Presidential Lawyers. more, before becoming president, had main tained, as a senior partner, for seventeen years, in Buffalo, the important law firm of Fillmore, Hall & Haven, which retained during all that time a large share in the litigation of Western and Midland New York. In that firm Fillmore was the principal advo cate because of his magnetism and fluency. When he retired from the White House only a second marriage with a widow, and her desire for European travel, prevented his desired return to his profession, of which he was manifestly fond. To Fillmore succeeded lawyer Franklin Pierce — a graduate from the offices of that famous jurist, Levi Woodbury, and Judge Edmund Parker, both of the New Hampshire bar. Pierce also took a legal degree from the Northampton Law School. His legal eminence may be estimated from the fact that President Polk offered him the post of attorney-general in his cabinet, which he declined in order to continue his lucrative practice at Concord. His first jury case resulted in a dismal failure. But it no more disheartened him than the well-known failure of his first speech in Parliament disheartened Disraeli. Young Pierce remarked on that unfortunate debut to a sarcastic sympathizer : "I will try 999 cases, if clients to that num ber bring me briefs; but even if I should in managing them do no better than I have done to-day, I should take the thousandth and try again; for the time will come when this court-house shall ring with praises of my success." President Buchanan practiced his pro fession at Lancaster, in his native State, for many years of his youth; and the name "J. Buchanan" modestly appears several times in the volumes of Pennsylvania Re ports between the years 1812 and 1820, as attorney of record in cases therein decided. But in the latter year he entered politics as a Congressman, and the rest of his career has become historical. His knowledge of international law, however, was serviceable
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to his fame when twice in our diplomatic service in Europe, or as Secretary of State under President Polk. But the legal experience of Buchanan's successor — the incomparable and beloved Lincoln — is in contemplation the most in teresting of all the presidential lawyers-. His posterity never wearies of hearing or reading about his perusal of borrowed law-books, of nights by the light of a blazing wood-fire, after an exhausting day of physical labor; norof his travels upon Illinoiscircuits, through wastes and forests, upon horseback, carrying his law-papers in saddle-bags; nor of his involuntarily obtaining clients literally by the wayside as they became impressed with his gathered knowledge of human nature, and his quaint, persuasive treatment of human contentions, and came to prefer his homely legal services to those of the better educated and more refined of his circuit associates; nor of his partnership with his friend Stuart, and with the wise Judge Stephen T. Logan, during four more years, and during subse quent two decades with Herndon, who has left racy and delightful reminiscences of Lincoln, and described how he would throw brain, soul, heart, physical vigor and keen sympathies into participation with clientage that was founded in right and justice; and how he would decline even large fees when asked to ally his professional services with possible fraud or suspected injustice; and how he declined a lucrative offer of partner ship with an eminent Chicago lawyer because he feared contact with the artificial society and constrained methods of a large city. "From 1849 to 1854,1 practiced law assidu ously, and then I took up Free Soil as my best client," has said Lincoln in a private letter. His more cultured contemporary on circuit, David Davis — whom Lincoln well remembered by placing him on the bench of the Federal Supreme Court — gave this tribute in a biographical sketch of Lin coln : " He was great both at nisi prius, and before an appellate tribunal. His mind
