In the Wake of His Famed Senate Campaign Against Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln Handles a Case for a Troublesome Client

In November 1858, Lincoln was just coming out of the famous Senate campaign against Stephen A. Douglas. He lost, but his debates with Douglas made him famous and thrust him into the national spotlight. He would be nominated for president just a year and a half later.

But in the wake of the loss, his law practice carried on. On November 17, 1858, Lincoln angrily replied to a letter from S. C. Davis & Co. complaining that, with Lincoln handling the case, lands of owners against whom judgments were won had not yet been entered for foreclosure or sold. After describing what had already been done, Lincoln sought to wash his hands of Davis business by offering to surrender it to anyone they name. “I believe we have had, of legal fees…one hundred dollars. I would not go through the same labor and vexation again for five hundred.” But the Davis firm refused to allow Lincoln to withdraw. We know this because on November 30, Lincoln again wrote Davis about the same matter. That he had other things on his mind may be seen in that on the same day, November 30, Lincoln wrote his friend and ally Henry C. Whitney, requesting that he procure for him two sets of the Chicago Tribune containing his debates with Douglas.

Autograph letter signed, Springfield, Ill., November 30, 1858, to Messrs. S. C. Davis & Co., further advising regarding foreclosures on the properties. “Gentlemen, Yours of the 27th returning letter of Mr. Fishback is just received. What amount will have to be paid Mr. Fishback, we can not tell until we hear further from him.

“We await your direction about making sales. The first Monday of January will be the 3rd day, so that judgment can be obtained at the January Term if process be served as early as the 24th of Dec. – being ten days. If suit be commenced as early as the 15th the Marshal will have from that till the 24th to find the parties, and serve the process – reasonable time, but not quite so safe as if it were a little greater. Yours &c, Lincoln & Herndon.”

The Fishback mentioned is William Meade Fishback, a young Arkansas lawyer who handled foreclosure proceedings for Lincoln & Herndon when he was for a while in Springfield. In 1861, Fishback was back in Arkansas and was elected to the Arkansas Secession Convention as a pro-Union delegate. Fishback became Governor of Arkansas in 1892.

This letter was at one time in the collection of Emanuel Hertz, an authority on Abraham Lincoln in the 1920-1940 era. He assembled one of the largest private collection of material relating to Lincoln, and was said to have gathered 4,000 items previously unknown. Hertz wrote pamphlets on various aspects of the life of Lincoln, and his books included: Abraham Lincoln, New Portrait; Abraham Lincoln, the Tribute of the Synagogue; and Hidden Lincoln. He was a substantial benefactor of the Library of Congress and the Hebrew University Library, Jerusalem.

The fabled partnership of Lincoln and Herndon handled at least 3,200 cases in the county courts of central Illinois, the Illinois Supreme Court, and the federal courts in Illinois. An outstanding lawyer, Lincoln was initially associated with John Todd Stuart, then with Stephen T. Logan, and finally with William H. Herndon. As a partner, Lincoln prepared cases for the federal courts, the Illinois Supreme Court, and the state’s Eighth Judicial Circuit, which covered most of east-central Illinois. Lincoln, gaining important exposure throughout the state, rode the circuit for six months during the year, but Herndon usually stayed at their law office in Springfield. Lincoln’s partnership with Herndon was not officially dissolved until Lincoln’s death in 1865. In his celebrated Lincoln biography, Herndon reported that just before Lincoln left Springfield to become president, he told Herndon, “If I live I’m coming back some time, and then we’ll go right on practicing law as if nothing had ever happened.”