Part 1 (1/2)
So of Men I Have Known
by Adlai E Stevenson
FOREWORD
To write in the spirit of candor of reat events in which he has hiht not an unworthy task for the closing years of more than one of the most eminent of our public men It may be that the labor thus imposed has oftentireat affairs sub end of his life with quiet hours”
Following the exa a hu of events of which I have been a witness, and of so the last third of a century
My book in theof men I have personally known; the occasional mention of statesmen of the past seems justified by matters at the time under discussion
With the hope that it may not be wholly without interest to soht contribution to the political literature of these passing days
A E S
BLOOMINGTON, ILLINOIS, _August 1, 1909_
I
ON THE CIRCUIT
DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY AFTER THE CIVIL WAR--SLAVERY THE APPLE OF DISCORD BEFORE THE WAR--LINCOLN AS A COUNTRY LAWYER--SOCIABILITY OF THE LAWYERS OF THE PERIOD--THEIR EXCELLENCE AS ORATORS--HENRY CLAY AS A PARTY LEADER--EULOGIUMS ON LAWYERS--LINCOLN'S ADMIRATION FOR GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT--THE WRITER'S ADDRESS ON THE LAW AND LAWYERS
The period extending froress in 1874, to my retirement from the Vice-Presidency in 1897, was one of e enterprises were undertaken, and the sure foundation was laid forbusiness conditions The South had recovered froained its former position in the world of trade, as well as in that pertaining to the affairs of the Government The population of the country had almost doubled; the ratio of representation in the Lower House of Congress largely augmented; the entire electoral vote increased froht new States had been ad the number of Senators from seventy-four to ninety
The yearsfroe, with few exceptions, of the reat debates directly preceding and during the Civil War and the reconstruction period which immediately followed By the arbitrament of war, and by constitutional amendment, old questions, for a half-century the prime cause of sectional strife, had been irrevocably settled, and passed to the domain of history
New men had come to the front, and new questions were to be discussed and determined
To the student of history, the years i interest In so subject of debate throughout the entire country
It had been the one recognized peril to the Union since the for with the debates in the convention that formulated the Federal Constitution, it remained for seventy years the apple of discord,--the subject of patriotic apprehension and repeated compromise The last serious attempt to settle this question in the manner just indicated was by the adjustment known in our political history as ”the coh bitterly denounced in the South as well as in the North, received the sanction in national convention of both of the great parties that two years later presented candidates for the Presidency It is no doubt true that a majority of the people, in both sections of the country, then believed that the question that had been so fraught with peril to national unity froth settled for all ti came two years later, when the country was aroused, as it had rarely been before, by iress, over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise It was a period of exciteain Slavery in all its phases was the one topic of earnest discussion, both upon the hustings and at the fireside There was little talk now of compromise The old-time statesmen of the Clay and Webster, Winthrop and Crittenden, school soon disappeared from the arena Men hitherto coe were soon to the front
Conspicuous afield, Illinois With the hty events soon to follow, his name is imperishably linked But it is not of Lincoln the President, the emancipator, the martyr, we are now to speak It is of Lincoln the country lawyer, as he stepped upon the arena of high debate, the unswerving antagonist of slavery extension half a century andhis entire professional life, was at the capital of the State He was, at the tiular attendant upon the neighboring courts His early opportunities for education were re indeed He had been a student of men, rather than of books He was, in the most expressive sense, ”of the people,”--the people as they then were
For,
”Know thou this, that e measure, under the severe conditions to be brieflythe circuit”
is to the present generation of lawyers only a tradition The feho reo will readily recall the fullof the expression The district in which Mr
Lincoln practised extended froston and Woodford upon the north, al the present cities of Danville, Springfield, and Blooton The last nae of the district As is well known, he was the intimate friend of Mr
Lincoln, and the latter was often his guest during attendance upon the courts at Blooton At that early day, the terer than a week, so that e and the lawyers who travelled the circuit with him was spent upon horseback When it is rees, a sparse population, and that more than half the area enificance of riding the circuit will fully appear It was of this period that the late Governor Ford, speaking of Judge Young,--whose district extended froo,--said: ”He possesses in rare degree one of the highest requisites for a good circuit judge, --he is an excellent horseback rider”
At the period mentioned there were fe-books in the State
The monster libraries of later days had not yet arrived The half-dozen voluether with the Statutes and a few leading text-books, constituted the lawyer's library
To an Illinois lawyer upon the circuit, a pair of saddle-bags was an indispensable part of his outfit With these, containing the few books e or two of linen, and supplied with the necessary horse, saddle and bridle, the lawyer of the pioneer days was duly equipped for the active duties of his calling The lack of numerous volumes of adjudicated cases was, however, not an unued upon principle Hoell this conduced to theof the real lawyer is well known