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country's welfare, cherishing, but without bitterness, the proud memories of their conflict-have long since realized the prophecy of Lincoln at his First Inaugural that:

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

The death of Lincoln postponed for a dreary time that happy era. How much humiliation, sorrow, wretchedness, and hate, what an Iliad of woes to white and black came through his untimely end, no tongue or pen can ever portray.

As far as the human mind can estimate and compare what was with what might have been, it was for the entire nation, but especially for the South, the most lamentable tragedy in history. My judgment, based upon years of observation and study, is that it was, in the light of subsequent events, more regretted by the Southern people than was the fall of the Confederacy.

What conflicts, what ingratitude, what disappointments in his great purposes, he may have been spared, we do not know. But we know that at the height of his fame, at the triumphant close of the great conflict which he had led, he was, by a tragedy that shocked the world, caught up from the stage of human action and its vicissitudes, and fixed forever as one of the greatest luminaries in that galaxy of illustrious men who will shine throughout the ages.

He passed out of view like tropic sun that

"With disc like battle target red

Rushes to his burning bed,

Dyes the wide wave with ruddy light,

Then sinks at once and all is night.'

Southern-born-with mind, heart, and soul loyal to its traditions, believing that the South was within its constitutional rights as the Constitution then stood, that her leaders were patriotic, that her people showed a devotion to principles without a touch of sordidness, that such action as theirs could only come from a deep conviction that counted not the cost

of sacrifice, cherishing as a glorious legacy the renown of her armies and leaders, whose purity of life and heroism were unsurpassed by those of any people at any one time-yet I say in all sincerity and without reservation, that I rejoice as much as any of you that our country produced Abraham Lincoln, who will, as long as great intellect, patriotism, sincerity, self-denial, magnanimity, leadership, heroism, and those graces of the mind and heart which reflect the gentle spirit are cherished, shed lustre, not only upon his countrymen, but upon all humanity.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AT THE BAR OF ILLINOIS

JOHN T. RICHARDS

F the early life of Abraham Lincoln, I shall not speak. His life in Kentucky and Indiana-his emigration to Illinois, at the age of nineteen years-his settlement at New Salem, his mercantile ventures there, his first candidacy for the Legislature, in which, as he said in later years, he met the only defeat he ever suffered at the hands of the people, are matters of history, with which all are familiar. He had passed through all these experiences before the end of the year 1834. He was then but twenty-four years of age, and had, within five years after his arrival in Illinois, been successively a farm-hand, laborer, clerk, and store-keeper. In 1834, he was elected a member of the Legislature and reelected for the three succeeding terms his last election being in the year 1840. During the time of his service in the Legislature, he pursued the study of law and was admitted to the bar of Illinois, March 1, 1837, being at that time twenty-eight years of age.

At the time of Lincoln's admission to the bar, the rules of the Supreme Court did not require the applicant to submit to an examination as to his qualifications. The only requirements of the statute then in force, and which went into effect March 1, 1833, were that before he could be permitted to practice as an attorney or counsellor-at-law, he must have obtained a license for that purpose from some two of the Justices of the Supreme Court, and that he should not be entitled to receive such license until he had obtained a certificate from the Court of some County, of his good moral character.

Having obtained a license from two of the Judges of the Supreme Court, he was required to take an oath to support

the Constitution of the United States and this State. The person who administered the oath was required to certify the same on the license, and on presentation of the license in this form to the Clerk of the Supreme Court, the latter was required to enroll the name of the applicant as an attorney or counsellor.

The required oath of office seems to indicate that the Legislature contemplated two classes in the profession, (1) attorneys; (2) counsellors; for the oath reads, "I will in all things faithfully execute the duties of an attorney-at-law or counsellor-at-law (as the case may be)," etc.

The first rule of Court relating to admission to the bar, was adopted March 1, 1841, and required all applicants for a license to practise law, to present themselves in person for examination in open court, except in cases where the applicant had been regularly admitted to the bar in some Court of Record within the United States. The Court was at that time composed of nine judges, who were required to perform circuit duties also. The State was divided into nine Judicial Circuits, one of the Judges presiding over each of the Circuit Courts; and all met together as a Supreme Court, and each was afforded an opportunity to review orders and decrees of the other members of the Court.

The proceedings in all the Courts were much less dignified and formal than they are in this generation. The judges and the lawyers met on the Circuit as friends, upon a common level, and as there were no places of amusement where the long evenings could be spent, they gathered about a common fireside at the country tavern and regaled each other with anecdotes and songs. The judge who heard their cases threw aside judicial dignity, when evening came, and joined with his professional brethren in the merrymaking. Life upon the Circuit in those days, as in every new community, had its sunshine and its shadows, but every hardship had its compensation in the goodfellowship, which always prevailed among those sturdy pioneers.

The experiences of Lincoln upon the Circuit were not unlike those of other lawyers of that day. There was little

that required great skill or much learning in the law. The interests involved were for the most part trivial, measured by a monetary standard-but they involved the same questions of right and justice which invite our professional attention in these latter days.

In the nisi prius Courts, Abraham Lincoln was called upon to try cases of every class, both civil and criminal, and he entered upon the trial of cases involving but a few dollars with as much zeal as those involving thousands; but no criminal case in which Lincoln appeared as an attorney is to be found in the reports of the decisions of the Supreme Court of Illinois. Whether this fact is due to his great ability as an advocate before a jury or to some other cause, I am unable to state, but, as his contemporaries inform us that he tried very many criminal cases, none of which appear in the State Reports, it seems safe to assume that his clients in such cases were acquitted by the jury.

Some of Lincoln's biographers have sought to make it appear that Lincoln refused to take advantage of a so-called technicality in order to win his case. This view is not borne out by the record, for-while he possessed many attributes which all admit are above and beyond those possessed by ordinary mortals-as a lawyer he seems to have been no less human than other members of the profession, and while it may be truthfully said that he took no mean advantage of his professional brethren, he did not hesitate to press upon the attention of the Court any legitimate advantage which the record of the case might furnish.

The first case in connection with which his name appears in the Supreme Court, furnishes evidence of this, being the case of J. Y. Scammon-afterwards Supreme Court Reporter -plaintiff in error vs. Cornelius Cline. Scammon had brought the suit before a Justice of the Peace in Boone County, and the Justice having rendered judgment in favor of the defendant, Scammon appealed to the Circuit Court of Boone County. At the time the appeal from the Justice was perfected, Boone County was still a part of Jo Daviess County, for judicial purposes, and no Court having been

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