Danville was a destination for Abraham Lincoln for nearly twenty years, beginning in 1841 when he first came to the village as a thirty-two-year-old attorney. Elizabeth Harmon recalled the young lawyer as shabbily and carelessly dressed, with clothes that were threadbare and worn out at the elbows. While staying at the McCormack house on Main Street, he was supposedly once seen watching an ant work its way out of a horse’s hoof print in the mud and remarked that the ant made better use of its small brain than he did of his own top piece. By the 1850's, his face was familiar to many Danville citizens when court was in session, he had begun to dress as well as other lawyers, his legal practice had grown, and he was becoming well known in politics. The McCormack House Hotel, on the northwest corner of Main and Walnut streets, long provided lodging to travelers and local businessmen, and there in 1859 Lincoln wrote on its stationery to James A. Briggs about making a political speech, the Cooper Union speech in New York that helped launch his path to the presidency and gain him the Republican presidential nomination. Lincoln and Ward Hill Lamon formed a law partnership in 1852 and opened an office in the Barnum Building on the public square, where Lamon’s young, fun-loving, boisterous personality made it a popular gathering place for Danville men. Their partnership ended when Lamon was elected State’s Attorney in 1856, and in 1861 Lincoln took him to Washington and made him Marshall of the District of Columbia; Judge Davis said Lincoln trusted Lamon more than any other man.
