We are told by Mr. Lamon, that Mr. Lincoln got his license as an attorney early in 1837, and commenced practice regularly as a lawyer in the town of Springfield, in March of that year. It is with this place that his name was associated for the remainder of his life. Though it contained at that time less than two thousand inhabitants, it was a town of considerable importance. The list of the local bar contained the names of several men of ability and reputation. Stephen A. Douglas, already referred to, was public prosecutor in 1836. Judge Stephen T. Logan was on the bench of the Circuit Court. There was John T. Stuart also, who had recommended young Lincoln to become a lawyer, and was now his partner.

The law office of Stuart and Lincoln was in the second story above the court-room, in Hoffman{88}’s Row. It was small and poorly furnished. Lincoln slept in the office, and boarded with Hon. William Butler, who appears to have been a politician and wire-puller.

At last, then, after a youth of penury, a long hand-to-hand struggle with privations in half a dozen different kinds of business, we find our hero embarked in the profession which, for the remainder of his life, he owned as mistress. He is twenty-eight years of age, with some legislative experience, but a mere novice in law. But he was ambitious, and in spite of his scanty equipment as regards book-knowledge, he made up his mind to succeed, and he did succeed.

Though I am thereby anticipating matters, I propose to relate an incident of his law practice which I find quoted in “Raymond’s History” of Lincoln’s Administrations, from the Cleveland Leader. It illustrates not merely Mr. Lincoln’s methods and shrewdness as a lawyer, but also his fidelity to friends.

This is the story:

“Some four years since, the eldest son of Mr. Lincoln’s old friend, the chief supporter of his widowed mother—the good old man having some{89} time previously passed from earth—was arrested on a charge of murder. A young man had been killed during a riotous mélée in the night time at a camp-meeting, and one of his associates stated that the death-wound was inflicted by young Armstrong. A preliminary examination was gone into, at which the accuser testified so positively, that there seemed no doubt of the guilt of the prisoner, and therefore he was held for trial.

“As is too often the case, the bloody act caused an undue degree of excitement in the public mind. Every improper incident in the life of the prisoner—each act which bore the least semblance of rowdyism—each school-boy quarrel—was suddenly remembered and magnified, until they pictured him as a fiend of the most horrible hue. As these rumors spread abroad they were received as gospel truth, and a feverish desire for vengeance seized upon the infatuated populace, whilst only prison bars prevented a horrible death at the hands of the populace. The events were heralded in the county papers, painted in the highest colors, accompanied by rejoicing over the certainty punishment being meted out to the guilty party. The prisoner, overwhelmed by the circumstances{90} in which he found himself placed, fell into a melancholy condition bordering on despair, and the widowed mother, looking through her tears, saw no cause for hope from earthly aid.

“At this juncture the widow received a letter from Mr. Lincoln, volunteering his services in an effort to save the youth from the impending stroke. Gladly was his aid accepted, although it seemed impossible for even his sagacity to prevail in such a desperate case; but the heart of the attorney was in his work, and he set about it with a will which knew no such word as fail. Feeling that the poisoned condition of the public mind was such as to preclude the possibility of impanelling an impartial jury in the court having jurisdiction, he procured a change of venue and a postponement of the trial. He then went studiously to work, unravelling the history of the case, and satisfied himself that his client was the victim of malice, and that the statements of the accuser were a tissue of falsehoods.

“When the trial was called on, the prisoner, pale and emaciated, with hopelessness written on every feature, and accompanied by his half-hoping, half-despairing mother—whose only hope was in{91} a mother’s belief of her son’s innocence, in the justice of the God she worshipped, and in the noble counsel, who, without hope of fee or reward upon earth, had undertaken the cause—took his seat in the prisoners’ box, and, with a ‘stony firmness,’ listened to the reading of the indictment.

“Lincoln sat quietly by, whilst the large body of auditors looked on him as though wondering what he could say in defence of one whose guilt they looked upon as certain. The examination of the witnesses for the State was begun, and a well-arranged mass of evidence, circumstantial and positive, was introduced, which seemed to impale the prisoner beyond............