support himself, a result due, no doubt, very largely to his personal
qualities and to his reputation as a shrewd politician. Not that he
made money. The fee-book of Lincoln and Stuart shows that the returns
were modest enough, and that sometimes they even "traded out" their
account. Nevertheless it was a satisfaction to earn a livelihood so
soon. Of his peculiar methods as a lawyer at this date we know very
little. Most of his cases are utterly uninteresting. The very first
year he was in Springfield, however, he had one case which created
a great sensation, and which, so far as we know, has been overlooked
entirely by his biographers. It is an admirable example of the
way Lincoln could combine business and politics as well as of his
merciless persistency in pursuing a man whom he believed unjust.

It seems that among the offices to be filled at the August election of
1837 was that of probate justice of the peace. One of the candidates
was General James Adams, a man who had come on from the East in the
early twenties, and who had at first claimed to be a lawyer. He had
been an aspirant for various offices, among them that of governor
of the State, but with little success. A few days before the August
election of 1837 an anonymous hand-bill was scattered about the
streets. It was an attack on General Adams, charging him with having
acquired the title to a ten-acre lot of ground near the town by the
deliberate forgery of the name of Joseph Anderson, of Fulton County,
Illinois, to an assignment of a judgment. Anderson had died, and the
widow, upon going to Springfield to dispose of the land, was surprised
to find that it was claimed by General Adams, and she employed Stuart
and Lincoln to look into the matter. The hand-bill, which went into
all of the details at great length, concluded as follows: "I have
only made these statements because I am known by many to be one of
the individuals against whom the charge of forging the assignment and