Lincoln Part 14

The heart of Lincoln's law practice continued to be in the circuit courts, and Lincoln & Herndon did its largest business in the Sangamon County Circuit Court. In August 1849, at the first session of that court held after Lincoln's return from Congress, the firm had three cases on the opening day, seventeen cases on the second day, and eight on the third day. Once again Lincoln & Herndon was back in business. In 1850 the partners were involved in 18 percent of all the cases brought before the Sangamon County Circuit Court, and by 1853 they partic.i.p.ated in about one-third of all cases.

As business increased, the small back room in the Tinsley Building, to which Herndon had moved during Lincoln's absence, proved inadequate, and the partners rented a larger, second-floor office on the west side of the capitol square. It was a bare, unpretentious room, with two dirty windows looking out over sheds and an alley. There was no carpet. One long table occupied the center of the room, with a shorter one crossing it, to form a T, and both were covered with green baize. An old-fas.h.i.+oned secretary, with pigeonholes and a drawer to hold legal papers, a bookcase containing about two hundred law books, a couch, and some miscellaneous chairs completed the furnis.h.i.+ngs. The office was almost never cleaned.

In this office the partners worked until 1861. Unless they were on the circuit, both came in every morning, and they sat facing each other at opposite ends of the shorter table. From time to time, Lincoln would throw himself on the couch, resting his legs on two or three chairs or up against the wall, spilling himself out, as Herndon noted with irritable exaggeration, "easily over of the room." Often, to his partner's exasperation, Lincoln would read aloud from the daily newspapers or whatever book he was interested in. As he explained to Herndon: "When I read aloud my two senses catch the idea-1st I see what I am reading and 2dly I hear it read; and I can thus remember what I read the better."

On many cases the partners worked together, with Herndon doing the research and the bookwork while Lincoln dealt with clients and the courts. But both Lincoln and Herndon handled many cases independently, or with other attorneys. In a rough division of labor, Herndon managed the office-insofar as any management was performed-and supervised the one or two students who were reading law with the firm, while Lincoln more often appeared in court. Except when he handled cases in Menard County, Herndon usually stayed in Springfield, while Lincoln went out on the circuit.

Every spring, after the adjournment of the Sangamon County Circuit Court, Lincoln set out on the round of the other circuit courts in the Eighth Judicial District. He discovered that there had been some significant changes during his two-year absence. For one thing, Lincoln now found himself one of the senior lawyers traveling the circuit. Though he was only forty years old, he was more and more frequently called-though never to his face-"Old Abe," both because of his weather-beaten appearance and because of his many years in public life and at the bar. Some of the younger, ambitious lawyers thought of him as one of the "fossils," who wanted to keep down new talent, and Lincoln himself, while denying any desire to discriminate against younger attorneys, conceded, "I suppose I am now one of the old men."

Another change resulted from the election in 1848 of David Davis as judge of the Eighth Judicial District, to succeed Samuel H. Treat, who had presided over so many of Lincoln's earlier cases on the circuit. Davis, a native of Maryland educated at Kenyon College and the Yale Law School, had known Lincoln casually for a number of years, but the two men now became closely acquainted in traveling the interminable miles of the circuit and in sitting for endless hours in the county courts. In appearance they were a curiously mismatched pair. Davis, so portly that it was said he had to be surveyed for a pair of trousers, was a stickler for immaculate clothing and perfect grooming; Lincoln, thin to the point of emaciation, seemed always to be hastily dressed, usually in a bobtailed sack coat and jeans that did not come within inches of his feet. In the winter months he added to this ensemble a circular blue cape, or sometimes a gray shawl, which he wore over his shoulders, fastened with an immense safety pin; in the summer he traveled in a white linen duster, much stained and the worse for wear. But in many ways Lincoln and Davis were much alike. Both were devoted Whigs, dedicated to promoting the country's economic growth and national spirit. Border-state men, they detested slavery but deplored abolitionist efforts to end it. In legal matters Davis, despite his formal training, was neither particularly acute nor learned, and like Lincoln he took a commonsensical approach to the law, allowing principles to guide his decisions more often than precedents.

Davis and Lincoln did not become intimate friends. "Lincoln never confided to me anything," Davis remarked many years later, adding that "Mr. Lincoln was not a sociable man by any means" and that he had "no strong emotional feelings for any person-mankind or thing." That sour judgment derived from the essentially professional nature of their relations.h.i.+p, which was based on respect rather than affection. Each man developed a high opinion of the other's ability.

Davis, as he wrote to his wife, greatly admired "Mr. Lincoln's exceeding honesty and fairness." So great was the judge's confidence in Lincoln that on numerous occasions when called away from the bench by family illness or other emergencies he designated Lincoln to preside in his stead. The practice of asking a prominent attorney to subst.i.tute for the judge was a fairly common one on the frontier (until the Illinois Supreme Court put an end to it in 1877), but only when the subst.i.tute was an attorney like Lincoln, who had the respect of the other members of the bar, were his rulings accepted without protest. Most of the decisions that Lincoln made as judge were in routine or uncontested cases, but he also disposed of slander suits, divorces, and actions for debt.

For the next eleven years Davis and Lincoln, together with the other lawyers, traveled essentially the same circuit twice a year. In the spring, after concluding the session of the Sangamon County Circuit Court in Springfield, the judge and his entourage moved on to Tremont in Tazewell County; then to Metamora in Woodford County; thence south to Bloomington in McLean County, and to Mt. Pulaski in Logan County; next east to Clinton in DeWitt County, Monticello in Piatt County, Urbana in Champaign County, and Danville in Vermilion County; after that south to Paris in Edgar County; then, turning west, to Shelbyville in Shelby County, Sullivan in Moultrie County, Decatur in Macon County, and Taylorville in Christian County. After that the judge went back to his home in Bloomington and the lawyers dispersed. (The route varied slightly from year to year depending in part on the condition of the roads. Sometimes counties where there was little litigation could be skipped. From time to time, the legislature changed the boundaries of the Eighth Judicial District, adding or subtracting counties.) The area traveled, as Davis grumbled, was equal to the entire state of Connecticut.

Roads were slightly better than they had been in the earlier days. Lincoln never used the public stagecoaches that connected a few towns but traveled in his buggy, pulled by Old Buck, the successor to Old Tom. Accommodations remained miserable. Davis's letters to his wife recited a litany of complaints: there was mud in the winter and dust in the summer; taverns were overrun with mosquitoes, fleas, and bedbugs; the dining rooms were dirty and typically the "table [was] greasy-table cloth greasy-floor greasy and every thing else ditto"; the waitress was so filthy that he guessed "the dirt must be half an inch thick all over her." Worst of all was the food "hardly fit for the stomach of a horse." Lincoln, as always indifferent to his surroundings and careless of comfort, registered no complaints. Once when he arrived at a hard-luck hotel and found the landlord had run out of meat and bread, he cheerfully announced: "Well in the absence of anything to eat I will jump into this Cabbage."

Everywhere on the circuit Lincoln's services were much in demand, mostly by younger attorneys who needed his a.s.sistance in drafting legal papers and in presenting their cases to the court. With some of them he worked so frequently that they came to think of themselves as his partners, though they should more properly be termed his a.s.sociates. With only one, Ward Hill Lamon, in Danville, was there anything like a formal arrangement; a local newspaper announced in 1852 the formation of the new firm of Lincoln & Lamon, Attorneys at Law. Possibly Lamon alone was responsible for inserting the advertis.e.m.e.nt, and perhaps Lincoln never knew of it. Anyway, he never rebuked Lamon because he was fond of this hard-drinking, two-fisted young giant with his endless repertory of off-color stories and Negro songs. The partners.h.i.+p, if it deserved that name, was limited to Vermilion County, where Lincoln and Lamon did frequently appear together, Lamon leaning heavily on the senior lawyer for guidance.

For the most part, Lincoln's cases in the circuit courts continued to be of no great interest or consequence to anyone except the parties involved in the litigation. For instance, at the 1850 session of the Tazewell County Circuit Court, where he always had a large practice, he represented three defendants who were being sued by the village of Tremont for establis.h.i.+ng an "unwholesome business," a lard factory, that was polluting the neighborhood. Lincoln based his case on a highly technical point, involving a statute of limitations, and lost, and his clients were fined $10 each. The next year he and two local lawyers represented members of the Funk family, accused of cutting 1,200 trees on the property of John s.h.i.+bley and hauling off the timber; he lost again, but the defeat was a technical one since the jury awarded the plaintiff only $104. In 1852 he defended Sheriff William Gaither and John Jones, accused of imprisoning and beating one Joseph F. Haines, on whom they were attempting to serve a writ. The jury acquitted Gaither but fined his a.s.sistant, Jones, $10; Lincoln could consider that half a victory. Later that same year he represented John P. Singleton, who was sued for nonpayment of a debt to Pearly Brown. In fact, Singleton had paid part of the debt and, at a time when cash was scarce in the West, had tried to pay the rest in corn, which Brown refused to accept. Lincoln negotiated a settlement. At the 1855 session he appeared for one Peter Duffy, accused of having repeatedly beaten, kicked, and thrown to the ground Benjamin Seaman, causing him to be "greatly hurt, bruised and wounded... sore, lame, and disordered." The grand jury found for Seaman but, under Lincoln's persuasion, reduced the damages awarded him from the $300 he claimed to only $3.

Lincoln's income from his circuit court practice depended on the volume of the cases he handled. His fees were generally modest, as were those charged by most other attorneys on the circuit. For most cases he received $10.00 or $20.00. Collecting a debt of $600.00, he retained as his fee only $3.50. He felt strongly that clients should not be overcharged. In 1856 when a man in Quincy sent him a check for $25.00 for drawing up some legal papers, Lincoln wrote: "You must think I am a high-priced man. You are too liberal with your money. Fifteen dollars is enough for the job." He returned the balance.

III

In handling hundreds of cases in the circuit courts, Lincoln firmly reestablished his reputation as a lawyer. It was a reputation that rested, first, on the universal belief in his absolute honesty. He became known as "Honest Abe"-or, often, "Honest Old Abe"-the lawyer who was never known to lie. He held himself to the highest standards of truthfulness. In notes for a lecture on the law, written about 1850, he referred to the "vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest" and warned: "Let no young man, choosing the law for a calling, for a moment yield to this popular belief. Resolve to be honest at all events; and if, in your own judgment, you can not be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation."

Clients and other attorneys also respected Lincoln's incredible capacity for hard work. Though most of the cases he argued on the circuit originated with local lawyers, he drafted nearly all the legal papers himself, from the purely formal praecipes to the most elaborate pleadings. Writing all these out in his own hand sometimes involved enormous labor. In the 1855 Macoupin County case of Clark & Morrison v. Page & Bacon, involving the claims of some St. Louis bankers and financiers, Lincoln for the defendants drafted a forty-three-page answer to the plaintiffs' bill of complaints; this was a task that required immense concentration, and Lincoln's handwriting suggested that he wrote the entire doc.u.ment at one sitting. Of course, few cases required so much labor, but Lincoln's clients rarely lost a suit because of carelessness or inattention on the part of their attorney.

Lincoln was also noted for his fairness to his opponents. Like any other lawyer, he resorted to technicalities in order to save his clients, but in these circuit court cases he preferred to base his arguments on justice rather than on legal precedents. His one standard move in the more serious of these cases was to apply for a change of venue, in the belief that the delay in hearing and the transfer of a case to another county would give his clients a fairer trial.

In court he rarely raised objections when opposing counsel introduced evidence. According to Leonard Swett, the young Bloomington lawyer who traveled the circuit with Lincoln, "he would say he 'reckoned' it would be fair to let this in, or that; and sometimes, when his adversary could not quite prove what Lincoln knew to be the truth, he 'reckoned' it would be fair to admit the truth to be so-and-so." But this, Swett noted, did not mean that he yielded essentials: "What he was so blandly giving away was simply what he couldn't get and keep." Many a rival lawyer was lulled into complacency as Lincoln conceded, say, six out of seven points in argument, only to discover that the whole case turned on the seventh point. "Any man who took Lincoln for a simple-minded man," Swett concluded, "would very soon wake up with his back in a ditch."

Rarely did Lincoln object to a judge's ruling on the admissibility of evidence, usually saying, when the argument went against him, "Well, I reckon I must be wrong." But when the point was essential to his case, he would vigorously controvert the court's ruling. In a celebrated 1859 case in the Sangamon County Circuit Court (which by this point was no longer part of David Davis's Eighth Judicial District), he, Logan, and Shelby M. Cullom represented Peachy Quinn Harrison, accused of stabbing Greek Crafton to death in the vicinity of Pleasant Plains. The stenographic transcript of the trial-the only such transcript for any case in which Lincoln was involved-showed that Lincoln and Logan did not attempt to deny that Harrison had killed Crafton but tried to prove that he did so because Crafton had repeatedly threatened to beat him up. The prosecuting attorney argued that evidence of these threats was inadmissible since it could not be proved that Harrison knew about them before the fatal stabbing. The judge, E. Y. Rice, a lifelong Democrat and political opponent of Lincoln, agreed and excluded the evidence. In a second line of defense, Lincoln and his a.s.sociates attempted to introduce the testimony of Crafton's grandfather, Peter Cartwright. The venerable Methodist exhorter, who had once run against Lincoln for Congress, visited Crafton on his deathbed. Cartwright testified that his grandson had shown remorse for having threatened Harrison and said: "I have brought it upon myself, and I forgive Quinn." Again the prosecution objected, arguing that Crafton's dying statement was inadmissible and irrelevant, and Judge Rice agreed to exclude Cartwright's testimony.

Angrily Lincoln protested both decisions, saying in court that he "had never heard of such law." The trial transcript did not include his argument against Judge Rice's ruling, but Herndon, who was in the courtroom, vividly remembered that Lincoln denounced it as "absurd and without precedent in the broad world." He "spoke fiercely-strongly-contemptuously of the decision of the court," just managing to avoid anything that could be held as contempt. Under his withering attack Judge Rice retracted his ruling and allowed both Cartwright's testimony and the evidence concerning threats to go to the jury, which acquitted Lincoln's client.

"In his examination of witnesses," a newspaperman wrote of Lincoln in 1850, "he displays a masterly ingenuity and a legal tact that baffles concealment and defies deceit." His legendary skill as a cross-examiner was clearly demonstrated in his most celebrated criminal case, the 1858 trial of William "Duff" Armstrong for the murder of James Metzker. Attending a religious camp meeting at Virgin's Grove, near the now deserted site of New Salem, in August 1857, Armstrong, Metzker, and James Norris, all undoubtedly drunk, got into a fight, and Metzker was killed. Norris was accused of having hit Metzker on the back of his head with a piece of wood, and Armstrong was indicted for striking him in the eye with his metal slungshot. The two cases were separated, and Norris was convicted for manslaughter. Armstrong's mother, Hannah, asked Lincoln to defend her son. Remembering his long friends.h.i.+p for the young man's father, Jack Armstrong, and Hannah's many kindnesses during his years in New Salem, Lincoln readily agreed. He accepted no fee.

At the trial, which was moved to the Ca.s.s County courthouse in Beardstown, the state's princ.i.p.al witness was Charles Allen, who testified that Armstrong struck Metzker. Though it was eleven o'clock at night and Allen was standing 150 feet away, he claimed that he could see the attack clearly by the light of the nearly full moon s.h.i.+ning directly overhead. On cross-examination, Lincoln slowly and with seeming casualness had Allen go through his story a dozen times, asking him to describe just what he had seen and how he was able to see it. Then, with the witness firmly committed to his story, Lincoln produced an 1857 almanac and read from it to show that at the time Allen claimed to have, witnessed the attack the moon had already set. The roar of laughter that followed showed that Allen's credibility was demolished.

Lincoln's skill in making the closing argument in a case caused one Illinois journalist to place him "at the head of the profession in this state," adding, "though he may have his equal, it would be no easy task to find his superior." On rare occasions he ended with a powerful emotional address to the jury. In the Duff Armstrong case, after carefully reviewing the now discredited evidence advanced by the prosecution, he made an unabashedly sentimental appeal that, as the prosecuting attorney remembered, "took the jury by storm." He told the jurors "of his once being a poor, friendless boy; that Armstrong's father took him into his house, fed and clothed him, and gave him a home." There were tears in his eyes as he spoke, and the story he told with such pathos moved the jury to tears also. "His sympathies were fully enlisted in favor of the young man," the prosecutor recalled, "and his terrible sincerity could not help but arouse the same pa.s.sion in the jury." Armstrong was acquitted. But that summation was unusual, for Lincoln ordinarily ended with a low-key, logical argument that jurors could readily understand. A reporter discovered "no false glitter, no sickly sentimentalism" in his arguments; instead, "bold, forcible and energetic, he forces conviction upon the mind."

IV

Davis and some of the attorneys were puzzled that Lincoln, up to 1854, generally remained with the court throughout the circuit without returning home, and sometimes they direly speculated that he must be having marital problems. They failed to realize that the law was Lincoln's only means of support. Unlike Davis, Logan, and a number of other Eighth District lawyers, he did not make a fortune from land speculation, nor did he own a farm or run a business. His law practice brought in a comfortable income of perhaps $2,000 a year, and by 1860 the census taker reported he owned real estate valued at $5,000 and a personal estate of $12,000. To maintain that level he had to be constantly at work. He stayed throughout the circuit because he could not afford to be absent.

It was fortunate that he could remain in Springfield for most of the summer months and during the winter, when the Illinois Supreme Court and the United States District Court met in the state capital, because he was much needed at home to help with a series of family crises. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was in failing health. Since 1840 the elder Lincolns had been living in a double log cabin on a 120-acre farm on Goosenest Prairie, in Coles County. Though Abraham Lincoln had developed an entirely different set of interests and values from those of his father and stepmother, he was concerned for their well-being and tried to help them live in modest comfort. In the 1840s when Thomas Lincoln got into financial difficulties, probably through partners.h.i.+p with his lazy and unreliable stepson, John D. Johnston, in a saw- and gristmill, Abraham Lincoln came to his rescue by paying him $200 for the east forty acres of his farm-a payment that was really a gift, since the agreement clearly specified that Thomas and Sarah Lincoln were to have "use and entire control" of the land during their lifetimes. From time to time, when his work on the circuit brought him near Coles County-where he had a certain amount of business, though it was not part of the Eighth Judicial District-he would visit his parents. While he was in Congress, Thomas begged him for a "Lone of, Twenty Dollars" to prevent his farm from being sold to settle a long-forgotten judgment against him. Lincoln promptly sent the money, though his letter made it clear that he thought it was "singular" that his father could not pay such a small debt and that such an obligation could have been forgotten for so long. In all probability he suspected Johnston of making up the whole story.

Toward his stepmother Lincoln always had the most affectionate feelings, and he closed his letter, "Give my love to Mother." Toward his father his att.i.tude was more ambivalent. The two had never been close, and they had drifted apart even more since Abraham left home. Thomas Lincoln's unambitious, unsuccessful way of life came to represent the values his son wanted to repudiate. He had reason, too, to believe that his father, as he reached seventy, was becoming a little senile and was too much under the influence of the unreliable Johnston.

In May 1849, shortly after Lincoln returned from Was.h.i.+ngton, he heard from Johnston that Thomas Lincoln was dying. "He Craves to See you all the time," the stepbrother wrote, "and he wonts you to Come if you ar able to git hure, for you are his only Child that is of his own flush and blood and it is nothing more than natere for him to crave to see you." At Johnston's request, Augustus H. Chapman, Dennis Hanks's son-in-law, reinforced the plea with a letter describing Thomas Lincoln's "Seizure of the Heart" and his "truly Heart-Rendering" cries to see his only son. Though Lincoln at this point was actively campaigning to secure appointment as commissioner of the General Land Office, he rushed off to Coles County to see his father, probably missing a second letter from Chapman a.s.suring him that Thomas Lincoln had no heart disease and would "doubtless be well in a Short time." Lincoln's visit to Goosenest Prairie delayed by nearly a week his trip to Was.h.i.+ngton, and it may have cost him the Land Office appointment.

The next winter, when John D. Johnston wrote him two more letters about Thomas Lincoln's declining health, Abraham Lincoln did not respond. He thought his stepbrother was again crying wolf. Only after he heard independently from Harriet Chapman did he take the news seriously. Repeating his "desire that neither Father or Mother shall be in want of any comfort either in health or sickness," he explained why he could not come to his father's sickbed. "My business is such that I could hardly leave home now," he wrote; besides, his wife was "sick-abed" with "baby-sickness." Both excuses had some plausibility. A trip by buggy to Coles County would take three days each way, at a time when Lincoln had cases before the United States Circuit and District courts and the Illinois Supreme Court almost every day. But had he truly wanted to go, he could have entrusted his cases to his partner or asked for postponements. It was also true that Mary had given birth to their third son on December 21. Though the delivery was perfectly normal, she doubtless would have been highly nervous if Lincoln left home while she had the entire responsibility of caring for a newborn baby. But, again, her illness was not serious, and there were friends and neighbors who could help her. Once again, the husband allowed his wife to take the blame for an uncomfortable decision.

The rest of Lincoln's letter, urging his father "to call upon, and confide in, our great, and good, and merciful Maker; who... notes the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads," was in unconvincing and strained language, really addressed to his backwoods relatives who thought in the cliches of the Primitive Baptists. "Say to him," he enjoined Johnston, "that if we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant; but that if it be his lot to go now, he will soon have a joyous meeting with many loved ones gone before; and where the rest of us, through the help of G.o.d, hope ere-long to join them." Unable to simulate a grief that he did not feel or an affection that he did not bear, Lincoln did not attend his father's funeral. He was not heartless, but Thomas Lincoln represented a world that his son had long ago left behind him.

During the years of his father's final illness, Lincoln had also to deal with family crises closer to home. In December 1849 his second son, Edward Baker, always a feeble child, became seriously sick. His disease was pulmonary tuberculosis, for which there was no known cure. After fifty-two days of acute illness, the little boy, who was not quite four years old, died on February 1, 1850. Both parents were devastated. Lincoln, as always, internalized his emotions, saying only, "We miss him very much." For his wife, Eddie's death, coming shortly after deaths both of her father and her beloved grandmother, was harder to bear, especially since she was exhausted from the long vigil of nursing the sick child. Like her husband, she lacked faith in conventional Christianity and consequently was denied the consolation of believing that her son's death was all for the best, as part of some divine plan. Restlessly she kicked against the p.r.i.c.ks of fate, and more than two years after Eddie's death she wrote a Kentucky friend, "I grieve to say that even at this distant day, I do not feel sufficiently submissive to our loss."

A few weeks after Eddie's death she was expecting again. The Lincolns clearly intended to replace the lost boy. Her pregnancy was uneventful, but, once again, she was alone much of the time, since Lincoln was away on the circuit. The baby was named William Wallace Lincoln, after her physician brother-in-law who had been so helpful during Eddie's final days. Willie was the most intelligent and the best-looking of all the Lincoln children, and from the day he was born his father doted on him.

Then, because Willie needed a playmate, Mary in 1853 gave birth to a fourth child. The Lincolns had hoped this time for a girl, but they were soon reconciled to accepting another boy, whom they named Thomas after his recently deceased grandfather. The choice of the name suggested that Abraham Lincoln's memories of his father were not all unpleasant-and perhaps it hinted at guilt for not having attended his funeral. The infant was born with an unusually large head, as compared to his tiny body, and Lincoln playfully called him a little tadpole. The nickname "Tad" stuck to him for the rest of his life.

The careful two-and-a-half-year intervals between the births of the Lincoln children suggested that the parents were using some form of birth control. Doubtless they relied in part on the widespread belief that conception could not take place so long as the mother was nursing, for Mary Lincoln did not wean her babies until after they were eighteen months old. After the birth of Tad, it may have been impossible for her to have additional children. The delivery had been difficult, perhaps because of the size of the infant's head, and it left Mary for the rest of her life as "more or less a sufferer" from what she called, with Victorian propriety, troubles "of a womanly nature."

V

By the mid-1850s the nature of Lincoln's law practice was gradually changing. He continued to have numerous cases with small fees and less consequence, but increasingly his time was taken up with suits relating to the railroad network that began to spread across the state. Wherever railroads ran, there were legal problems-problems concerning charters and franchises; problems relating to right-of-way; problems concerning evaluation and taxation; problems relating to the duties of common carriers and the rights of pa.s.sengers; problems concerning merger, consolidation, and receivers.h.i.+p-and Lincoln, like other lawyers, found the ensuing litigation a major source of income.

Long an advocate of improved transportation as the key to economic development, Lincoln took on his first significant railroad case in 1851 for the Alton & Sangamon Railroad, which he considered "a link in the great chain of railroad communication which shall unite Boston and New York with the Mississippi." The suit arose when one of the original subscribers to the stock of the railroad, James A. Barret, who owned land in western Sangamon County, refused to pay the balance due on his pledge in order to protest a change in the planned route of the road. When he had subscribed for his thirty shares, it was to go by his 4,215 acres, which consequently would greatly increase in value, but a s.h.i.+ft in the route, designed to cut off twelve miles in the length of the road, meant that he would derive no direct benefit from the construction. Employing Lincoln, the railroad sued for payment of Barret's pledge. Everyone realized the case was important because, as Lincoln said, if Barret won, it "might encourage others to stop payments" on their subscriptions. Lincoln took extraordinary pains to construct an airtight case for his client, designed to prove that Barret was indeed a stockholder and that the Alton & Sangamon Railroad had the right to sue for his delinquent payment. In frequent correspondence with officials of the railroad both in New York and in Alton, Lincoln insisted that they provide full doc.u.mentation to support his brief, noting, "I have labored hard to find the law" that applied to cases like this. The Illinois Supreme Court accepted his argument, and Chief Justice Samuel Treat agreed that a "few obstinate stockholders should not be permitted to deprive the public and the company of the advantages that will result from a superior and less expensive route." The decision, subsequently cited in twenty-five other cases throughout the United States, helped establish the principle that corporation charters could be amended in the public interest, and it established Lincoln as one of the most prominent and successful Illinois pract.i.tioners of railroad law.

The following year he made his first appearances for the powerful Illinois Central Railroad, which was designed to connect Chicago with Mobile and the Gulf of Mexico. Partic.i.p.ation in two minor cases whetted his desire to partic.i.p.ate in larger litigation involving the railroad. When the state chartered the Illinois Central, it had granted an exemption from all taxation, provided the company paid the state treasury an annual "charter tax." Dissatisfied with this arrangement, the officials of McLean County argued that the state had no right to exempt the railroad from county taxes, and they levied a tax on its real estate within that county. The Illinois Central resisted, because paying county taxes in addition to the state charter tax would practically have forced it out of business. The resulting suit, Lincoln recognized, was "the largest law question that now can be got up in the State," and he wanted to be a party to it on one side or the other. He first approached the officials of Champaign County, who were contemplating a suit like the one in McLean, and when they did not respond, he wrote the solicitor for the Illinois Central: "I am now free to make an engagement for the Road; and if you think fit you may 'count me in.'" He received a retainer of $250.