Identifier: lincolnlawye00hill (find matches)
Title: Lincoln, the lawyer
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Hill, Frederick Trevor, 1866-1930
Subjects: Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 Lawyers Presidents
Publisher: New York : Century Co.
Contributing Library: Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection
Digitizing Sponsor: State of Indiana through the Indiana State Library

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Judicial Circuit, andthe big leather saddle-bags1 which carried thelawyers papers and belongings are in existenceto-day; but by 1849 wheels could be used withsome comfort in traveling, and when Lincolnresumed his professional duties a procession ofbuggies and carry-alls marked the progress of thecourt. It was an open and sparsely settled countrythrough which the judge and lawyers journeyedin those days, a country almost skirting the wil-derness from which it had been only recentlyreclaimed, a new, free, wind-swept, and in many review, each judge withdrawing, of course, while his own de-cisions were under consideration. After 1848, however, threeSupreme Court judges were appointed, who performed no circuitwork, and the sessions of the court were held not only at Spring-field, but also at Ottawa and Mount Vernon. i The Hon. Robert Lincoln told the writer that he distinctlyremembers seeing his father start out on horseback, with hissaddle-bags, to accompany the judge on the circuit. 164
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Hon. Samuel H. Treat Judge of the old 8th Illinois Circuit LIFE ON THE ILLINOIS CIRCUIT respects beautiful country, rich with promise andpossibility. Vast stretches of wonderful prairie-land rolled between the little towns which servedas the centers of government for the respectivecounties, and so great were the distances that sev-eral days were sometimes consumed in travelingfrom point to point. In 1849 the Eighth Circuitincluded no less than fourteen counties,—Sanga-mon, Tazewell, Woodford, McLean, Logan,DeWitt, Piatt, Champaign, Vermilion, Edgar,Shelby, Moultrie, Macon and Christian,—andits dimensions were at least a hundred and tenby a hundred and forty miles. To-day there areeighteen judges doing duty in the district cov-ered by one justice in the early fifties, and it isnot surprising that Lincolns attendance on thecircuit occupied him at least six months of everyyear. Not many lawyers devoted themselves tothe work as closely as he did. Some confinedtheir attention to a few

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