Early Life and Career of Abraham Lincoln - Prairie Lawyer - Case Load and Income

Case Load and Income

Unlike many other attorneys on the circuit, Lincoln did not supplement his income by engaging in real estate speculation or operating a business or a farm. His income was generally what he earned practicing law. In the 1840s this amounted to $1,500 to $2,500 a year, increasing to $3,000 in the early 1850s and $5,000 by the mid 1850s.

Criminal law always made up the smallest portion of Lincoln and Herndon’s case work. In 1850 the firm was involved in 18% of the cases on the Sangamon County Circuit and by 1853 this had grown to 33%. On his return from his single term in the United States House of Representatives Lincoln turned down the offer of a partnership in a Chicago law firm. Based strictly on the volume of cases, Lincoln was "undoubtedly one of the outstanding lawyers of central Illinois." In the Federal courts Lincoln was also in demand and he received important retainers from cases in the United States Northern District Court in Chicago.

During his law career Lincoln was involved in at least two cases involving slavery. In an 1841 state Supreme Court case (Bailey v. Cromwell), Lincoln successfully prevented the sale of a woman who was alleged to be a slave, making the argument that in the State of Illinois “the presumption of law was ... that every person was free, without regard to color.” In 1847, Abraham Lincoln defended Robert Matson, a slave owner who was trying to retrieve his runaway slaves. Matson had brought the slaves from his Kentucky plantation to work on land he owned in Illinois. The slaves were represented by Orlando Ficklin, Usher Linder, and Charles H. Constable. The slaves ran away during the move because they believed that they were free because the Northwest Ordinance forbade slavery in Illinois. In this case Lincoln invoked the right of transit, which allowed slave holders to take their slaves temporarily into free territory. Lincoln also stressed that Matson did not intend to have the slaves remain permanently in Illinois. Even with these arguments, judges in Coles County ruled against Lincoln and the slaves were set free. Donald notes, “Neither the Matson case nor the Cromwell case should be taken as an indication of Lincoln’s views on slavery; his business was law, not morality.” The right of transit was a legal theory recognized by some of the free states that a slave-owner could take slaves into a free state and retain ownership as long as the intent was not to permanently settle in the free state.

Railroads became an important economic force in Illinois in the 1850s. As they expanded they created a myriad of legal issues regarding “charters and franchises; problems relating to right-of- way; problems concerning evaluation and taxation; problems relating to the duties of common carriers and the rights of passengers; problems concerning merger, consolidation, and receivership.” Lincoln and other attorneys would soon find that railroad litigation was a major source of income. Like the slave cases, sometimes Lincoln would represent the railroads and sometimes he would represent their adversaries. He had no legal or political agenda that was reflected in his choice of clients. Herndon referred to Lincoln as “purely and entirely a case lawyer.”

In one prominent 1851 case, he represented the Alton & Sangamon Railroad in a dispute with a shareholder, James A. Barret. Barret had refused to pay the balance on his pledge to the railroad on the grounds that it had changed its originally planned route. Lincoln argued that as a matter of law a corporation is not bound by its original charter when that charter can be amended in the public interest, that the newer route proposed by Alton & Sangamon was superior and less expensive, and that accordingly, the corporation had a right to sue Barret for his delinquent payment. He won this case, and the decision by the Illinois Supreme Court was eventually cited by several other courts throughout the United States.

The most important civil case for Lincoln was the landmark Hurd v. Rock Island Bridge Company, also known as the Effie Afton case. America's expansion west, which Lincoln strongly supported, was seen as an economic threat to the river trade, which ran north-to-south, primarily on the Mississippi River. In 1856 a steamboat collided with a bridge, built by the Rock Island Railroad, between Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, the first railroad bridge to span the Mississippi. The steamboat owner sued for damages, claiming the bridge was a hazard to navigation. Lincoln argued in court for the railroad and won, removing a costly impediment to western expansion by establishing the right of land routes to bridge waterways.

Possibly the most notable criminal trial of Lincoln's career as a lawyer came in 1858, when he defended William "Duff" Armstrong, the son of Lincoln's friend Jack Armstrong, who had been charged with murder. The case became famous for Lincoln's use of judicial notice — a rare tactic at that time — to show that an eyewitness had lied on the stand. After the witness testified to having seen the crime by moonlight, Lincoln produced a Farmers' Almanac to show that the moon on that date was at such a low angle that it could not have provided enough illumination to see anything clearly. Based almost entirely on this evidence, Armstrong was acquitted.

Lincoln was involved in more than 5,100 cases in Illinois alone during his 23-year legal career. Though many of these cases involved little more than filing a writ, others were more substantial and quite involved. Lincoln and his partners appeared before the Illinois State Supreme Court more than 400 times.

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