First Inauguration of Lincoln as President.
It was that interest which made the man and the great historical character of Lincoln. One lives according to his interest in life, and the meaning realized in him as humanity.
In 1834 Lincoln again tried for the legislature, and this time was elected. This gave him his long desired opportunity to study law. He borrowed books and read them incessantly until he mastered them. He never studied law with any one, as was the custom in those days. He did not require a teacher to lay out or explain his mental tasks.
To a young man who asked him, twenty years later, how to become a successful lawyer, he said, “Get books. Read and study them carefully. Work, work, work is the main thing.”
IV. LINCOLN’S FIRST LAW CASES
One of the first important law cases of Lincoln in its claims sounds remarkably like the unsolved problems of today, and shows how rights have to be developed year by year, how the public mind has to be built up from idea to idea like an individual mind.
A public-spirited attempt was made to build a bridge across the upper Mississippi. The boatmen declared it to be an invasion of human rights, as they had vested interests at stake in the business they had built up, ferrying people across the river. They declared that a man was an enemy of the people who would try to destroy business. But Lincoln won the case against them in favor of building the bridge for the larger interest of the people.
In another significant case he set a legal precedent. A negro girl had been sold in the free territory of Illinois. A note had been given for her but the maker of the note could not pay it when it became due and was sued for it.
Lincoln defended the maker of the note on the ground that the note was invalid because a human being could not be bought and sold in Illinois. The case was carried to the Supreme Court, where it was decided that Lincoln’s view of the case was correct law.