The Circuit Lawyer

The Circuit Lawyer. Looking for Lincoln. , (left panel:), Twenty-two years before the sixteenth president died of a gunshot wound to the head-after restoring the Union of our broken country - a disheveled thirty-four-year-old country lawyer named Abraham Lincoln traveled on horseback through the prairie and wilderness among the counties that made up the Eighth Illinois Judicial Circuit Court. His journey covered more than four hundred miles and included Hanover, later named Metamora, in Woodford County. Court sessions were held in the spring and the fall, and Mr. Lincoln participated in most through 1858. He handled more than seventy cases here, including numerous debt and business suits, eviction, paternity, gambling, perjury, trespass, and rights of way cases, and several guardianships. He was the defense attorney for two abolitionists charged with harboring slaves and for two people accused of murder. Local legend also has Lincoln mediating disputes in the Metamora Square to discourage litigation, as he often considered court a waste of time and money. Many of his cases took place before his friend and future Supreme Court justice, Judge David Davis. , (center:), Roderick Cole likely took this photo in Peoria in 1858, the same year Lincoln finished work on his last case in Metamora and delivered his last speech here, in between his Charleston and Galesburg debates with Judge Stephen Douglas for the Senate seat from Illinois. Both Lincoln and Douglas gave speeches, and each attracted thousands of supporters who paraded into town. This photograph was a favorite of Lincoln and was reproduced on campaign ribbons of 1860, when he ran against Douglas for the presidency. , (right panel:), On October 10, 1857, Lincoln attempted to defend Melissa Goings, a seventy-year-old woman accused of killing her abusive husband, seventy-seven year-old Roswell, earlier that spring. Roswell died from a blow to the back of his head, which Melissa was alleged to have inflicted with a piece of firewood. Town legend claims that most felt sorry for Melissa and did not want to prosecute her. , While in the custody of the sheriff, though, she somehow was able to escape. A bailiff accused Lincoln of chasing her off, but in one version of the story, he told the judge, "Your Honor, I did not run her off. She wanted to know where she could get a good drink of water, and I told her there was mighty good water in Tennessee." No effort was made to bring her back.