was admitted to the bar on September 9, 1836. This is an error. Admission to the bar in Illinois was at that time controlled by a statute which went into effect March 1, 1833. The first rule of court relating to admission to the bar was adopted by the Supreme Court March 1, 1841, and that rule required all applicants for admission to the bar to present themselves in person for examination in open court, excepting only those who had been regularly admitted to the bar in some court of record within the United States. But under the statute of 1833, which remained in force until 1841, the applicant was not required to pass an examination of any kind.

The error into which Mr. Isaac N. Arnold and some others among Lincoln's biographers have fallen in relation to the date of Mr. Lincoln's admission to the bar is doubtless due to the fact that, since the adoption of rules upon the subject by the Supreme Court, all licenses to practice law have been issued by the clerk of that court and the enrollment has been concurrent with the issuance of the license. In consequence of this it has doubtless been assumed by these writers that the issuance of a license to Mr. Lincoln by the judges on September 9, 1836 authorized him to practice law regardless of the time of his enrollment, while the statute of 1833 provided that before one could be "admitted to

practice as an attorney and counselor at law" he must have performed the following acts: (1) He must have obtained a license for that purpose from some two of the judges of the Supreme Court. (2) In order to obtain such license, he was required to procure a certificate of his good moral character from the court of some county in the State. (3) Having obtained the license from the two judges, he was required to take an oath to support the Constitution of the United States and of the State. (4) The officer who administered the oath was required to certify the same on the license. (5) On the presentation of the license, with the oath endorsed thereon, to the clerk of the Supreme Court, the latter was required to enroll the name of the applicant as an attorney and counselor at law, and the same statute provided that "no person whose name is not subscribed to or written on said roll with the day and year when the same was subscribed thereto, or written thereon, shall be suffered or admitted to practice as an attorney or counselor at law within this State."

If anything further is needed to settle the question of the date of Mr. Lincoln's admission to the bar, reference is here made to the decision by the Supreme Court of Illinois in the case of E. C. Fellows ex parte, 3 Ill. 369, which was an application made by Fellows at the December term, 1840, of the Supreme Court

for an order authorizing the clerk of that court to enter the name of the applicant upon the roll of attorneys as of the 20th of March, 1837. Fellows had obtained from the judges the necessary license to practice law in September, 1835, and had taken the required oath on March 20, 1837. Thus far he had fully complied with the provisions of the statute of 1833, but he had omitted to have his name enrolled until October 6, 1840. The application of Fellows was denied, and in its opinion the court said, “If he has incurred any liability by practicing as an attorney and receiving fees before his name was enrolled, or if he seeks to recover for services performed before his name was entered on the roll, this court cannot aid him by permitting the clerk to make the entry nunc pro tunc."

From the foregoing it conclusively appears that the date of Mr. Lincoln's admission to the bar was the date of his enrollment, which was March 1, 1837, and not September 9, 1836, the date of the issuance of the license by the judges. The Supreme Court at the time of Lincoln's admission to the bar was composed of four judges and the court sat only as a court of review, but by an act passed by the legislature February 10, 1841, the judiciary of the State was reorganized; the Circuit Court judges namely, the judges of the nisi prius courts, of whom there were

four in the State - were legislated out of office and the number of Supreme Court judges was increased to nine.

Under the Constitution of 1818 all of the Circuit and Supreme Court judges were elected by the legislature on joint vote of both houses. The judges of the Supreme Court, before the passage of the act referred to, were William Wilson, chief justice; and Samuel D. Lockwood, Theophilus W. Smith, and Thomas C. Browne, associate justices. Three of them belonged to the Whig party, Judge Smith alone being a Democrat. The legislature of 1841 had a Democratic majority. In 1839-40, two political questions were awaiting decision in cases pending in the Supreme Court, one of which involved the power of the governor to remove from office the secretary of state, and the other involved the right of aliens to vote. As the Whigs contended that the governor did not possess the power to remove the secretary of state without cause and that aliens were not entitled to vote, and the Democrats held the contrary view on both questions, and as the Whig majority of the Supreme Court had at the December term, 1839, held against the Democratic contention as to the power of the governor to remove the secretary of state, it was assumed that the same judges would sustain the Whig contention in deciding the other

case, and the legislature by the act referred to added five judges to the Supreme Court, abolished the office of Circuit Court judge, and immediately proceeded to elect five additional judges, all Democrats, to fill the offices then created.

It was also provided by the act referred to that the Supreme Court judges should perform Circuit Court duty. The five additional judges of the Supreme Court, all of whom were elected by joint vote of the two houses of the legislature on the 15th day of February, 1841, were Thomas Ford, afterwards governor of Illinois; Sidney Breese, who afterwards became United States Senator from Illinois and at a later date was elected a judge of the Supreme Court of Illinois and served in that office until his death in 1878; Walter B. Scates; Samuel H. Treat, afterwards, by appointment of President Pierce, the first judge of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of Illinois, when that court was created; and Stephen A. Douglas, who was destined to become the opponent of Lincoln in the great debate and also his rival for the United States senatorship and the presidency.

Douglas made a speech in the rotunda of the Capitol at Springfield advocating the passage of the act which created the office to which he was later elected by the joint vote of both branches of the legislature