In Charleston and Coles County, nineteenth-century political life mixed spectacle with serious campaigning, and the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debate of September 18, 1858, was followed by separate Democratic and Republican rallies in town, with the smaller Democratic gathering inside the courthouse and the Republican gathering, four times as large, on the courthouse lawn, where Richard J. Oglesby spoke while Usher Linder spoke for the Democrats; a later recollection held that the courthouse lights went out during the Democratic rally and many in the crowd went outside to join the Republicans, after which bands played and drums beat in a festive atmosphere. Charleston also answered quickly to the coming of the Civil War: on April 15, 1861, five days after Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers, a war meeting recruited local soldiers for the Union, 175 young men declared themselves ready to go, and by July 1861 the town had provided more soldiers than its quota required. Abraham Lincoln had earlier practiced law in the Coles County Courthouse between 1841 and 1855, using Charleston's location between other circuit towns to take on additional legal work while visiting relatives nearby and building political ties; when court was in session, he was a familiar presence in town inns and taverns, remembered as lively and entertaining. Among the notable cases tied to his visits was the Matson Slave Trial, in which Lincoln and Usher Linder represented slave owner Robert Matson against abolitionists Gideon Ashmore and Hiram Rutherford over Jane Bryant and her four children, but Judges Samuel Treat and William Wilson ruled for Ashmore and Rutherford, holding that the Bryants were permanently settled in Illinois rather than merely in transit.