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September 2001
Contact: Peter Bailley
news@knox.edu
309-341-7715
Abraham Lincoln's twenty-five years as a general practice lawyer "must have influenced his public life," stated Cullom Davis, historian and former director of the Lincoln Legal Papers Project, in a Lincoln Studies Center lecture, "The Law and Mr. Lincoln," September 28, 2001, at Knox College.
While for Lincoln "law and politics complemented each other... law was not a front for politics." That compares to contemporary Illinois figures, such as Stephen A. Douglas, who was "a lawyer in name only," Davis said. The law also gave Lincoln the background that he would need as President. "He has no prior experience as an executive or military commander. The law provided Lincoln his only substantive body of experience."
Currently a consulting editor of the Lincoln Legal Papers Project in Springfield, Illinois, Davis is the author of several books, including "Bench and Bar on the Illinois Frontier." From 1988 until his retirement in 2000, Davis was director and senior editor of the Lincoln Legal Papers Project. The project worked to gather, edit and reprint approximately 100,000 documents associated with Lincoln's legal career in Illinois from 1836 until 1861.
For nearly a quarter-century, Lincoln "rode the circuit for three to six months a year," Davis said. "He enjoyed courtroom activity... [and] drew enormous satisfaction from legal work." Davis speculated that the predictable rules and procedures of law practice "offered [Lincoln] a contrast to the stresses of married life." It also helped Lincoln "bridge the gap from private to public life" without the "vagaries" involved in trying to make a career as a full-time politician.
Trial work helped develop an "economy and simplicity of language" for which Lincoln later became famous, Davis said. According to Davis, Lincoln's early speeches tended to be more ornate, and his early debates with Douglas in the fall of 1858 often fell into legal technicalities. But Lincoln eventually developed an ability to combine political argument with the careful logic of an attorney.
Lincoln represented both slaves and slave owners, both creditors and debtors. He "never viewed legal work as representing personal beliefs," Davis said. "He saw his highest duty to serve the adversarial system."
Cullom Davis is also professor emeritus of history at the University of Illinois at Springfield, where he founded the Oral History Office and established the master's program in public history. He received his B.A. at Princeton University and his M.A. and Ph.D at the University of Illinois. Davis is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College. He received an honorary degree from Knox in 2000.
Related Pages
Lincoln Legal Papers Project
Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College
Scholar Douglas Wilson interviewed about Lincoln's married life
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