Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States in 1860. By then he had been a farm laborer, hostler, boatman, and store clerk; a land surveyor, legislator, political stump speaker, and congressman. And he had been practicing law in the Illinois bar for twenty-three years. Lawyer Lincoln, a classic in the field of Lincoln biography, examines those twenty-three years. It follows Lincoln into the courts and onto judicial circuits, where the practice of law continually broadened his intellectual faculties, developed his forensic skills, honed his wit, enlarged his sympathy, and deepened his understanding of human nature. It views Lincoln’s legal career not as a mere backdrop to the story of his Civil War presidency but as experience vital to his evolution from a shrewd practitioner of frontier justice into a chief executive capable of leading his nation through the most challenging period in America’s history. It strives not only to illuminate Lincoln’s legal intelligence or moral courage or love of justice but also to comprehend more fully the nature his singular genius. This classic biography rescues Lincoln from schoolbook myths of Honest Abe. Anecdotal and penetrating, it portrays Lincoln the trial lawyer, the brief lawyer, the appellate lawyer, the railroad and big business lawyer, and for a time the judge. It follows him, too, into his Civil War presidency to attest to his status as one of the world’s truly great legal minds.