By Stephen Anderson

The process of admission of Abraham Lincoln as an Illinois lawyer began in March 1836 and concluded almost a year later.

On March 24, 1836, Lincoln’s name was first entered on the Sangamon County Court record as “a person of good moral character.” He was 27 years old.

By then, he had already been elected to the Illinois legislature. He had served as a captain in the Illinois militia, as deputy county surveyor, and as postmaster of New Salem, an office that was abolished May 30, 1836.

Two justices of the Illinois Supreme Court gave Lincoln a provisional law license on Sept. 9, 1836, and that is considered his date of admission to the Illinois bar, according to records of the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission.

Lincoln filed a plea in his first lawsuit, Hawthorn v. Wooldridge, on Oct. 5 in Sangamon County, but it wasn’t until March 1, 1837, that his name was officially entered on the roll of attorneys in the Supreme Court clerk’s office.

In mid-April, Lincoln the lawyer rode into Springfield on a borrowed horse, with his law books and a few clothes in saddlebags, and became a law partner of John T. Stuart.

A fortuitous incident in his life as a New Salem shopkeeper became the impetus for Lincoln’s decision to become a lawyer. He paid a mover 50 cents for a barrel of “household plunder,” because he felt sorry for the tired horses who were hauling the load.

As Dale Carnegie described it in “The Unknown Lincoln,” Lincoln found at the bottom of the barrel a complete edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries on Law. He read all four volumes and wanted more.

He borrowed law books from an attorney with whom he had served in the Blackhawk War and studied them day and night. To improve his manner of speaking, he also mastered Kirkham’s Grammar at a pace that astounded friends.

Next, he read “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” a book of military biographies, Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason,” and the lives of Jefferson, Clay and Webster.

When the Lincoln & Berry general store went out of business, Lincoln studied surveying and soon embarked on this new profession.

He made his first-known survey as Sangamon County’s deputy surveyor on Jan. 6, 1834, and during the next three years laid out towns as far away as New Boston on the Mississippi River in Mercer County.

Lincoln’s sweetheart, Ann Rutledge, died Aug. 25, 1835, and the distraught young man grieved while he served in the Illinois House at Vandalia and honed his intent to become a lawyer.

A subsequent law partner, William Herndon, observed that “If Lincoln ever had a happy day in twenty years, I never knew of it. Melancholy dripped from him as he walked.”

The practice of law and his calling to public service became refuges for this lonely man.