"Profession, a lawyer": recent scholarship sheds light on Abraham Lincoln's law practice.

AuthorVickrey, Barry R.

We lawyers like to emphasize the impact of Abraham Lincoln's legal training and experience on his achievements as arguably our greatest president. Why shouldn't we? What profession wouldn't want to claim a person whose extraordinary command of language, uncanny ability to assess others, strategic use of wit, keen analytical powers, inexhaustible intellectual curiosity, along with commitment to principle, willingness to change, appreciation of the necessity of hard work, and unconditional sacrifice of his ego and ultimately his life in the service of his calling, seem unparalleled in the history of our nation or perhaps even humanity.

The problem is that our professional claim on Lincoln's greatness may not be justified. The historical record suggests a disconnect between Lincoln's career as a lawyer and his presidency. In part, this may have resulted from the perceptions of Lincoln and his backers that voters are, at best, ambivalent in their opinions of lawyers. In part, it may reflect the fact that Lincoln's legal career-though quite accomplished for his time and place--was in a time and place that hardly seemed a springboard for greatness on the national stage at our nation's time of greatest crisis.

Although the completion of the Lincoln Legal Papers project a decade ago is a scholarly watershed in the evaluation of Lincoln's law practice, it is unlikely that even this event will make it possible to settle the debate about how much of

Lincoln's political greatness is attributable to his legal career. And as important as that debate may be to our professional self-image, even more important is what we can learn from Lincoln's legal career to make us better lawyers. Just as Lincoln famously challenged us as citizens to find the "better angels of our nature," (4) we should employ the "better angels" of Lincoln's life in the law as models for our professional behavior.

The Lincoln Legal Papers project has spawned three books in the last six years which add substantially to our knowledge of Lincoln's legal career. An Honest Calling: The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln, authored by South Texas College of Law Professor Mark E. Steiner in 2006, describes Lincoln's law practice in detail and examines the principles that guided him as a lawyer. (5) In Lincoln the Lawyer, published in 2007, Anderson University history Professor Brian Dirck focuses on the historical context of Lincoln's practice, suggesting that Lincoln was a typical lawyer of his time and place. (6) Abraham Lincoln, Esq.: The Legal Career of America's Greatest President, published in 2010, is a collection of essays compiled by former Rhode Island Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank J. Williams and Professor Roger Billings of Northern Kentucky University's Salmon P. Chase College of Law. (7) This latest book starts with essays that attempt to re-evaluate Lincoln's legal career within the context of the Lincoln Legal Papers project; essays by Steiner and Dirck are included in this overview section. The remaining essays cover a wide range of topics, including the legal language employed by Lincoln, specific subject areas of his practice (debtor-creditor and real estate law), ethical issues he encountered, the geographical context of his practice, and even his insights on constitutional and international law as president. Another valuable product of the Lincoln Legal Papers project is Michael Burlingame's discussion of Lincoln's law practice in his comprehensive 2008 biography. (8)

Perhaps the most surprising insight from these books--and what they glean from the Lincoln Legal Papers--is just how mundane Lincoln's law practice was. (9) While he was a leading trial and appellate lawyer of his time and place, his practice was dominated by debt-collection matters. This tedious, high-volume, low-pay work consumed three-quarters of his law practice. (10)

This raises the question of how a legal practice of such a mundane nature could prepare a person to be one of our greatest presidents. How could someone go from doing debt collection in prairie Illinois to successful governmental leadership during our greatest national crisis? What about Lincoln's mundane law practice prepared him to be remembered as one of the greatest leaders in the history of humanity?

These questions are even more baffling because Lincoln went directly from his law practice to the presidency and, by comparison to other lawyer-presidents, had very limited professional experience other than his law practice. He served one term in Congress (11) and four terms as a part-time state legislator in Illinois. (12) As Dirck notes, "the law had never exercised quite so exclusive an influence over a chief executive." (13) Noted Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer, in an essay in Abraham Lincoln, Esq., asserts that "Lincoln's life as a lawyer informed nearly every aspect of his future, a future that became inseparable from the nation's future." (14)

Lincoln's two immediate predecessors, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, were both lawyers. Each had significantly more political and governmental experience than Lincoln. Pierce's experience included service as Speaker of the New Hampshire legislature, two terms in the United States House of Representatives, and five years as a United States Senator. (15) Buchanan's experience was even more extensive: one term in the Pennsylvania state legislature; four terms in the United States House of Representatives, where he chaired the Judiciary Committee; ten years in the United States Senate, where he chaired the Foreign Relations Committee; Minister to Russia and to Great Britain; and Secretary of State. (16) Yet both Pierce and Buchanan failed to resolve--and arguably compounded--the national crisis that Lincoln inherited.

During his time in the Illinois legislature, Lincoln achieved a leadership role, (17) but he also suffered an emotional breakdown. Lincoln's lone Congressional term produced little more than one memorable speech that questioned the legality of President Polk's conduct of the Mexican War and a failed attempt to emancipate slaves in the District of Columbia. (19) The speech denouncing President Polk demonstrated both Lincoln's commitment to principle and his facility with language--traits that would be paramount during his presidency--but not the political judgment that would be necessary to be elected president and then to make arguably the most difficult political decisions that have faced any president. At the end of this Congressional term, in the words of Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame, Lincoln "was an accomplished partisan politician of limited scope...." (20)

On the governmental spectrum, moving from even a leadership position in the Illinois legislature and one term in Congress to the United States presidency, under normal circumstances, would be like jumping from first chair in the Springfield high school orchestra, with a guest performance at Carnegie Hall, to conductor of the New York Philharmonic. (21) And Lincoln's circumstances as president were far from normal.

The recent scholarship spawned by the Lincoln Legal Papers project cannot explain Lincoln's leap from an ordinary prairie lawyer to an extraordinary national leader. Such a monumental leap is probably inexplicable. But these books and essays provide new insights on some of the skills and values reflected in Lincoln's law practice and how these might have contributed to his success as president. Specifically, they elucidate three skills--interpersonal relations, precision in the use of language, and acquisition of broad knowledge--and two values--enhancing societal order and maintaining personal and professional ethics--from Lincoln's law practice which were important to his presidential leadership.

Thanks to Doris Kearns Goodwin's masterpiece, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, (22) the importance of Lincoln's interpersonal prowess to his success as president is now widely appreciated. By setting aside his own ego and using skills of persuasion that included logic, humor, story-telling, and steadfast persistence, Lincoln co-opted those who opposed or even dismissed him into the great task of saving the Union. Though Lincoln never won over Salmon Chase, (23) he employed Chase's irreplaceable skills as Secretary of the Treasury to win the Civil War (24) and then appointed him to lead the Supreme Court that would interpret the fundamental Constitutional revisions Lincoln engineered. Other opponents, most notably Secretary of State Edwin Stanton and Secretary of State William Seward, overcame their doubts about Lincoln to become essential members of his Cabinet and ultimately friends and admirers.

Lincoln's relationship with Stanton dated back to his law practice and depicts an evolution that strains credulity. The essay by William T. Ellis and Billie J. Ellis, Jr., in Abraham Lincoln, Esq. (26) describes a famous episode in which Stanton, a prominent Pittsburgh lawyer, and Lincoln were co-counsel in an 1855 federal patent law case in Cincinnati, Ohio, involving the McCormick reaper. (27) Stanton and lead counsel George Harding denied Lincoln any participation in the case and even refused to walk down the street with him. (28) "In fact, Stanton regarded Lincoln as a country yokel, a Tong armed baboon' who had no business being involved in such an important, complex case." (29)

And yet, in January 1862, Lincoln appointed as Secretary of War one Edwin...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT