Bulletin. [Vol. 8, no. 1]

BULLETIN NUMBER EIGHT 5

INDIANA TO RE-CREATE
LINCOLN HOME
The Indiana Lincoln Union, at its
meeting in Indianapolis June 8, 1927,
adopted tentative plans for the restoration of the old Lincoln home in southwestern Indiana, together with the
backwoods surroundings in which it
stood more than a hundred years ago.
Several projects in addition to the
reconstruction of the Lincoln cabin are
contemplated. The Union plans to
remove the Southern railroad track from
its present position between the homesite and the grave of Nancy Lincoln. It
plans to purchase all the land originally
in the Lincoln farm, and it is looking
toward the erection of a memorial hall
near the reconstructed cabin.
The cost of this work is estimated at
$1,265,000, to be raised by popular subscription in a campaign scheduled to
commence in the autumn of 1927.
At the present time the state of
Indiana owns several acres surrounding
the grave of Nancy Lincoln. This land
has been made into an attractive and
well tended state park. The site of the
Lincoln cabin, perhaps a quarter of a
mile from the park, is designated by a
small granite marker.
LINCOLN IN THE U. S.
COURT
(Continued from page 1)
the seat of which was to continue at
Springfield. Since Judge Drummond,
who was assigned the northern district,
was the senior judge, all records were
transferred to Chicago, only to be destroyed in the great fire of 1871. Consequently there are in existence no
records for the southern district earlier
than 1855, and therefore we have documentary sources for Lincoln's U. S.
Court work for a five year period only:
1855-1860.
For these years, however, the sources
are prolific. The records show that
Lincoln was of counsel in at least
eighty-five of the thousand cases tried

during these five years, and a careful
search of the files has brought to light
more than a hundred papers in his
handwriting.
These papers show, for one thing, that
no matter how truly the firm of Lincoln
& Herndon may have been a "partnership" in other branches of the law, in
the United States Court Lincoln did
practically all the work. Most of the
business was handled in the firm name.
Occasionally Lincoln had a case alone, or
in connection with attorneys other than
Herndon, but in any event the papers
are nearly always in his handwiiting.
The one exception is the precipe-the
formal notice to the clerk to issue summons-but even here Herndon drew
only about one in ten. Of course there
is no means of knowing which member
of the firm bore the brunt of oral argument, but it seems reasonable to assume
that when the senior partner did even
the least important paper work, he too
handled the cases in court.
These legal papers puncture the notion that Lincoln was averse to office
work-that his love of the law commenced and ended with his presence in
the court room. Among a pile of legal
papers drawn by contemporaries, a
pleading in Lincoln's hand is instantly
noticeable for its neatness and precision
of form. Such papers, involving an
enormous amount of labor, most of
which could have been performed by
clerks, were hardly drawn by a man
whose heart was not in his work.-Indeed, it is hard to imagine just what
were the duties of these numerous individuals who at one time or another
studied in the Lincoln & Herndon office.
The writer has seen hundreds of the
papers of the firm. The great majority
were drawn by Lincoln, while of the
remainder only a few were not in
Herndon's handwriting. And the clerks
themselves testify that the office was
never swept.
Collections constituted the bulk of
Lincoln's business in the United States
(Concluded on next pagc)