There has been much discussion as to Lincoln’s rank and ability as a lawyer.  Opinion among his contemporaries seems to have been somewhat divided.  Mr. Herndon felt warranted in saying that he was at the same time a very great and a very insignificant lawyer.  His mind was logical and direct.  Generalities and platitudes had no charm for him.  He had the ability to seize the strong points of a case and present them with clearness and compactness.  His power of comparison was great.  He rarely failed in a legal discussion to use this mode of reasoning.  Yet he knew practically nothing of the rules of evidence, of pleading, of practice, as laid down in the text-books, and seemed to care little about them.  Sometimes he lost cases of the plainest justice which the most inexperienced lawyer could have won.  He looked upon two things as essential to his success in a case.  One was time; he was slow in reasoning and slow in speech.  The other was confidence that the cause he represented was just.  “If either of these were lacking,” said Mr. Herndon, “Lincoln was the weakest man at the bar.  When it fell to him to address the jury he often relied absolutely on the inspiration of the moment,—­but he seldom failed to carry his point.”

Among the great number of opinions of Lincoln’s rank as a lawyer, expressed by his professional brethren, a few may properly be given in closing this chapter, which is devoted chiefly to Mr. Lincoln’s professional career.  First we may quote the brief but emphatic words of the distinguished jurist, Judge Sidney Breese, Chief Justice of Illinois, who said:  “For my single self, I have for a quarter of a century regarded Mr. Lincoln as the finest lawyer I ever knew, and of a professional bearing so high-toned and honorable, as justly, and without derogating from the claims of others, entitling him to be presented to the profession as a model well worthy of the closest imitation.”

Another distinguished Chief Justice, Hon. John Dean Caton; says:  “In 1840 or 1841, I met Mr. Lincoln, and was for the first time associated with him in a professional way.  We attended the Circuit Court at Pontiac, Judge Treat presiding, where we were both engaged in the defense of a man by the name of Lavinia.  That was the first and only time I was associated with him at the bar.  He practiced in a circuit that was beyond the one in which I practiced, and consequently we were not brought together much in the practice of the law.  He stood well at the bar from the beginning.  I was a younger man, but an older lawyer.  He was not admitted to the bar till after I was.  I was not closely connected with him.  Indeed, I did not meet him often, professionally, until I went on the bench in 1842; and he was then in full practice before the Supreme Court, and continued to practice there regularly at every term until he was elected President.  Mr. Lincoln understood the relations of things, and hence his deductions were rarely wrong from any given state of facts.