now the masterful theme of history crowded in rapid succession, the opportune moment arrived, the hour struck, the Proclamation that has no counterpart-fell upon the ears of the startled world, and as by the interposition of a mightier hand, a race was lifted out of the depths of bondage.

To the one man at the helm seems to have been given to know "the day and the hour." At the crucial moment in one of the exalted days of human history, "He sounded forth the trumpet that has never called retreat."

My fellow-citizens, the men who knew Abraham Lincoln, who saw him face to face, who heard his voice in public assemblage, have, with few exceptions, passed to the grave. Another generation is upon the busy stage. The book has forever closed upon the dread pageant of civil strife. Sectional animosities, thank God, belong now only to the past. The mantle of peace is over our entire land and prosperity within our borders.

Through the instrumentality-in no small measure of the man whose memory we now honor, the government established by our fathers, untouched by the finger of Time, has descended to us. The responsibility of its preservation and transmission rests upon the successive generations as they shall come and go. To-day, at this auspicious hour-sacred to the memory of Lincoln-let us, his countrymen, inspired by the sublime lessons of his wondrous life, and grateful to God for all He has vouchsafed to our fathers and to us in the past, take courage and turn our faces resolutely, hopefully, trustingly to the future. I know of no words more fitting with which to close this humble tribute to the memory of Abraham Lincoln than those inscribed upon the monument of Molière: "Nothing was wanting to his glory; he was wanting to ours.'

LINCOLN THE LAWYER, AND HIS BLOOMINGTON

SPEECHES

MY

R. M. BENJAMIN

Y personal acquaintance with Abraham Lincoln began in 1856 and continued until his election to the presidency in 1860. Accordingly, my remarks on this occasion will be confined to that period.

I shall first speak of Lincoln, the lawyer, and then of his two principal Bloomington speeches-one of them in Major's Hall on May 26, 1856, and the other in the Court House square on September 4, 1858.

I began the study of law at the Harvard Law School in 1854, came to Bloomington in April, 1856, was admitted to the bar on an examination certificate signed by Lincoln, and in October of the same year, began the practice of law in company with Gridley and Wickizer. They were both old-time Whigs-political associates and supporters of Mr. Lincoln. Gen. Gridley had served as a Representative, and later as a Senator, in the State Legislature, and was at the time (1856) one of the five members of the State Central Committee of the new party just organized and known at first as the Anti-Nebraska Party. Mr. Wickizer had been Mayor of the city of Bloomington, and at the November election, 1856, was elected the Representative of this legislative district. During the four years between the Spring of 1856 and the Spring of 1860, Lincoln was a regular attendant at the sessions of the McLean County Circuit Court. He sometimes, in important cases, assisted us, and he frequently visited the office for consultation with Gridley and Wickizer on political matters.

In 1856, there were published only sixteen volumes of the Illinois Supreme Court Reports. There are now two hundred

and thirty-five volumes of these Reports. Previous to that time, and up to 1860-during all the period that Lincoln was a practising lawyer-causes were tried on principle rather than precedent. Those who followed Judge David Davis as he went from county to county holding court on the "Old Eighth Circuit," when the published reports were so few and the jurisprudence of Illinois was in its formative state, were naturally compelled in the trial of causes to base their arguments to the Court and jury upon the solid foundation of right and justice. Instead of citing a great number of alleged similar cases, and spending their time in long arguments to show the analogy between them and the one at bar, they would apply to the transaction in controversy the test of reason, and appeal to that faculty by which we distinguish truth from falsehood and right from wrong.

Why is it that the people at large, the unlearned as well as the learned, so uniformly observe the law-follow its mandates in the indefinitely varying circumstances of life? Why is it that they are held bound to know the law? Is it not because they know the difference between the true and the false between right and wrong-between justice and injustice between law and violation of law?

The lawyer of central Illinois who "travelled the Circuit" fifty-six years ago, did not carry with him, and could not cite, an array of authorities in support of the points he made, but he had to win, if at all, by his ability to marshal the facts in evidence and by his power of reasoning to carry conviction of the righteousness of his client's cause. The school of law in which Abraham Lincoln, John T. Stuart, Leonard Swett, and Lawrence Weldon were trained, was a school, not merely of oratory, but also of logic and legal ethics.

But it must not be inferred that Lincoln never consulted authorities. Although he was on the circuit a large portion of the year, he had access at Springfield, his home, to the State Law Library-to the English, the Federal, and the State Reports. And whenever any of the hundreds of cases, in the trial of which he had taken part on the Circuit, were taken to the Supreme Court of the State, he would reinforce himself

with all the authorities he could find in the books. In this way he was doubly armed for the final contest. He had his forces well in hand, with principles in the fore-front of the battle and precedents for their support.

Lincoln was admitted to the bar in 1837. The Illinois Reports show that in the twenty-three years of his practice of law, he argued one hundred and seventy-three cases in the Supreme Court of the State. He also had a large practice in the United States District and Circuit Courts at Springfield and Chicago.

The best description of Lincoln as a lawyer that I have ever read was that of Thomas Drummond, who was Judge of the United States District Court of Illinois as early as 1850, and subsequently became Judge of the United States Circuit Court for this, the Seventh Judicial District, comprising the States of Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Judge Drummond gives this characterization of Lincoln as a lawyer:

"Without any of the personal graces of the orator; without much in the outer man indicating superiority of intellect; without great quickness of perception; still, his mind was so vigorous, his comprehension so exact and clear, and his judgment so sure that he easily mastered the intricacies of his profession and became one of the ablest reasoners and most impressive speakers at our bar. With a probity of character known by all; with an intuitive insight into the human heart; with a clearness of statement which was itself an argument; with uncommon power and felicity of illustration-often, it is true, of a plain and homely kind and with that sincerity and earnestness of manner which carried conviction, he was perhaps one of the most successful lawyers we have ever had in the State."

This is a true picture of Lincoln, the lawyer. No one who has ever seen and heard him at the bar can fail to recognize the likeness.

The Bloomington Pantagraph of May 14, 1856, published a call for a mass meeting of the voters of McLean County, favorable to the Anti-Nebraska movement, to select three delegates to a State Convention to be held in Bloomington on the twenty-ninth of May, 1856. This call was signed by John M. Scott, W. C. Hobbs, J. H. Wickizer, L. Graves, J. E. McClun, Z. Lawrence, James Vandolah, and Leonard Swett. The meet

ing held in pursuance of that call was the first political meeting I attended in this State. At that meeting, Owen T. Reeves was one of the Committee appointed to select delegates. The delegates reported by the Committee and appointed by the meeting were, James Gilmore, Dr. Harrison Noble, and William W. Orme. The alternates were, Green B. Larrison, David Cheney, and A. T. Briscoe.

The first time I saw and heard Lincoln was at this AntiNebraska Convention of May 29, 1856, held in Major's Hall. I then and there received my first and lasting impressions of the logic and eloquence, the power and greatness of Abraham Lincoln.

A great speech requires a righteous cause, an inspiring occasion, and a man who measures up to the full height of the cause and the occasion.

What was the cause in whose support former members of all the old parties gathered together in that Convention? A clear understanding of the cause for which Lincoln spoke that day-the one cause for which he made all his political speeches-requires a brief historic statement.

About two years before the adoption of the Constitution, the last Congress, sitting under the Articles of Confederation, passed what is known as the Ordinance of 1787, for the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River, it being all the territory then owned by the United States. After the adoption of the Constitution, there were formed from this Northwest Territory, the Territories and later, the States-of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The sixth article of this Ordinance of 1787, provided that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crime, whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted." Each of the Acts of Congress for the establishment of territorial governments within this region northwest of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi, required the government to be in all respects similar to that provided by the Ordinance of 1787. The Enabling Act for the admission