Museum chief says Lincoln counts as a Chicago lawyer
Abraham Lincoln should be credited as a Chicago lawyer, take it from attorney Gary T. Johnson, who is president of the Chicago History Museum
That bit of information was number one on a list of the top 10 items people may not know about the 16th president that Johnson related to members of the Illinois chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates during a Law Day luncheon in Chicago.
Lincoln had legal business in Chicago on several occasions, and argued cases in federal court, he said.
Number eight on Johnson’s top 10 list is that Lincoln was the only president who had a municipality named for him. The dubbing of Lincoln, Ill., was an 1853 tribute from grateful citizens for his legal work in platting the town and acting as counsel in laying the railroad line that led to its founding.
Number seven is that Lincoln was the only president to have received a patent. This was in 1849 for a device with buoyant chambers that could lift boats over shoals in the rivers.
Number four is that William Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner and closest friend, was an alcoholic who could have used the services of the Lawyers’ Assistance Program.
Another bit of trivia that Johnson disclosed is that at one time Lincoln’s original signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation was held by the History Museum. Unfortunately, it burned during the great fire of October 1871.
At the time of Johnson’s speech to ABOTA, a copy of the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln’s handwriting was on display at the museum. Its presence was a favor in return for the museum’s loan of Lincoln’s death bed to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield for the Bicentennial Celebration.
Johnson discussed Edward Everett, whose two-hour speech at the dedication of Gettysburg Cemetery in 1863 was overshadowed historically by Lincoln’s hallowed two-minute remarks.
The first American to earn a Ph.D. degree, Everett was Harvard’s valedictorian in 1811. He studied theology and became an ordained minister.
Later a professor of Greek literature at Harvard, he was a student and teacher of Grecian concepts of the rise and fall of democracies. He was president of the university from 1846 to 1849.
Everett served in the U.S. House and Senate, and was governor of Massachusetts and U.S. secretary of state. He was an unsuccessful candidate for vice president on both the Whig and Constitutional Union Party tickets in 1860, the year that Lincoln was elected.
Everett died Jan. 15, 1865, exactly three months before Lincoln’s death.