CHAPTER XVII. LINCOLN FINALLY DECIDES ON A LEGAL CAREER.-HIS FIRST SESSION IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF ILLINOIS. votes; it was coming to a determination to read law, not for pleasure, but as a business. In his autobiographical notes he says: "During the canvass, in a private conversation, Major John T. Stuart (one of his fellowcandidates) encouraged Abraham to study law. After the election he borrowed books of Stuart, took them home with him, and went at it in good earnest. He never studied with anybody." He seems to have thrown himself into the work with an almost impatient ardor. As he tramped back and forth from Springfield, twenty miles away, to get his lawbooks, he read sometimes forty pages or more on the STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. Born at Brandon, Vermont, April 23, 1813; died in Chicago, June 3, 1861. Douglas learned a trade when a boy, but abandoned it to study law. Obliged to support himself, he went to Illinois in 1833, where he taught school until admitted to the bar. In 1835 he was elected State Attorney-General, but resigned at the end of the year, having been elected to the General Assembly. In 1837 he was appointed register of the land-office at Springfield; in 1838 was defeated in a contest for Congress; in 1840 was appointed Secretary of State; in 1841 was elected judge of the Supreme Court of Illinois. From 1843 to 1846 he was in Congress, and for fourteen years after was a United States Senator. The Lincoln and Douglas debates took place in his last senatorial canvass. In 1860 Mr. Douglas was the Democratic candidate for President, and was defeated by Lincoln. He died in 1861. REPORT OF A ROAD SURVEY BY LINCOLN.-HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED. Photographed for this biography from the original, now on file in the County Clerk's office, Springfield, Illinois. The survey here reported was made in pursuance of an order of the County Commissioners' Court, September 1, 1834, in which Lincoln was designated as the surveyor. way. Often he was seen wandering at random across the fields, repeating aloud the points in his last reading. The subject seemed never to be out of his mind. It was the great absorbing interest of his life. The rule he gave twenty years later to a LINCOLN'S ADVICE TO A YOUNG LAW STUDENT. 199 Youthern Coundry line of Section 24. c Sown 17. Range 6 1- 00Que Vorthe instruments; and he was frequently called upon by his neighbors to perform services of this kind. "In 1834," says Daniel Green Burner, Berry and Lincoln's clerk, 'my father, Isaac Burner, sold out to Henry Onstott, and he wanted a deed written. I knew how handy Lincoln was that way, 00 young man who wanted to know how to become a lawyer, was the one he practised: "Get books, and read and study them carefully. Begin with Blackstone's 'Commentaries,' and after reading carefully through, say twice, take up Chitty's 'Pleadings,' Greenleaf's 'Evidence,' and Story's 'Equity,' in succession. Work, work, work, is the main thing." Having secured a book of legal forms, he was soon able to write deeds, contracts, and all sorts of legal Beasley branch Partersection with the old food A MAP MADE BY LINCOLN OF A PIECE OF ROAD IN MENARD COUNTY, ILLINOIS.-HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED. Photographed from the original for this biography. This map, which, as here reproduced, is about one-half the size of the original, accompanied Lincoln's report of the survey of a part of the road between Athens and Sangamon town. For making this map, Lincoln received fifty cents. He received three dollars for the day he spent in relocating the road. (See report,'page 198.) The road evidently was located "on good ground," and was "necessary and proper," as the report says, for it is still the main travelled highway leading into the country south of Athens, Menard County. and suggested that we get him. We found him sitting on a stump. All right,' said he, when informed what we wanted. 'If you will bring me a pen and ink and a piece of paper I will write it here.' I brought him these articles, and, picking up a shingle and putting it on his knee for a desk, he wrote out the deed." As there was no practising lawyer nearer than Springfield, Lincoln was often employed to act the part of advocate before the village squire, at that time Bowling Green. He realized that this experience was valuable, and never, so far as known, demanded or accepted a fee for his services in these petty cases. Justice was sometimes administered in a summary way in Squire Green's court. Precedents and the venerable rules of law had little weight. The "Squire" took judicial notice of a great many facts, often going so far as to fill, simultaneously, the two functions of witness and court. But his decisions were generally just. James McGrady Rutledge tells a story in which several of Lincoln's old friends figure, and which illustrates the legal practices of New Salem. "Jack Kelso," says Mr. Rutledge, "owned, or claimed to own, a white hog. It was also claimed by John Ferguson. The hog had often wandered around Bowling Green's place, and he was somewhat acquainted with it. Ferguson sued Kelso, and the case was tried before 'Squire' Green. The plaintiff produced two witnesses who testified positively that the hog belonged to him. Kelso had nothing to offer, save his own unsupported claim. "Are there any more witnesses?' inquired the court. "He was informed that there were no more. "Well,' said 'Squire' Green, the two witnesses we have heard have sworn to a lie. I know this shoat, and I know it belongs to Jack Kelso. I therefore decide this case in his favor."" An extract from the record of the County Commissioners' Court illustrates the nature of the cases that came before the justice of the peace in Lincoln's day. It also shows the price put upon the privilege of working on Sunday, in 1832: "JANUARY 29, 1832.-Alexander Gibson found guilty of Sabbath-breaking, and fined 12 cents. Fine paid into court. ** (Signed) EDWARD ROBINSON, J. P." DISTRUST OF YANKEES IN EARLY ILLINOIS. 66 THE ILLINOIS ASSEMBLY OF 1834. 201 The session of the ninth Assembly began December 1, 1834, and Lincoln went to the capital, then Vandalia, seventy-five miles southeast of New Salem, on the Kaskaskia River, in time for the opening. Vandalia was a town which had been called into existence in 1820 especially to give the State government an abiding-place. Its very name had been chosen, it is said, because it sounded well" for a State capital. As the tradition goes, while the commissioners were debating what they should call the town they were making, a wag suggested that it be named Vandalia, in honor of the Vandals, a tribe of Indians which, said he, had once lived on the borders of the Kaskaskia; this, he argued, would conserve a local tradition while giving a euphonious title. The commissioners, pleased with so good a suggestion, adopted the name. When Lincoln first went to Vandalia it was a town of about eight hundred inhabitants; its noteworthy features, according to Peck's "Gazetteer" of Illinois for 1834, being a brick court-house, a two-story brick edifice "used by State officers," "a neat framed house of worship for the Presbyterian Society, with a cupola and bell," "a framed meeting-house for the Methodist Society," three taverns, several stores, five lawyers, four physicians, a land-office, and two newspapers. It was a much larger town than Lincoln had ever lived in before, though he was familiar with Springfield, then twice as large as Vandalia, and he had seen the cities of the Mississippi. The Assembly which he entered was composed of eighty-one members-twenty-six senators and fifty-five representatives. As a rule, these men were of Kentucky, Tennessee, or Virginia origin, with here and there a Frenchman. There were but few Eastern men, for there was still a strong prejudice in the State against Yankees. The close bargains and superior airs of the emigrants from New England contrasted so unpleasantly with the open-handed hospitality and the easy ways of the Southerners and French, that a pioneer's prospects were blasted at the start if he acted like a Yankee. A history of Illinois in 1837, published, evidently, to "boom" the State, cautioned the emigrant that if he began his life in Illinois by "affecting superior intelligence and virtue, and catechizing the people for their habits of plainness and simplicity, and their apparent want of |