Abraham Lincoln

by William Eleroy Curtis

"Emerson, I am going home to study law."

"'Why,' I exclaimed, 'Mr. Lincoln, you stand at the head of the bar in Illinois now! What are you talking about?'

"'Ah, yes,' he said, 'I do occupy a good position there, and I think I can get along with the way things are done there now. But these college-trained men, who have devoted their whole lives to study, are coming West, don't you see? And they study their cases as we never do. They have got as far as Cincinnati now. They will soon be in Illinois.' Another long pause; then stopping and turning towards me, his countenance suddenly assuming that look of strong determination which those who knew him best sometimes saw upon his face, he exclaimed, 'I am going home to study law! I am as good as any of them, and when they get out to Illinois I will be ready for them.'"

While Mr. Lincoln was not a sensitive man in the ordinary sense of that term, he felt keenly his own deficiencies in education; nor did he lose this feeling when his ability as a statesman was recognized by the entire universe and he held the destiny of a nation in his grasp. Once, when a famous lawyer called at the White House and referred courteously to his eminent position at the bar, he replied, "Oh, I am only a mast-fed lawyer," referring to his limited education. "Mast" is a kind of food composed of acorns, grass, and similar natural substances which was commonly given to cattle and hogs in Indiana and other frontier States when he was a boy.

Conscious of his deficiencies, he never ceased to be a student. Until the very day of his death he was eager to acquire knowledge, and no new subject was ever presented to him without exciting his inquisitiveness and determination to learn all there was to know about it. Of this characteristic he once remarked to a friend,—

"In the course of my law reading I constantly came upon the word demonstrate—I thought at first that I understood its meaning, but soon became satisfied that I did not. I consulted Webster's Dictionary. That told of certain proof, 'proof beyond the probability of doubt;' but I could form no sort of idea what sort of proof that was.

"I consulted all the dictionaries and books of reference I could find, but with no better results. You might as well have defined blue to a blind man. At last I said, 'Lincoln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means;' and I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father's house, and stayed there until I could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what demonstrate meant, and went back to my law studies."

He met every new question with the same disposition, and nobody ever knew better how to dig for the root of a subject than he. When his children began to go to school, he used to study with them, and frequently referred to the many interesting points of information and the valuable knowledge he acquired in that way. The lawyers who were associated with him upon the circuit relate how often he was accustomed to pull a book from his pocket whenever he had an idle moment, and it was quite as frequently a treatise on astronomy or engineering or a medical lecture as a collection of poems or speeches.

But, with all his modesty and diffidence, he never hesitated to meet with confidence the most formidable opponent at the bar or on the stump, and frequently, when reading accounts of litigation in which famous lawyers were engaged, he would express a wish that he might some time "tackle" them in a court-room. He once said that in all his practice at the bar he had never been surprised by the strength of the testimony or the arguments of his adversary, and usually found them weaker than he feared. This was due to a habit he acquired early in his practice of studying the opposite side of every disputed question in every law case and every political issue quite as carefully as his own side. When he had an important case on hand he was accustomed to withdraw himself into a room where he would not be disturbed, or, what he liked better, to get out into the fields or the woods around Springfield where there was nothing to distract his thoughts, in order to "argue it out in my own mind," as he put it; and when he returned to his house or his office he would usually have a clear conception of his case and have formed his plan of action.

He argued great causes in which principles were involved with all the zeal and earnestness that a righteous soul could feel. Trifling causes he dismissed with the ridicule in which he was unsurpassed, and his associates relate many incidents when a verdict was rendered in a gale of laughter because of the droll tactics used by Lincoln. He never depended upon technicalities or the tricks of the profession. He never attempted to throw obstacles in the way of justice, or to gain an unfair advantage of his adversaries, but was capable of executing legal manœuvres with as much skill as any of his rivals. He adapted himself to circumstances with remarkable ease, and his thorough knowledge of human nature enabled him to excite the interest and sympathy of a jury by getting very close to their hearts. He argued much from analogy; he used old-fashioned words and homely phrases which were familiar to the jurymen he desired to impress, and illustrated his points by stories, maxims, and figures often droll and sometimes vulgar, because he knew that he could make it plainer to them in that way and that they would better understand the force and bearing of his arguments. He relied more upon this method of convincing a jury than upon exhibitions of learning or flights of eloquence, and his acquaintance with human nature was even more intimate than his knowledge of the law.