But whether or not Lincoln lost some cases due to a lack of technical expertise on certain points of law, the fact remains that he was a successful trial attorney. This assessment has been disputed or at least modified by those who have since studied Lincoln’s law career. In fact, I may truthfully say, I never knew him to read through a law book of any kind.’ Lincoln, he wrote, was’strikingly deficient in the technical rules of law….I doubt if he ever read a single elementary law book through in his life. Herndon* stated that his partner was a good lawyer but not a scholarly one.

Except for a sojourn in Washington, D.C., as a Whig Congressman during 1847-49, the law remained the future president’s chief occupation until his election to the White House in 1860. In 1837, while serving in the Illinois state legislature, Lincoln completed his legal training and joined the office of John Todd Stuart in the new Illinois capital at Springfield. Prior to his presidency, Lincoln honed his political skills and aspirations through the practice of law. Yet, given the importance of the events that marked his 1861-65 term of office, the nation’s admiration for him as a man of courage and principle, and the abundance of photographic images that recorded his presidency, it is hard for most people to think of him as anything else.īut there were other facets to the career of this man who led the nation through the Civil War years. Abraham Lincoln spent only four of his 56 years as president of the United States.

The lincoln lawyer 480p