Lincoln and the Law

I. Early Political Career

A. New Salem Advocate

1. Failure of Lincoln’s store—not the best of businessmen, and burdened by the amount of debt they took on to by the general store, Lincoln and his partner lost the general store, and Lincoln had to rely on his local connections to be appointed postmaster and also surveyor for the area around New Salem.


2. Black Hawk War—Lincoln saw no real action in this war, but got his first taste of electoral success when the men called up to serve elected him an officer.

3. First run for office—his wrestling match with Jack Armstrong won him the allegiance of the Clary’s Grove Boys, but not enough support from others in the county to win the election. Lincoln finished solidly in the middle of the pack (8th out of 14 candidates); this finish seems largely due to his unabashedly proclaiming that he was an “anti-Jackson” man, which cost him votes in the rural districts that made up most of the county.

B. The Death of New Salem—because it never got the infrastructure needed to become a successful city, New Salem died a lingering death.


1. Business problems—although Lincoln and his partner were not good businessmen, their lack of experience was exacerbated by the lack of transportation infrastructure to get products into and out of the settlement. Then Sangamon River was not reliably navigable near the village, and there were never sufficient investors to make a viable rail connection when that technology became available on the prairie.

2. Ann Rutledge—his relationship with her has long been in dispute, but evidence points to the greater probability of there being an intimate (but chaste) relationship. Her death, however, put Lincoln into a state of deep depression; intimate friends, in fact, feared he would attempt suicide.

3. Second Election Campaign—Lincoln again ran for election in 1834. Learning from past mistakes, Lincoln played up his own rural roots (and familiarity with farm work), and was less forthright over his differences with the still-popular Andrew Jackson. This new strategy paid off in a victory in the election.

C. New Start in Springfield


1. Joshua Speed—one of the first people Lincoln meets upon arriving in Springfield is shopkeeper Joshua Speed, son of an old, well-to-do Kentucky family. Speed invites Lincoln to stay with him above the store, and Lincoln remains there until is marriage.

a. Recently, some historians have argued that the fact that Lincoln was awkward around women and that he and Speed shared the same bed for many years, to argue that Lincoln was either bisexual or a closeted homosexual as an adult. This, I argue, is an attempt to read the present into the past. In fact, Speed and Lincoln soon shared their upstairs room with three other males; differing standards of privacy prevailed in the antebellum period makes it difficult to project the social mores of today back to that time period.

2. The Apprentice Lawyer—Lincoln had engaged in an informal study of law while he lived in New Salem; upon arriving in Springfield, he was able to undertake a more systematic study.


a. Lincoln arrived in Springfield already a known quantity, and one of the most prominent lawyers in town, John Todd Stuart, readily took him on as a partner while Lincoln studied for the bar exam—lending him books from his personal library. The law partnership was an equal one—Stuart took the lion’s share of the fees generated, while Lincoln did most of the work—but it did give Lincoln a start above what he would have been able to do for himself, and a steady stream of clients came through the office door because of Stuart’s reputation, where Lincoln would have to hustle business on his own if not in an already established practice.

b. The experience Lincoln gained from his service as assistant surveyor was tailor-made for many of the disputes that arose in his early years as a lawyer, because many of the disputes were over land titles; in fact, Lincoln was called upon to testify and help adjudicate these disputes before he was even admitted to the bar.



3. The Springfield Politician—Lincoln’s reputation was made before his move to Springfield because of his role with the “Long Nine” group of Springfield-area politicians who maneuvered a bill through the Illinois legislature to move the state capitol from Vandalia to Springfield. Lincoln’s political skills were appreciated, and he quickly became one of the leaders of the Whig Party in Illinois, in one of the few reliably Whig districts in the state.

4. Law and Politics—Lincoln in the early years of his law practice at times confused his role as an advocate for a client with his role as politician, imputing political motives in his opponents’ personal matters.

5. Politics and Law—for most of the time immediately after Lincoln was admitted to the bar, most of his time was spent on political matters—organizing the Whigs in central Illinois, and campaigning himself and for other party candidates during elections. Before his marriage and subsequent family obligations that came with that came with marriage, Lincoln cared little for the compensation the law practice provided, and more about his political career.

II. Lincoln and the Practice of Law

A. Lawyering

1. Frontier professionals—there were few opportunities for those who did not want to work as a farmer in the West in the antebellum period. Lincoln had already failed at running a general store. He did find work as a surveyor and postmaster, but neither were renumerative nor of very high status.

2. Low bar of entry—the two highest status professions in the west were medicine and law.

a. Medicine required some formal training, even though that training was not yet completely tied to the scientific approach we associate it with today. There was still a belief in the powers of “miasma,” and “vapors,” little regard for sanitation. In the early years of medical practice, doctors probably killed more patients than they saved.

b. Law—if one learned to read and write, one could study the law and usually become a lawyer. Law required no formal training. Although Harvard had established a law school in 1806, most lawyers did not attend Harvard—and others did not follow suit until the 1870s and 1880s, when there is a greater push for credentialization to enter all of the professions.

B. The Appeal of Law to Lincoln

1. Equality Under the Law—A large part of the appeal of the practice of law to Lincoln was his belief that adherence to the law helped to equalize opportunity for everyone; that the law, under the best of circumstances, made no distinction between rich and poor.

2. Lincoln as Advocate—William Herndon, Lincoln’s second, long-term partner, claimed Lincoln was a poor advocate for his client if he did not believe in the innocence of that person; again, this probably reflects upon Lincoln’s sense of fair play and equality than on his ability as a lawyer.


C. Riding the Circuit—in much of the sparsely-settled west (and much of the rest of the country), court sessions were not a daily occurrence. Judges, accompanied by lawyers, “road the circuit” visiting the various county seats in the “circuit” to hear the various cases that arose since their previous visit.