Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [98]
During the relative calm that followed the passage of the Compromise, Lincoln rode the legal circuit, a pursuit that proved congenial to his personality as well as his finances. He relished the convivial life he shared with the lawyers who battled one another fiercely during the day, only to gather as friends in the taverns at night. The arrival of the judge and lawyers generally created a stir in each town on their circuit. Villagers traveled from miles around, anticipating the courtroom drama as hundreds of small cases were tried, ranging from disputed wills, divorce, and bastardy proceedings to slander and libel suits, from patent challenges and collection of debts to murder and robbery.
“The local belles came in to see and be seen,” fellow circuit rider Henry Whitney recalled, “and the court house, from ‘early morn till dewy eve,’ and the tavern from dewy eve to early morn, were replete with bustle, business, energy, hilarity, novelty, irony, sarcasm, excitement and eloquence.” In some villages, the boardinghouses were clean and comfortable and the food was excellent; in others, there were “plenty of bedbugs” and the dirt was “half an inch thick.” The lawyers generally slept two to a bed, with three or four beds in a room. While most of the traveling bar regularly bemoaned the living conditions, Lincoln savored the rollicking life on the circuit.
He was singularly good at his work, earning the respect and admiration of his fellow lawyers. Several of these associates became great friends and supporters, among them Circuit Judge David Davis. In letters to his wife, Sarah, Davis spoke not only of Lincoln’s exceptional skill in addressing juries but of his “warm-hearted” nature and his “exceeding honesty & fairness.” Davis had come to Illinois from Maryland when he was twenty-one, after graduating from Kenyon College and New Haven Law School. In his late twenties he was elected to the state legislature and considered a career in politics, but his wife, whom he loved “too well to thwart her views,” was vehemently opposed. Instead, he ran for circuit judge, a position that offered the camaraderie of the circuit six months a year, yet enabled him to devote sufficient energy to business ventures that he eventually accumulated a substantial fortune.
The evolution of a warm and intimate friendship with Lincoln is evident in the judge’s letters home. The two men took lazy strolls along the river, shared accommodations in various villages, read books in common, and enjoyed long conversations on the rides from one county to the next. No lawyer on the circuit was better loved than Lincoln, a fellow lawyer recalled. “He arrogated to himself no superiority over anyone—not even the most obscure member of the bar…. He was remarkably gentle with young lawyers…. No young lawyer ever practised in the courts with Mr. Lincoln who did not in all his after life have a regard for him akin to personal affection.”
At mealtimes, all those with an interest in the various cases at hand would eat together at the same long table. Judge Davis would preside, surrounded by the lawyers, the members of the jury, the witnesses, the bailiffs, and the prisoners out on bail. Once the meal was done, everyone would gather before the blazing fire or in Judge Davis’s quarters to talk, drink, smoke, and share stories. Though Lincoln did not drink, smoke tobacco, use profane language, or engage in games of chance, he never condescended to those who did. On the contrary, when he had addressed the Springfield Temperance Society at the height of the temperance crusade, he had insisted that “such of us as have never fallen victims, have been spared more from the absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have.”
No sooner