January 17, 1839, he acknowledged the problems in a seriously weakened economy, but remained adamant. “We are now so far advanced in a general system of internal improvements that, if we would, we cannot retreat from it, without disgrace and great loss.” After discussing the purchase of still more public lands as part of the program of internal improvements, Lincoln declared, “The conclusion then is, that we must advance.”
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nbsp; Behind Lincoln’s specific proposals for building roads and canals lay his ardent belief in the promise of Illinois. “Illinois surpasses every other spot of equal extent upon the face of the globe, in fertility of soil, and in the proportionable amount of the same which is sufficiently level for actual cultivation.” At twenty-nine, Lincoln was living proof that in Illinois a young man could begin with nothing and through hard work rise to statewide influence.
The session adjourned on March 4, 1839. As Lincoln prepared to leave Vandalia, he could look back on a record of solid accomplishment, especially in championing transportation as the best means to promote growth throughout the state. From December 1834 through March 1839, he had spent nearly an entire year, forty-four weeks total, in Vandalia. He had arrived largely unknown; he left with a growing reputation for political intelligence, judgment, and honesty.
DURING THE BREAK between legislative sessions, Lincoln joined his fellow Whigs in a series of debates with Democrats in a prelude to the 1840 political campaigns. Stephen Douglas, still regarded as a leader of the Democratic Party despite his congressional defeat, began the debates by defending President Van Buren’s plan for a subtreasury system, a new way to solve the old problem of a national bank.
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