Abraham Lincoln enjoyed a successful legal career in Illinois spanning nearly 25 years. Like most lawyers of his time, he did not attend law school.
It was customary to study under established lawyers, but he lived in a rural village and taught himself. In 1834 John T. Stuart, a Springfield attorney, encouraged him to study law and lent him the necessary books. Less than three years later Lincoln was admitted to the bar and joined Stuart as a junior partner.
Lincoln had three different law partners at separate times during his career as a practicing attorney, all of whom were located in Springfield. His first partnership began in 1837 when he became the junior partner to John Todd Stuart, who was his mentor and the cousin of his future wife, Mary.
In 1837, while serving in the Illinois state legislature, Lincoln completed his legal training and joined the office of John Todd Stuart in the new Illinois capital at Springfield.
25He rigorously studied by reading a large selection of previous legal cases and law books, and in 1836, at the young age of 25, he obtained his law license.
On this day in 1839, Abraham Lincoln reached an important milestone in his legal career when the U.S. Circuit Court admitted him to practice law before that tribunal. During his years as a practicing attorney, Lincoln honed oratorical skills that served him well as the nation's beleaguered Civil War president.
In the 1840s, Abraham Lincoln took on his first Illinois State Supreme Court case just before ending his partnership with Logan. After he got elected to the US Congress in 1846, Lincoln took a 2-year break from practicing law.
because he wanted to protest the formation of the Republican Party. in 1854, when the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed and became law. You just studied 15 terms!
183628. SANDBURG, supra note 1 at 61. In the autumn of 1836, Lincoln obtained his law license. Unfortunately, little is known about the exam which was administered to Lincoln in Sangamon County Circuit Court.
Lewis v. LewisAccording to historical records, Lincoln represented approximately 175 cases before the Illinois Supreme Court. In 1849, he argued for Thomas Lewis, the defendant in Lewis v. Lewis, which was his only case tried before the U.S. Supreme Court.
He has sharp words for the dishonest and unscrupulous members of the bar, calling them "fiends" and "knaves." He warns prospective lawyers, "if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer."
Of the 46 US presidents, 27 worked as lawyers, including current president Joe Biden, but not all of them have actually earned law degrees.
He earned a reputation for honesty while working the circuit as a lawyer. As Richard Carwardine writes in his Lincoln biography, “The nickname 'honest Abe' was not the fabrication of party publicists but a mark of the universal respect in which he was held as a lawyer of scrupulous honesty.
In his nearly 25 years as a lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln had three partners. He joined John Todd Stuart (1837-1841) as a junior partner, then started a new practice as a junior partner with Stephen T. Logan (1841-1844). After he and Logan dissolved their partnership, he took William H.
4) Lincoln had three law prtners Over the course of his career as a lawyer, Lincoln had three separate law partners: John Stuart, Stephen Logan, and William Herndon. Lincoln shared an office with each of these partners in Springfield, Illinois. Click here for a brief summary of his law career.
March 1-15 - The Lincoln family moved to Illinois and settled in Macon County near what is now Decatur. July - Abraham Lincoln left his family and arrived in New Salem. He was 22 years old.
To honor both Lincoln’s noble profession — July was lawyer month at the Cottage — and our 10-year anniversary, we created a list of Ten Things You Might Not Have Known about Lincoln the Lawyer.
Lincoln made many appearances as a lawyer in front of the Illinois Supreme Court but only one before the United States Supreme Court. In 1849 Lincoln represented Thomas Lewis before the Supreme Court in the case Lewis v Lewis. Lincoln lost the cause and Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote the majority opinion opposing Lincoln.
In a letter, dated November 3, 1859, Lincoln responded to Harrison by encouraging him to vote for Palmer, since “he is good and true, and deserves the best vote we can give him.”. This month, we’re honored to display this original letter, on loan from Jorge Roldan and Family.
2) Lincoln had to sue for a fee. Lincoln worked his most profitable case while representing Illinois Central Railroad i n 1856 who paid him $5,000. McLean County had seized railroad land to sell after refusing to recognize the state’s authority to exempt the company from county taxes.
In 1858, Lincoln successfully defended his client who had been accused of murder in one of his most famous trials, dubbed the Almanac Trial. The key witness’s testimony relied on his explanation that he had seen the murder because of the light from the full moon. Lincoln was able to refute the claim through reference to a farmers almanac that showed there was a new moon the night of the murder, and thus insufficient light by which the witness could have seen the alleged murderer.
1) Lincoln represented a slave owner. In October 1847 Robert Matson brought several enslaved people from Kentucky to work on his farm in Illinois, including Jane Bryant and her four children. Also working at the farm was freedman Anthony Bryant, Jane’s husband. When threatened with the children being sold, the Bryants fled Matson’s farm ...
Lincoln lost the cause and Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote the majority opinion opposing Lincoln. Lincoln would cross paths with Taney again in 1861 when Taney administered Lincoln’s presidential oath of office.
Abraham Lincoln learned the law by borrowing books and training informally with practicing lawyers. He was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1836 and practiced law there for 25 years. Most of his work involved settling debts, contracts, business disputes, divorces, and some criminal cases.
Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life. “Profession, a Lawyer ”. —Abraham Lincoln’s entry in the Dictionary of Congress, 1848. In 1834, when Lincoln was 25 years old and living in New Salem, Illinois, he ran for a seat in the Illinois legislature and won. After the victory, he borrowed money to purchase his first suit and took up the study of law.
Where Lincoln Worked. Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois purchased this desk for 10 dollars. As Republican minority leader, Dirksen played a crucial role in helping to write and pass civil rights legislation of the 1960s. It is likely he did some of this work on the same desk once used by Abraham Lincoln.
As a young lawyer, Lincoln served as a junior partner in two firms. In 1844 he was ready to take the lead. He invited a young attorney, William Henry Herndon, to form a partnership. The Lincoln and Herndon partnership in Springfield, Illinois, lasted the rest of Lincoln’s life.
Many of Lincoln’s cases were in central Illinois’ Fourteenth Circuit —known as the “mud circuit” for its poor roads. Stopping at county seats, the circuit judge and a traveling band of lawyers would quickly handle pending cases and disputes and then move on to the next town.
Many people are unaware that Lincoln was mostly self-educated and learned to read while in Kentucky, scratching words on the back of a shovel as his paper pad of sorts.
Abraham Lincoln enjoyed a 25-year legal career in Illinois, but he was never really educated in the field. He did practice law but did not take the traditional law school route. Like many lawyers in the 1800s, Abraham Lincoln never received his legal education or attended law school.
In 1834, Abraham caught the attention of a lawyer by the name of John Stuart, who gave Lincoln a lot of legal books to study and encouraged him to pick up this profession. As bright as Lincoln was, within 3 years, the stout gentleman joined John Stuart as a partner in his law practice.
In the 1840s, Abraham Lincoln took on his first Illinois State Supreme Court case just before ending his partnership with Logan. After he got elected to the US Congress in 1846, Lincoln took a 2-year break from practicing law. However, he soon resumed his practice, working hard to regain his position as a prairie lawyer.
He met Mary Todd, a well-to-do Kentucky belle with many suitors (including Lincoln’s future political rival, Stephen Douglas ), and they married in 1842. The Lincolns went on to have four children together, though only one would live into adulthood: Robert Todd Lincoln (1843–1926), Edward Baker Lincoln (1846–1850), William Wallace Lincoln (1850–1862) and Thomas “Tad” Lincoln (1853-1871).
Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 to Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in a one-room log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky. His family moved to southern Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal schooling was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he had to work constantly to support his family.
Lincoln proved to be a shrewd military strategist and a savvy leader: His Emancipation Proclamation paved the way for slavery’s abolition, while his Gettysburg Address stands as one of the most famous pieces of oratory in American history.
On October 16, 1854, Lincoln went before a large crowd in Peoria to debate the merits of the Kansas-Nebraska Act with Douglas, denouncing slavery and its extension and calling the institution a violation of the most basic tenets of the Declaration of Independence.
After his young son Willie died of typhoid fever in 1862, the emotionally fragile Mary Lincoln, widely unpopular for her frivolity and spendthrift ways, held seances in the White House in the hopes of communicating with him , earning her even more derision. Lincoln taught himself law, passing the bar examination in 1836.
As a congressman, Lincoln was unpopular with many Illinois voters for his strong stance against the Mexican-American War. Promising not to seek reelection, he returned to Springfield in 1849.
After settling in the town of New Salem, Illinois, where he worked as a shopkeeper and a postmaster, Lincoln became involved in local politics as a supporter of the Whig Party, winning election to the Illinois state legislature in 1834.
After only an hour the jury acquitted Duff Armstrong of all charges. Lincoln refused to accept any payment for his work. After twenty years, this self-taught lawyer had risen to the top of the legal profession. His courtroom appearances drew large crowds who hung on his words.
Local citizens were so enraged by the killing that the trial had to be moved to the Cass County courthouse in Beardstown, Illinois. As the trial proceeded, Lincoln sat placidly while prosecutors made their case.
Lincoln had set his trap, and slowly began closing it. Allen testified several times that he had been standing no more than 150 feet away and had seen everything clearly in the brightness of the full moon.
When the prosecutor finished with his witness, Lincoln began his cross-examination and led Allen through the testimony he had just provided, focusing in on the details: Did you see the fight? Exactly where were you standing? Would you describe this slung shot. And finally, what time did this take place? He asked Allen several times if it was possible that he had not seen the event as clearly as he recalled. Allen remained adamant.
Many years earlier, when Lincoln had lived in New Salem, he had been invited to share the stark cabin of Jack and Hannah Armstrong. They had treated him as family. Hannah had cooked his meals and mended his clothing, and Lincoln had rocked their infant son to sleep in his cradle. Now a widow, Hannah Armstrong appealed to Lincoln to save her son.
He turned to the proper page, then asked Allen to read the description aloud. Rather than a full moon that night, there actually was little more than a quarter-moon. And rather than shining brightly overhead at eleven o’clock; the moon had disappeared. It was practically pitch-dark. It simply wasn’t credible that he could have seen the events he described from that distance on a dark night. The prosecution’s pivotal witness had been exposed as a liar.
Lincoln then produced a witness who claimed he had made the slung shot and described it in detail; Lincoln then cut open the leather sack to show jurors the weapon was exactly as described. That small slug of metal hardly seemed capable of inflicting a fatal blow.