A. Lincoln

by Ronald C. White, Jr.

  Lincoln respected Trumbull and his sharp, logical mind, and knew he would provide a balance to Douglas in the Senate. On the evening after the election, Ninian and Elizabeth Edwards hosted a reception that had originally been intended as a victory party. The defeated Lincoln surprised many by attending. Elizabeth tried to console him by saying she knew he must be very disappointed. He replied, “Not too disappointed to congratulate my friend Trumbull,” and with those words walked over to shake the hand of the new senator. Trumbull, admiring Lincoln’s behavior, later wrote him: “I shall continue to labor for the success of the Republican cause and the advancement at the next election to the place now occupied by Douglas of that Friend, who was instrumental in promoting my own.”

  “I WAS DABBLING IN POLITICS; and, of course, neglecting business. Having since been beaten out, I have gone to work again.” So Abraham Lincoln wrote a long-overdue letter to a New York law firm on March 10, 1855.

  Lincoln had foreseen the future of railroads a full twenty years before they brought a revolution in transportation to Illinois. In his first announcement of candidacy for the Illinois legislature in 1832, Lincoln declared, “No other improvement that reason will justify us in hoping for, can equal in utility the rail road.” As he returned from his stint in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1849, the first railroad was winding its way south from Chicago. Innumerable problems and roadblocks resulted in only 110 miles of track being laid by 1850.

  Lincoln started representing the Illinois Central Railroad in 1852. First greeted as a boon to transportation, the Illinois Central quickly established a reputation as a large and unpopular bully. It was infamous for striking cows on the rails, setting barns on fire with stray sparks, and losing the freight of its customers.

  The railroads needed friends in high places to succeed. Lincoln, like other political leaders, “chalked his hat,” or traveled on railroad passes, regularly. Politicians were lobbied heavily in the state legislature by every small town that wanted to be on the new railroad line. Many politicians and lawyers would become wealthy through land speculation close to the routes of railroad lines. Satisfied to earn his livelihood from his law practice, Lincoln turned away from such speculation, though it was practiced with lucrative results by his close friend David Davis. Railroads needed lawyers to represent them in the contracts and contentions in the 1850s. Lincoln, with his growing stature, found the railroads coming to his door seeking his legal services.

  From 1852 through the end of the decade, Lincoln would represent the railroads in about fifty cases, although seldom alone, in five counties in the Eighth Circuit and in appellate cases before the Supreme Court. He was never an employee of the Illinois Central, the most powerful railroad in the state, although he did serve at various times on a retainer. He also brought suit against it on a number of occasions.

  Lincoln’s work for the railroad was a departure from his previous legal practice. When he advocated the “economic right to rise” in America, he had in mind the upward path of the farmer or small proprietor that he had come to know in the 1830s and 1840s. He had grown up as a lawyer in a face-to-face society in which he urged his clients to settle because they had to live with one another in small communities. Most of the clients stood on more or less equal footing with one another. As a Whig, he upheld the ideal of the independence of each person, but as a lawyer in the 1850s he represented a powerful corporation determined to use its corporate muscle for profit.

  Even when dealing with corporations, Lincoln looked for opportunities to be a mediator. In 1854, he wrote to Milton Brayman, solicitor of the Illinois Central, about an old man from DeWitt County who wanted Lincoln to sue the railroad because it did not keep its word regarding the erection and repair of fences. Lincoln offered advice to Brayman that the railroad should be careful to mend its fences, both physical and political. “A stitch in time may save nine in this matter.”

  As the Illinois Central proceeded with construction, it completed a section in 1853 between La Salle and Bloomington in McLean County. Thereupon county officials presented a bill for a tax assessment. The railroad protested, arguing that under the provisions of its charter the legislature had exempted it from all county taxes with the proviso that it pay a charter tax of 5 percent of its annual gross revenues for the first six years after its incorporation in 1851, and 7 percent thereafter. McLean officials argued the state did not have the power to exempt the railroad from county taxation. The railroad was in trouble if every county attempted to levy a tax.

  Both sides contacted Lincoln as each prepared to go to court. He believed at issue “is the largest law question that can now be got up in the State.” Approached by the county, he replied that he needed an official letter promising payment if they wanted him to represent them. “I can not afford, if I can help it, to miss a fee altogether.” After waiting eighteen days, Lincoln wrote the Illinois Central that he would accept their offer. Four days later, Brayman sent Lincoln a personal check for $250 as a retainer for the case.

  McLean County engaged the services of a prominent team of lawyers—Stephen Logan, John Todd Stuart, and Benjamin S. Edwards. This was Lincoln’s first big case for the Illinois Central and he well understood that success could lead to many more. He prepared carefully. In his appeal on February 28, 1854, Lincoln, for precedent, cited twenty-six cases: four decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court and twenty-two decisions from thirteen state courts. Because of the significance and complexity of the case, the circuit court ordered the case reargued before the Illinois Supreme Court.

  The Supreme Court heard the case a final time in January 1856. Lincoln argued that because the railroad was held in trust by the state it was exempt from taxation for its first six years while being built. He defended the authority of the legislature to take such action. Judge Walter G. Scates upheld Lincoln’s argument, ruling that the legislature had the authority to exempt the railroad’s payment of county taxes. In his long opinion, Judge Scates cited thirteen of the precedents from Lincoln’s appeal.

  Lincoln, overjoyed with the result, believed he had salvaged for the railroad at least $500,000. He presented a bill in person in Chicago of $2,000 for his fee.

  The bill was rejected. The railroad replied that Lincoln’s request was as much as Daniel Webster might have charged. Rebuffed, Lincoln started back for Springfield. Stopping in Bloomington, he consulted with a few fellow attorneys. His peers, surprised at Lincoln’s submission of such a modest fee, encouraged him to resubmit a bill for $5,000. When the railroad again refused to pay, Lincoln brought suit in January 1857, in the McLean Circuit Court. Six months later, a jury returned a verdict to pay the plaintiff the full amount of five thousand dollars.

  Lincoln would work for the Illinois Central again. This episode tells us how far he had come as a lawyer in twenty years. The man with the reputation as a peaceful mediator for his clients took a stand for himself against the largest corporation in Illinois.

  DURING THE FALL CIRCUIT in 1855, Lincoln interrupted his usual routine for a patent case that was attracting national attention. The “Reaper Case,” as it would become known, would be a crucial test case with huge implications for the growing farm community. It also offered a splendid opportunity for a rising Illinois lawyer.

  Cyrus McCormick, born three days after Lincoln in 1809, had invented a mechanical reaper in Virginia that could mow, gather, tie, and stack wheat, thereby combining the functions of earlier harvesting machines. McCormick patented his machine in 1834 and started a factory in Chicago in 1847. John H. Manny developed a similar machine in Wisconsin and subsequently moved his factory to Rockford, Illinois. McCormick sued Manny for infringement, demanding damages of $400,000.

  Both sides were prepared to hire the best lawyers and spend whatever it took to win the case. McCormick retained nationally known lawyers Edward M. Dickerson of New York and Reverdy Johnson of Washington. The Manny Company hired the country’s leading patent lawyers, George Harding of Philadelphia and Peter H. Watso
n of New York, as well as Edwin M. Stanton, a rising young lawyer from Pittsburgh. Because the case was to be tried in the federal court in Chicago, Harding sent Watson to Illinois in June to find a prominent local lawyer who would have the trust of the federal judge. Watson, a short, stout man, with red hair and beard, upon meeting the tall, dark Lincoln at his home, was unenthusiastic. Nevertheless, he invited Lincoln to join the defense team and gave him a $500 retainer, telling him there would be a substantial fee upon completion of a successful case. Watson also told Lincoln that he would deliver the closing argument as the Illinois lawyer on the case.

  Lincoln determined to give this case his most careful preparation. On July 7, 1855, while in Chicago for the summer session of the U.S. Federal Court, he went out to Rockford and spent time at the Manny factory becoming familiar with their reaper. On July 23, he wrote to Watson, concerned that he had not yet received depositions for the case. “During August, and the remainder of this month, I can devote some time to this case, and, of course, I want all the materials that can be had.” Lincoln’s letter received no answer. Frustrated, Lincoln finally wrote to the Manny headquarters in Rockford on September 1, seeking materials and asking for clarification about the place of the trial. In the weeks before the trial, the case was transferred from Chicago to Cincinnati.

  On the morning of September 19, 1855, as Harding and Stanton were walking to the courthouse from the Burnett House in Cincinnati, they came across, in Harding’s words, “a tall rawly boned, ungainly back woodsman, with coarse, ill-fitting clothing” standing on the stone steps. Remembering Watson’s uncomplimentary description of Lincoln, they knew it had to be the Springfield lawyer. Lincoln suggested that they go up to the courthouse “in a gang,” but Stanton prevailed upon Harding to walk without Lincoln.

  In Cincinnati, the Manny Company lawyers informed Lincoln he would not give the final argument. In fact, he would have no role in the case. Harding never opened the lengthy brief that Lincoln had prepared. When informed of this, Lincoln asked that the brief be returned so he might destroy it.

  The case lasted a week. In all this time, the defense team never included Lincoln in their deliberations, nor even invited him to join them for their meals at the hotel. Judge John McLean entertained all the lawyers at a dinner at his home, but Lincoln was not invited.

  Lincoln felt humiliated. He remained in Cincinnati, attending all the court sessions—now reduced to the role of a spectator. He admired the lawyers’ expertise in the technical matters of patents. After the case was decided in favor of the Manny Company, Watson sent Lincoln a check as payment for his participation. Lincoln returned the check, replying that he had no right to any fee beyond the original retainer. Watson sent him the check again, saying he had earned it by his preparation. Lincoln finally cashed it.

  Stanton, who was known for his brusque manners and often acidic tongue, was especially rude to Lincoln. He is reputed to have described Lincoln as “a long, lank creature, from Illinois, wearing a dirty linen duster for a coat.” Lincoln told Herndon after he returned to Springfield that he had been “roughly handled by that man Stanton.” Stanton, a careful letter writer, wrote in great detail about what he called “the most important Patent case that has ever been tried,” but said nothing about Lincoln in his letters. The two men would meet again seven years later in very different circumstances.

  AS LINCOLN RETURNED to his successful law practice, he continued to be deeply concerned about politics, staying abreast of developments, agonizing over party realignments, and biding his time. Though he did not make public speeches, he did reveal his thoughts and struggles in private letters.

  On July 18, 1855, he opened a package containing a gift: Scrap Book on Law and Politics, Men and Times, by George Robertson, an old friend who was presently professor of law at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. The volume contained Robertson’s speeches and letters from a distinguished legal and political career spanning more than forty years. On August 15, Lincoln wrote to Robertson to thank him and to offer his thoughts on issues triggered by Robertson’s lectures.

  Robertson, as a young Kentucky congressman in 1819, had spoken of the prospect of “the peaceful extinction of slavery.” Lincoln replied, “Since then we have had thirty six years of experience; and this experience has demonstrated, I think, that there is no peaceful extinction of slavery in prospect for us.” Lincoln was saying privately in 1855 what he would not yet say publicly. “The signal failure of Henry Clay, and other good and great men, in 1849, to effect anything in favor of gradual emancipation in Kentucky, together with a thousand other signs, extinguishes that hope utterly.”

  Lincoln also responded to Robertson’s discussion of liberty. “On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been.” He continued, “When we were the political slaves of King George, and we wanted to be free, we called the maxim ‘all men are created equal’ a self-evident truth; but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim ‘a self-evident lie.’ ” What did all this mean? “The fourth of July has not quite dwindled away; it is still a great day—for burning fire-crackers!!!”

  Lincoln voiced both despair and hope. “The Autocrat of all of Russia will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than our American masters will voluntarily give up their slaves.” He then posed what he believed to be “Our political problem. Can we, as a nation, continue together permanently—forever—half slave, and half free?” Lincoln concluded with a confession and a hope. “The problem is too mighty for me. May God, in his mercy, superintend the solution.” This poignant letter to Robertson, at a time when Lincoln was making no speeches, tracked his thinking as he brooded over ideas that would become central to his future attack upon slavery.

  On August 24, 1855, Lincoln wrote an even more revealing letter to Joshua Speed. He had received an earlier letter from Speed in which his good friend wrote that it had become clear that he and Lincoln now had quite different positions on the nature and prospect of slavery. Speed stated that he may well be against slavery in principle, but in practice, in Lincoln’s paraphrase, “You say that sooner than yield your legal right to the slave—especially at the bidding of those who are not themselves interested, you would see the Union dissolved.” Lincoln was here confronted, not with an anonymous opponent or an avowed enemy, but with the ideas of his oldest and dearest friend.

  At the outset of his letter, Lincoln recalled their common experience in 1841 when they encountered ten or twelve slaves “shackled together with irons” on a steamboat traveling from Louisville to St. Louis. Fourteen years later, Lincoln told Speed, “That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border.” He then challenged his old friend. “You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the constitution and the Union.” Lincoln was pained to see that he and Speed “differ about the Nebraska-law.” In private, Lincoln said to Speed, “I look upon that enactment not as a law, but as violence from the beginning. It was conceived in violence, passed in violence, is maintained in violence, and is being enacted in violence.”

  Speed, in his letter, had asked Lincoln where he stood. Lincoln answered, “That is a disputed point. I think I am a whig; but others say there are no whigs, and that I am an abolitionist. When I was in Washington I voted for the Wilmot Proviso, a measure enacted by the opponents of slavery to prevent its introduction into territories acquired in the Mexican War, as good as forty times, and I never heard any one attempting to un whig me for that. I now do more than oppose the extension of slavery.” Lincoln exaggerated how many times he had voted for the Wilmot Proviso, but once more he disclosed his continuing struggle with identity—including party identity—even as he told his friend that others were seeking to identify him in ways he was not w
illing to accept.

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  IN THE WINTER OF 1856, Lincoln was rethinking his affiliation with the Whigs as the party continued to splinter, but whether from loyalty or obstinacy, he did not rush to join any of the new movements. On Washington’s birthday, a Republican national organizing convention was to meet in Pittsburgh. The Republican train was gaining speed. Would Lincoln climb aboard?

  In early February, two men came to Springfield to raise money and secure arms for the “free-state” forces in Kansas. William Herndon helped organize a meeting to hear their appeal, and in the midst of much excitement, belligerence, and exaggeration, Lincoln was asked to speak. He counseled moderation and spoke against coercion that would lead to bloodshed. “Revolutionize through the ballot box, and restore the Government once more to the affections and hearts of men by making it express, as it was intended to do, the highest spirit of justice and liberty.” At the end of the meeting Lincoln made a donation to be forwarded to free-state supporters in Kansas. As usual, Lincoln remained more moderate in public than in his more candid conversations with trusted friends.

  On February 22, 1856, Lincoln boarded the train for Decatur. Paul Selby, editor of the Morgan Journal in Jacksonville, and William Usrey, editor of the Illinois State Chronicle in Decatur, had issued a call for an anti-Nebraska meeting, which was endorsed by editors of twenty-five Illinois newspapers. The purpose of the meeting was to plan for the coming state and national elections. The planners had invited one well-known political figure to attend. Lincoln, who had cultivated a relationship with newspaper editors, accepted their invitation. The editors agreed to oppose the introduction of slavery into the territories and work for the restoration of the Missouri Compromise. They called for an anti-Nebraska convention to meet in Bloomington in May.