to accept the more readily his mode of avoiding it. He was equally potent before the jury as with the Court." Judge Breese said of him, "Mr. Lincoln was never found deficient in all the knowledge requisite to present the strong points of his case to the best advantage, and by his searching analysis make clear the most intricate controversy. There was that within him, glowing in his mind, which enabled him to impress with the force of his logic, his own clear perception upon the minds of those he sought to influence."

Stephen A. Douglas declared that Lincoln had no equal as an advocate in the trial of a case before a jury. Leonard Swett, who knew him as well, if not better, than any other of his associates on the Circuit, has said that if Lincoln ever had a superior before a jury-and the more intelligent the jury the better he was pleased-he, Swett, never knew him. Mr. Swett went further and declared that in his younger days, he had listened to Tom Corwin, Rufus Choate, and many others of equal standing at the bar in the trial of cases, but that Lincoln at his best, was more sincere and impressive than any of them, and that what Lincoln could not accomplish with a jury no man need try. Judge David Davis afterwards appointed by President Lincoln a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and who was the presiding judge in the old Eighth Judicial Circuit of Illinois during the greater part of the time while Lincoln travelled that Circuit from County to County, trying cases-continually said that, "in all the elements that constitute the great lawyer, he had few equals. He was great both at nisi prius and before an appellate tribunal."

Thomas Drummond, than whom no greater trial judge ever sat upon the bench, declared Lincoln to be one of the ablest lawyers he had ever known. The testimony of these distinguished men is convincing, and with the record of his professional career in Illinois, to which might be added a creditable though not very extended practice in the Federal Courts, should set at rest forever the statement sometimes made that Lincoln's standing as a lawyer was not of a high order for in all which constitutes the really great lawyer, he

stood in the front rank of the profession at a time when many men of renown battled for supremacy at the bar; and he who by common consent was classed as the equal, if not the superior of Leonard Swett, and the other distinguished lawyers whom I have named, must be given high place among the leaders of the bar of our State.

Had it not been that his great abilities were demanded by the Republic, in the turbulent times following 1857, there is no reason to doubt that the name of Abraham Lincoln, the lawyer, would have been known from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

His whole career shows that failure was a word unknown to his vocabulary; and prior to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise he was making most wonderful progress in his professional career; but when his country demanded his services in that trying hour, when he saw that the iron heel of the slave power of the South was about to be planted upon the free soil of the nation, he left to others the pursuit of the calling of his choice at a time when that calling seemed more than ever inviting, and when greater professional renown was easily within his grasp, to become more than ever before, an advocate of the rights of the people against an aristocracy founded upon human slavery.

What followed is a matter of familiar history. Abraham Lincoln, the lawyer of Illinois, became the great restorer of the Union of the States, and the work of the lawyer was overshadowed by the greater labors and accomplishments of Abraham Lincoln, the emancipator of a race, and the saviour of his country. Had he lived to witness the realization of the vision which he saw and so beautifully expressed in his First Inaugural Address, when "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 touched again, as they surely will be, by the better angels of our nature," Abraham Lincoln would have proven himself to be the greatest constitutional lawyer of the nineteenth century, and many of the mistakes and horrors of the reconstruction period, I firmly

believe, would have been unknown to our country's history. He would have proceeded "with malice toward none, but charity for all," to "bind up the nation's wounds"; and by constitutional government many of the conflicts which have left a blot upon the escutcheon of our national honor, would have been avoided and jewels of still greater brilliancy would have been thereby placed upon the brow of the greatest ruler of modern times, if not the greatest of the ages.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

FROM

HON. JOHN C. RICHBERG

ROM Abraham Lincoln's entrance into public life to his sacrificial exit was probably the stormiest period of the Republic, during all of which time the slavery question was uppermost. But underlying this controversy lay the great question of State's rights, the extremists insisting that the Union was a mere confederacy of States, that the States were absolutely sovereign and any State had a right to withdraw from the Union at any time its people saw fit so to do. Lincoln was opposed both to slavery and the doctrine of State's rights, as enunciated, believing in an inseparable and indestructible Union; and it may be interesting to trace the gradual growth and strengthening of his belief which culminated in that mighty appeal to the spirit of nationality known as the Gettysburg Address.

It will be borne in mind that Lincoln had been a member of the Illinois Legislature for four successive terms and entered upon the scene of national politics in 1847, at the age of thirty-eight, as a member of Congress. Although a new member, he was not a silent member, and took part in the debates affecting the leading questions of the day. He had been practising law for some ten years, and his speeches in Congress, especially the one against granting appropriations for internal improvements on constitutional grounds, showed that he had studied the works of Kent and Storey and the leading cases of the Supreme Court of the United States, notably those delivered by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall. He had taken an active part in politics during the administration of Andrew Jackson and especially in the great controversy then raging with reference to the Charter of the United States Bank. That Charter had been upheld in 1819 by the Supreme

Court of the United States in the opinion delivered by Chief Justice Marshall in the celebrated case of M'Culloch v. State of Maryland. The question involved as to whether Congress had power to incorporate a bank, and the holding of the Court that the government of the Union is supreme within its sphere of action, and that its laws, when made in pursuance of the Constitution, are the supreme law of the land, are of course familiar to all here present.

Lincoln said, in a speech delivered in Congress, July 27, 1848:

"When the bill chartering the first Bank of the United States passed Congress, its constitutionality was questioned. Mr. Madison, then in the House of Representatives, as well as others, had opposed it on that ground. Gen. Washington, as President, was called on to approve or reject it. He sought and obtained, on the constitutional question, the separate written opinions of Jefferson, Hamilton, and Edmund Randolph, they then being respectively Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, and Attorney-General. Hamilton's opinion was for the power; while Randolph's and Jefferson's were both against it."

In a reply to Douglas, delivered at Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857, he again showed how familiar he was with the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, wherein the question of the constitutionality of the Act establishing the Bank of the United States was involved; that he had not only read, but studied that decision. He said:

"Why, this same Supreme Court once decided a national bank to be constitutional; but General Jackson, as President of the United States, disregarded the decision, and vetoed a bill for a re-charter, partly on constitutional grounds, declaring that each public functionary must support the Constitution, 'as he understands it.' But hear the General's own words. Here they are, taken from his veto message:

"It is maintained by the advocates of the Bank, that its constitutionality, in all its features, ought to be considered as settled by precedent, and by the decision of the Supreme Court. To this conclusion I cannot assent. Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority, and should not be regarded as deciding questions of constitutional power, except where the acquiescence of the people and the States can be considered as well settled. So far from this being the case on this subject, an argument against the bank might be based on precedent. One Congress, in 1791, decided in favor of a bank; another,