well-informed. If the chronology of his autobiography may be accepted,
he had already read the debates in the Constitutional Convention of
1787, the _Federalist_, the works of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson,
and the recent debates in Congress.

Even while he was teaching school, Douglass found time to practice law
in a modest way before the justices of the peace; and when the first
of March came, he closed the schoolhouse door on his career as
pedagogue. He at once repaired to Jacksonville and presented himself
before a justice of the Supreme Court for license to practice law.
After a short examination, which could not have been very searching,
he was duly admitted to the bar of Illinois. He still lacked a month
of being twenty-one years of age.[34] Measured by the standard of
older communities in the East, he knew little law; but there were few
cases in these Western courts which required much more than
common-sense, ready speech, and acquaintance with legal procedure.
_Stare decisis_ was a maxim that did not trouble the average lawyer,
for there were few decisions to stand upon.[35] Besides, experience
would make good any deficiencies of preparation.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: There can be little doubt that he supplied the data for
the sketch in Wheeler's Biographical and Political History of
Congress.]

[Footnote 2: See Transactions of the Illinois State Historical
Society, 1901, pp. 113-114.]