Academic

The Lincoln Bicentennial

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

As you might imagine, here in the Land of Lincoln, people are very excited to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.  We are invited to our first ever Lincoln's birthday party tomorrow, and are looking forward to it. 

Of course, Lincoln was born in Kentucky and grew up in Indiana, but people in Illinois lay great claim to the Abe Lincoln we know as lawyer-turned-politician.  The College of Law is proud to be a sponsor of Lincoln:  Prelude to the Presidency, a documentary that is showing on various public television channels throughout the country.  (The actor doing the reenactments of Lincoln makes me wonder if Joaquin Phoenix, who I guess has sworn off acting, wouldn't do a bang-up job in a new biopic?)

The documentary focuses on the period of Lincoln's life that should be very interesting to us as lawyers -- the time in which he spent "traveling the circuit" of the Eighth Judicial Circuit in Central Illinois, representing parties that showed up needing an attorney for their court cases.  All high school debaters associate Lincoln with the now-famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, and what better training that taking cases on the fly and arguing them with little preparation?

I learned three things from the documentary I had not known before that I thought were interesting:  First, Lincoln went bankrupt before becoming a lawyer.  He tried his hand at business, and it didn't work out.  Second, Lincoln was almost in a duel.  He agreed to a challenge, and the duel was going to be he and his opponent in stationary spots weilding broadswords at one another.  When the challenger realized that Lincoln was much taller and had a much greater wingspan, he called it off.  Had Lincoln been in the duel, then he could not have run for state office under the law.  Whew.

Full post as published by Conglomerate on February 12, 2009 (boomark / email).