Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 14.pdf/106

 Abraham Lincoln.

ABRAHAM

11

LINCOLN.

From an address before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh. Bv Hon. Joskph H. Choate. AT the age of twenty-five Lincoln be came a member of the Legislature of Illinois, and so continued for eight years, and, in the meantime, qualified himself by reading such law books as he could borrow at random—for he was too poor to buy any— to be called to the Bar. For his second quar ter of a century—during which a single term in Congress introduced him .into the arena of national questions—he gave himself up to law and politics. In spite of his soaring am bition, his two years in Congress gave him no premonition of the great destiny that awaited him, and at its close, in 1849, we find him an unsuccessful applicant to the Presi dent for appointment as Commissioner of the General Land Office, a purely adminis trative bureau, a fortunate escape for himself and his country. Year by year his knowl edge and power, his experience and repu tation extended and his mental faculties seemed to grow by what they fed on. His power of persuasion, which had always been marked, was developed to an extraordinary degree, now that he became engaged in con genial questions and subjects. Little by little he rose to prominence at the Bar, and be came the most effective public speaker in the West. Not that he possessed any of the graces of the orator, but his logic was in vincible, and his clearness and force of state ment impressed upon his hearers the con victions of his honest mind, while his broad sympathies and sparkling and genial humor made him a universal favorite as far and as fast as his acquaintance extended. These twenty years that elapsed from the time of his establishment as a lawyer and legislator in Springfield, the new capital of Illinois, furnished a fitting theatre for the development and display of his great fac

ulties, and with his new and enlarged oppor tunities he obviously grew in mental stature in this second period of his career, as if to compensate for the absolute lack of ad vantages under which he had suffered in youth. As his powers enlarged, his reputa tion extended, for he was always before the people, felt a warm sympathy with all that concerned them, took a zealous part in the discussion of every public question, and made his personal influence ever more widely and deeply felt. My professional brethren will naturally ask me, how could this rough backwoods man, whose youth had been spent in the forest or on the farm and flatboat, without culture and training, education or study, by the random reading, on the wing, of a few miscellaneous law books, become a learned and accomplished lawyer? Well, he never did. He never would have earned his salt as a writer for The Signet. nor have won a place as advocate in the Court of Session, where the technique of the profession has reached its highest perfection, and centuries of learning and precedent are involved in the equipment of a lawyer. Dr. Holmes, when asked by an anxious young mother, 'When should the education of a child begin?' re plied, 'Madam, at least two centuries before it is born,' and so I am sure it is with the Scots lawyer. But not so in Illinois in 1840. Between 1830 and 1880 its population increased twentyfold, and when Lincoln began prac ticing law in Springfield, in 1837, life in Illinois was very crude and simple, and so were the courts and the administration of justice. Books and libraries were scarce. But the people loved justice, upheld the law, and followed the courts, and soon found their