DAVID DAVIS 286
   S. S. PRENTISS 287
   EDWIN BOOTH 304
   JOSEPH JEFFERSON 305
   RUFUS CHOATE 312
   ISAAC N. PHILLIPS 313
   WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 316
   W. H. MILBURN 317
   R. J. OGLESBY 346
   JOSEPH W. FIFER 347
   LAWRENCE WELDON 352
   THOMAS F. MARSHALL 353
   MATTHEW T. SCOTT 372
   ADLAI E. STEVENSON 373
   LYMAN TRUMBULL 382
   HOME OF ADLAI E. STEVENSON, BLOOMINGTON, ILL.
                                  383

SOMETHING OF MEN I HAVE KNOWN

I ON THE CIRCUIT

DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY AFTER THE CIVIL WAR—SLAVERY THE APPLE OF DISCORD BEFORE THE WAR—LINCOLN AS A COUNTRY LAWYER—SOCIABILITY OF THE LAWYERS OF THE PERIOD—THEIR EXCELLENCE AS ORATORS—HENRY CLAY AS A PARTY LEADER—EULOGIUMS ON LAWYERS—LINCOLN'S ADMIRATION FOR GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT—THE WRITER'S ADDRESS ON THE LAW AND LAWYERS.

The period extending from my first election to Congress in 1874, to my retirement from the Vice-Presidency in 1897, was one of marvellous development to the country. Large enterprises were undertaken, and the sure foundation was laid for much of existing business conditions. The South had recovered from the sad effects of the Civil War, and had in a measure regained its former position in the world of trade, as well as in that pertaining to the affairs of the Government. The population of the country had almost doubled; the ratio of representation in the Lower House of Congress largely augmented; the entire electoral vote increased from 369 to 444. Eight new States had been admitted to the Union, thus increasing the number of Senators from seventy-four to ninety.

The years mentioned likewise witnessed the passing from the national stage, with few exceptions, of the men who had taken a conspicuous part in the great debates directly preceding and during the Civil War and the reconstruction period which immediately followed. By the arbitrament of war, and by constitutional amendment, old questions, for a half-century the prime cause of sectional strife, had been irrevocably settled, and passed to the domain of history. New men had come to the front, and new questions were to be discussed and determined.

To the student of history, the years immediately preceding the Civil War are of abiding interest. In some of its phases slavery was the all-absorbing subject of debate throughout the entire country. It had been the one recognized peril to the Union since the formation of the Government. Beginning with the debates in the convention that formulated the Federal Constitution, it remained for seventy years the apple of discord,—the subject of patriotic apprehension and repeated compromise. The last serious attempt to settle this question in the manner just indicated was by the adjustment known in our political history as "the compromise measures of 1850." These measures, although bitterly denounced in the South as well as in the North, received the sanction in national convention of both of the great parties that two years later presented candidates for the Presidency. It is no doubt true that a majority of the people, in both sections of the country, then believed that the question that had been so fraught with peril to national unity from the beginning was at length settled for all time. The rude awakening came two years later, when the country was aroused, as it had rarely been before, by impassioned debate in and out of Congress, over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. It was a period of excitement such as we shall probably not see again. Slavery in all its phases was the one topic of earnest discussion, both upon the hustings and at the fireside. There was little talk now of compromise. The old-time statesmen of the Clay and Webster, Winthrop and Crittenden, school soon disappeared from the arena. Men hitherto comparatively unknown to the country at large were soon to the front.

Conspicuous among them was a country lawyer whose home was at Springfield, Illinois. With the mighty events soon to follow, his name is imperishably linked. But it is not of Lincoln the President, the emancipator, the martyr, we are now to speak. It is of Lincoln the country lawyer, as he stepped upon the arena of high debate, the unswerving antagonist of slavery extension half a century and more ago.

His home, during his entire professional life, was at the capital of the State. He was, at the time mentioned, in general practice as a lawyer and a regular attendant upon the neighboring courts. His early opportunities for education were meagre indeed. He had been a student of men, rather than of books. He was, in the most expressive sense, "of the people,"—the people as they then were. For,

"Know thou this, that men are as the time is."

His training was, in large measure, under the severe conditions to be briefly mentioned. The old-time custom of "riding the circuit" is to the present generation of lawyers only a tradition. The few who remember central Illinois as it was sixty years ago will readily recall the full meaning of the expression. The district in which Mr. Lincoln practised extended from the counties of Livingston and Woodford upon the north, almost to the Indiana line—embracing the present cities of Danville, Springfield, and Bloomington. The last named was the home of the Hon. David Davis, the presiding judge of the district. As is well known, he was the intimate friend of Mr. Lincoln, and the latter was often his guest during attendance upon the courts at Bloomington. At that early day, the term of court in few of the counties continued longer than a week, so that much of the time of the judge and the lawyers who travelled the circuit with him was spent upon horseback. When it is remembered that there were then no railroads, but few bridges, a sparse population, and that more than half the area embraced in that district was unbroken prairie, the real significance of riding the circuit will fully appear. It was of this period that the late Governor Ford, speaking of Judge Young,—whose district extended from Quincy, upon the Mississippi River to Chicago,—said: "He possesses in rare degree one of the highest requisites for a good circuit judge, —he is an excellent horseback rider."

At the period mentioned there were few law-books in the State. The monster libraries of later days had not yet arrived. The half-dozen volumes of State Reports, together with the Statutes and a few leading text-books, constituted the lawyer's library. To an Illinois lawyer upon the circuit, a pair of saddle-bags was an indispensable part of his outfit. With these, containing the few books mentioned and a change or two of linen, and supplied with the necessary horse, saddle and bridle, the lawyer of the pioneer days was duly equipped for the active duties of his calling. The lack of numerous volumes of adjudicated cases was, however, not an unmixed evil. Causes were necessarily argued upon principle. How well this conduced to the making of the real lawyer is well known. The admonition, "Beware the man who reads but one book," is of deep significance. The complaint to-day is not of scarcity, but that "of the making of many books there is no end." Professor Phelps is authority for the statement that "it is easy to find single opinions in which more authorities are cited than were mentioned by Marshall in the whole thirty years of his unexampled judicial life; and briefs that contain more cases than Webster referred to in all the