Abraham Lincoln

D

Early Law Practice

Meanwhile, Lincoln continued his study of law, and in 1836 he became a licensed attorney. The following year he became a junior partner in John T. Stuart's law firm and moved from New Salem to Springfield. Lincoln was extremely poor and arrived in Springfield on a borrowed horse with all his belongings in two saddlebags. A Springfield storekeeper, Joshua Fry Speed, whom Lincoln later called “my most intimate friend,” gave Lincoln free lodging.

D

1

Courtship and Marriage

According to a now discredited legend, while in New Salem, Lincoln was said to have been in love with Ann Rutledge, the beautiful young daughter of a local innkeeper. When she died in 1835, Lincoln was said to be “plunged in despair.” The frequent lapses into melancholy that marked his adult years were said to be a result of this tragic death. But Lincoln in his later years never referred to Ann Rutledge, and authorities are unanimous in agreeing that the Lincoln-Rutledge romance is a myth.

Indeed, less than 18 months after Ann's death, Lincoln proposed marriage to Mary Owens, a Kentucky girl who also lived in New Salem. Theirs was not an ardent love affair, but having made his proposal, Lincoln felt he could not honorably break it off. Much to his relief, Mary turned him down. Later she explained, “I thought Mr. Lincoln was deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman's happiness.”

In 1840, Lincoln met a cultured, high-strung Kentucky woman named Mary Todd, who was staying with a married sister in Springfield. After a long courtship, they were married on November 4, 1842. A week later, Lincoln wrote a fellow lawyer, “Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me, is a matter of profound wonder.”

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Late in 1843 the Lincolns moved from their simple rented quarters to a modest frame house in Springfield that Lincoln bought for $1500. Of their four boys, only the eldest, Robert Todd Lincoln, reached adulthood. He was born in 1843 and died in 1926. Edward Baker Lincoln was born in 1846 and died at the age of four. William Wallace, called Willie, was born in 1850 and died in the White House, the presidential mansion, shortly before his 12th birthday. Lincoln's favorite son, Thomas, whom he affectionately called Tad, was born in 1853, grew up in the White House, and died at the age of 18.

In contrast with the sweet, loving Ann Rutledge of legend, Mary Todd Lincoln has unfairly been pictured as a shrew who made Lincoln's life miserable. Certainly she was spoiled, haughty, and temperamental. The death of her children caused her much anguish, and after Willie's death she was often hysterical. Lincoln was devoted to her, however, and there is no evidence that theirs was not a happy marriage. On those occasions when she became upset, Lincoln treated her with patience and understanding. He, for his part, was careless in his personal habits and subject to extreme depression. What he and his wife had in common was ambition. Mary aided her husband's political career immeasurably.

D

2

Frontier Lawyer

At the time of his marriage, Lincoln was earning $1200 to $1500 a year from his law practice, a good income for the time and place. When the law firm of Stuart and Lincoln dissolved in 1841, Stephen T. Logan, an able and experienced lawyer, took Lincoln in as junior partner. In 1844 the firm of Logan and Lincoln also dissolved, and Lincoln formed a lifelong partnership with a young lawyer named William H. Herndon.

Lawsuits on the Illinois frontier usually dealt with such trivial matters as crop damage caused by wandering livestock, ownership of hogs and horses, small debts, libel, and assault and battery. The Springfield courts were in session only a small part of the year. For three months each spring and fall, lawyers and judges rode the circuit, holding court at rural county seats. Lincoln rode the eighth judicial circuit, the largest in the state, covering 15 counties and about 12,900 sq km (about 8000 sq mi).

The local sessions of the circuit court were major events on the frontier. The particulars of each case were well known to the townspeople and were subject to heated debate. Courtroom conduct was informal, and more often than not a case was won on a lawyer's speaking ability rather than the legal merits of his case. The judge and the lawyers were treated as celebrities, and Lincoln, because of his storytelling abilities and skill as a lawyer, was popular on the circuit. Ever the politician, he used this opportunity to meet new people and advance his political career.

Lincoln still had political ambitions, but he now looked beyond the statehouse to the U.S. Congress. In 1843 he wrote a fellow politician, “Now if you should hear any one say that Lincoln don't want to go to Congress, I wish you as a personal friend of mine, would tell him you have reason to believe he is mistaken. The truth is, I would like to go very much.”

The Whigs were a minority party in Illinois, and there was competition among the Whig politicians over the nomination for U.S. representative for the Seventh Congressional District, where Whigs were in the majority. Lincoln sought the nomination in 1842 and 1844 and received it in 1846. He went on to defeat the Democratic candidate, the Methodist preacher Peter Cartwright, in the election of November 1846.

E

United States Congressman

Congressman-elect Lincoln was a popular, masterful politician in Illinois. Having succeeded in the rough-hewn Illinois legislature, he was confident that he would make his mark in Congress. Once in Washington, D.C., however, Lincoln became one of many unknown freshman congressmen. The inner councils of government were closed to him, as was the Washington social life that Mary Lincoln was looking forward to. However, Lincoln never lost confidence in himself. He wrote Herndon, “As you are all so anxious for me to distinguish myself, I have concluded to do so before long.” The Lincolns, with their two sons, lived quietly in a modest boardinghouse. Lincoln had a small body of friends with whom he could relax and discuss politics. Among them was Alexander H. Stephens, the Whig congressman from Georgia, who later became vice president of the Confederate States of America.

E

1

Spot Resolutions

James K. Polk, a Democrat, was president while Lincoln was in Congress. Lincoln joined other Whigs in attacking Polk for starting the Mexican War. Congress had declared war against Mexico in May 1846 upon Polk's contention that Mexicans had fired on American soldiers in U.S. territory.

In December 1847 Lincoln challenged the truth of this contention. He introduced a resolution questioning whether the spot on which the firing took place was actually in U.S. territory. In another resolution he claimed that the American troops were on that spot in violation of the orders of their commanding officer, General Zachary Taylor. The next month, Lincoln supported a Whig resolution declaring that the Mexican War had been “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally . . . begun by the President.”

Lincoln's “spot resolutions” made little impression either on Congress or on the president, but they caused an uproar in Illinois, where the war was approved of by most voters. Lincoln was denounced as a traitor, and opposition newspapers gleefully called him Spotty Lincoln. However, despite his opinion of the war, once war was declared, Lincoln voted for all appropriations in support of it.

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