Yours forever,
Lincoln.
On the 3d of December, 1839, Mr. Lincoln was admitted to practice in the Circuit Court of the United States; and on the same day the names of Stephen A. Douglas, S. H. Treat, Schuyler Strong, and two other gentlemen, were placed on the same roll. The "Little Giant" is always in sight!
The first speech he delivered in the Supreme Court of the State was one the like of which will never be heard again, and must have led the judges to doubt the sanity of the new attorney. We give it in the form in which it seems to be authenticated by Judge Treat:—
"A case being called for hearing in the Court, Mr. Lincoln stated that he appeared for the appellant, and was ready to proceed with the argument. He then said, 'This is the first case I have ever had in this court, and I have therefore examined it with great care. As the Court will perceive, by looking at the abstract of, the record, the only question in the case is one of authority. I have not been able to find any authority sustaining my side of the case, but I have found several cases directly in point on the other side. I will now give these cases, and then submit the case.'"
The testimony of all the lawyers, his contemporaries and rivals, is in the same direction. "But Mr. Lincoln's love of justice and fair play," says Mr. Gillespie, "was his predominating trait. I have often listened to him when I thought he would certainly state his case out of Court. It was not in his nature to assume, or to attempt to bolster up, a false position. He would abandon his case first. He did so in the case of Buckmaster for the use of Denham vs. Beenes and Arthur, in our Supreme Court, in which I happened to be opposed to him. Another gentleman, less fastidious, took Mr. Lincoln's place, and gained the case."
In the Patterson trial—a case of murder which attained some celebrity—in Champaign County, Ficklin and Lamon prosecuted, and Lincoln and Swett defended. After hearing the testimony, Mr. Lincoln felt himself morally paralyzed, and said, "Swett, the man is guilty: you defend him; I can't." They got a fee of five hundred or a thousand dollars; of which Mr. Lincoln declined to take a cent, on the ground that it justly belonged to Swett, whose ardor, courage, and eloquence had saved the guilty man from justice.
It was probably his deep sense of natural justice, his irresistible propensity to get at the equities of the matter in hand, that made him so utterly impatient of all arbitrary or technical rules. Of these he knew very little,—less than an average student of six months: "Hence," says Judge Davis, "a child could make use of the simple and technical rules, the means and mode of getting at justice, better than Lincoln could." "In this respect," says Mr. Herndon, "I really think he was very deficient."
Sangamon County was originally in the First Judicial Circuit; but under the Constitution of 1848, and sundry changes in the Judiciary Acts, it became the Eighth Circuit. It was in 1848 that Judge Davis came on the bench for the first time. The circuit was a very large one, containing fourteen counties, and comprising the central portion of the State. Lincoln travelled all over it—first with Judge Treat and then with Judge Davis—twice every year, and was thus absent from Springfield and home nearly, if not quite, six months out of every twelve. "In my opinion," says Judge Davis, "Lincoln was as happy as he could be, on this circuit, and happy in no other place. This was his place of enjoyment. As a general rule, of a Saturday evening, when all the lawyers would go home [the judge means those who were close enough to get there and back by the time their cases were called] and see their families and friends, Lincoln would refuse to go." "It was on this circuit," we are told by an authority equally high, "that he shone as a nisi prius lawyer; it was on this circuit Lincoln thought, spoke, and acted; it was on this circuit that the people met, greeted, and cheered on the man; it was on this circuit that he cracked his jokes, told his stories, made his money, and was happy as nowhere in the world beside." When, in 1857, Sangamon County was cut off from the Eighth Circuit by the act creating the Eighteenth, "Mr. Lincoln would still continue with Judge Davis, first finishing his business in Sangamon."
On his return from one of these long journeys, he found that Mrs. Lincoln had taken advantage of his absence, and, with the connivance and assistance of his neighbor, Gourly, had placed a second story and a new roof on his house. Approaching it for the first time after this rather startling alteration, and pretending not to recognize it, he called to a man on the street, "Stranger, can you tell me where Lincoln lives? He used to live here."