Abraham Lincoln

Had Begun To Read Blackstone While In The Store

Posted on October 21, 2015 Updated on October 23, 2015

    Conscious of his many shortcomings as a merchant, and undaunted by the unfortunate complications from which he had just been released, Lincoln returned to his books. Rowan Herndon, with whom he had been living, having removed to the country, he became for the first time a sojourner at the tavern, as it was then called-a public-house kept by Rutledge, Onstatt, and Alley in succession. “It was a small log house,” he explained to me in later years, “covered with clapboards, and contained four rooms.” It was second only in importance to the store, for there he had the opportunity of meeting passing strangers-lawyers and others from the county seat, whom he frequently impressed with his knowledge as well as wit. He had, doubtless, long before determined to prepare himself for the law; in fact, had begun to read Blackstone while in the store, and now went at it with renewed zeal. He borrowed law-books of his former comrade in the Black Hawk war, John T. Stuart, who was practicing law in Springfield, frequently walking there to return one and borrow another. His determination to master any subject he undertook and his application to study were of the most intense order. On the road to and from Springfield he would read and recite from the book he carried open in his hand, and claimed to have mastered forty pages of Blackstone during the first day after his return from Stuart’s office. At New Salem he frequently sat barefooted under the shade of a tree near the store, poring over a volume of Chitty or Blackstone; sometimes lying on his back, putting his feet up the tree, which provokes one of his biographers to denote the latter posture as one which might have been “unfavorable to mental application, in the case of a man with shorter extremities.”
That Lincoln’s attempt to make a lawyer of himself under such adverse and unpromising circumstances excited comment is not to be wondered at. Russell Godby, an old man who still survives, told me in 1865, that he had often employed Lincoln to do farm work for him, and was surprised to find him one day sitting barefoot on the summit of a woodpile and attentively reading a book. “This being an unusual thing for farm hands in that early day to do, I asked him,” relates Godby, “what he was reading.” ‘I’m not reading,’ he answered. ‘I’m studying.’ ‘Studying what?’ I enquired. ‘Law, sir,’ was the emphatic response. It was really too much for me, as I looked at him sitting there proud as Cicero. ‘Great God Almighty!’ I exclaimed, and passed on.
But Lincoln kept on at his studies. Wherever he was and whenever he could do so the book was brought into use. He carried it with him in his rambles through the woods and his walks to the river. When night came he read it by the aid of any friendly light he could find. Frequently he went down to the cooper’s shop and kindled a fire out of the waste material lying about, and by the light it afforded read until far into the night.
One of his companions at this time relates that, “while clerking in the store or serving as postmaster he would apply himself as opportunity offered to his studies, if it was but five minutes time-would open his book which he always kept at hand, study it, reciting to himself; then entertain the company present or wait on a customer without apparent annoyance from the interruption. Have frequently seen him reading while walking along the streets. Occasionally he would become absorbed with his book; would stop and stand for a few moments, then walk on, or pass from one house to another or from one crowd or squad of men to another. He was apparently seeking amusement, and with his thoughtful face and ill-fitting clothes was the last man one would have singled out for a student. If the company he was in was unappreciative, or their conversation at all irksome, he would open his book and commune with it for a time, until a happy thought suggested itself and then the book would again return to its wonted resting-place under his arm. He never appeared to be a hard student, as he seemed to master his studies with little effort, until he commenced the study of the law. In that he became wholly engrossed, and began for the first time to avoid the society of men, in order that he might have more time for study. He was not what is usually termed a quick-minded man, although he would usually arrive at his conclusions very readily. He seemed invariably to reflect and deliberate, and never acted from impulse so far as to force a wrong conclusion on a subject of any moment.” *
* R. B. Rutledge, letter, Nov. 30. 1866, MS.
By William H. Herndon，Jesse W. Weik “Herndon’s Lincoln: A True Story of a Great Life”
Herndon-092-055-5-24 Had Begun To Read Blackstone While In The Store