DECLINES A HIGH OFFICE.
Just before the close of his term in Congress Mr. Lincoln was an applicant for the office of Commissioner of the General Land Office, but was unsuccessful. He had been such a factor in General Taylor’s election that the administration thought something was due him, and after his return to Illinois he was called to Washington and offered the Governorship of the Territory of Oregon. It is likely he would have accepted this had not Mrs. Lincoln put her foot down with an emphatic no.
He declined a partnership with a well-known Chicago lawyer and returning to his Springfield home resumed the practice of law.
From this time until the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which opened the way for the admission of slavery into the territories, Mr. Lincoln devoted himself more industriously than ever to the practice of law, and during those five years he was probably a greater student than he had ever been before. His partner, W. H. Herndon, has told of the changes that took place in the courts and in the methods of practice while Mr. Lincoln was away.
LINCOLN AS A LAWYER.
When he returned to active practice he saw at once that the courts had grown more learned and dignified and that the bar relied more upon method and system and a knowledge of the statute law than upon the stump speech method of early days.
Mr. Herndon tells us that Lincoln would lie in bed and read by candle light, sometimes until two o’clock in the morning, while his famous colleagues, Davis, Logan, Swett, Edwards and Herndon, were soundly and sometimes loudly sleeping. He read and reread the statutes and books of practice, devoured Shakespeare, who was always a favorite of his, and studied Euclid so diligently that he could easily demonstrate all the propositions contained in the six books.
Mr. Lincoln detested office work. He left all that to his partner. He disliked to draw up legal papers or to write letters. The firm of which he was a member kept no books. When either Lincoln or Herndon received a fee they divided the money then and there. If his partner were not in the office at the time Mr. Lincoln would wrap up half of the fee in a sheet of paper, on which he would write, “Herndon’s half,” giving the name of the case, and place it in his partner’s desk.