Stuart and Lincoln Law Office

Before moving to Springfield, Abraham Lincoln went to John Todd Stuart's law office to borrow law books. Henry E. Dummer, Stuart's partner at the time, recalled that the "uncouth looking" Lincoln said little and seemed timid, yet when he did speak he was strong and acute and surprised them more at every visit. In 1837 Lincoln joined Stuart as the junior member of a law partnership that lasted four years. Sangamon County rented the room directly beneath their office as a courtroom, and a trap door between the rooms let Lincoln overhear proceedings below. During the fall 1839 political season, when disgruntled Democrats threatened Lincoln's friend Edward Baker with bodily harm during a courthouse speech, the 30-year-old Lincoln heard the commotion, came dramatically through the trap door into the crowd, and warned that he would "pitch in" if anyone attacked Baker; no one challenged him, and Baker finished speaking unmolested. Their office occupied a second-floor room in the fifth section of Hoffman's Row, a six-part brick block in early Springfield considered a striking and handsome improvement over other buildings, and its furnishings included a small lounge, a chair, a buffalo robe, a wooden bench, a bookcase, and a table that served as a desk. In Lincoln's world, where few schools offered study in law and politics, a mentor was indispensable for many young men, and Lincoln's first was John Todd Stuart, an educated Kentucky aristocrat, his senior by two years, a first cousin of Mary Todd, and a man who had met Lincoln during the Black Hawk War and later served with him in the state legislature in Vandalia. Impressed by Lincoln's demeanor and intelligence, Stuart encouraged him to study law and helped guide him into political leadership, though in the 1850s the two became politically estranged when Stuart refused to join the antislavery Republican Party after the Whig Party's demise.

Springfield, Illinois · United States