It can well be imagined that after this reception I felt at home. I had known Judge Breese when I was a boy, and the first law speech I ever heard was made by him.

He met and remembered me kindly, and soon after assigned me to the defense of a poor fellow who was indicted for larceny; I have often repeated the incidents of this trial and the conduct of Judge Breese toward me, to illustrate the wisdom of judges who treat young members of the bar with kindness.

Any lawyer may easily guess the character of the defense I made for this, my first, client. I had never before appeared in the circuit court; my client was unquestionably guilty, and the jury so found after very brief hesitation. After the jury had found him guilty I remembered that "according to the books," after a verdict against his client, it was the duty of the lawyer to make a motion for a new trial, and if that motion failed then to move in arrest of judgment; accordingly I made a motion for a new trial for the usual formal

reasons.

I know I attempted to argue the motion, and although at the time I was so embarrassed by the surroundings that I then scarcely understood what I said, I was satisfied soon afterwards when I heard from the judge that I made a most learned and forcible argument.

When I had concluded my speech, whatever it was, I was confused enough, but when Mr. Kitchell, the then attorney-general, finished his caustic and almost contemptuous reply, I was overwhelmed with confusion.

The judge, however, rescued me; he noticed the reasons I had assigned in writing for a new trial in succession, and said that the learned counsel had supported these reasons with great force of argument.

He stated what he said were the arguments I had used, confessed he was impressed with their force, and then proceeded to answer them with great deliberation, and

concluded by saying that the defendant had been ably defended by learned counsel and tried by an intelligent and impartial jury, and that he therefore felt constrained to overrule the motion for a new trial and render a judgment on the verdict.

I did not make a motion in arrest of judgment, but I will confess that, for awhile after the judge had concluded, I believed I had really used the arguments that he attributed to me, and then repeated and answered, and, though I afterwards realized that both the arguments and the answers to them were the work of the judge, he made an impression upon me that still remains, and secured for himself my best personal services as long as he had occasion for them, and he left upon my mind an impression which I still retain-that Sidney Breese was in all respects an ideal judge; and, in view of his inaptness as a politician, I have been inclined to repeat what Dryden says of Shaftesbury:

"In Israel's courts, ne'er sat an Abeth-din

With more discerning eyes, or hands more clean,
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress,

Swift of despatch, and easy of access.

O, had he been content to serve the crown
With virtues, only proper to the gown;
Or, had the rankness of the soil been freed
From cockle that oppressed the noble seed,
David, for him, his tuneful harp had strung

And Heaven had wanted one immortal song."

The judge was, for some reasons, a failure as a politician, but his preeminence as a judge has never been disputed.

In the May following my admission to the bar, a term of the circuit court was held in Macoupin county, and I was appointed, in conjunction with Mr. Chestnut, and a lawyer by the name of Fiske, who lived at Hillsboro, to defend Aaron and William Todd, brothers, who were indicted for the murder of their cousin, Larkin Scott.

This murder was so remarkable in its circumstances that it excited the greatest horror in the minds of the

people, who, though not unfamiliar with violence, were shocked at what was manifestly a cold-blooded, deliberate assassination.

The Todds and Scott, their victim, lived in Indiana, and had during the latter part of the winter visited some relatives in Illinois. At the time of the murder they were traveling on foot across the then unsettled prairie, near the head of Sugar creek, along the road from Jacksonville to Hillsboro.

At a point several miles distant from any house, Scott was killed, and an attempt was made to conceal the body, which was found after some days. The men in the neighborhood in which the body was found ascertained, at the house where the parties had spent the night before the murder, the name of the man killed, as well as the name of his companions. They had told the people of the house where they lived and to what point they were traveling. A pursuing party overtook the Todds before they reached their destination; they were brought back to Carlinville and committed to jail. Before the trial, Aaron Todd, the elder of the brothers, confessed the killing, and exonerated William.

The result of the trial was that Aaron was convicted, and afterwards hung; William was acquitted.

It is probable that the brothers killed the poor man to get possession of a few dollars (sixteen, it was said), and that Aaron took upon himself the entire responsibility of the murder in order to shield his brother. Such was his statement after William had been acquitted and hastily left Carlinville, manifesting no further interest in the fate of Aaron.

By this time my business had so increased that it afforded me means of support, according to the simple habits of the times, and I think I may say that, from that time to the present, I have never seen a day when I was without employment. I do not mean to say I have worked every day, but that, if idle, it was not because I had not something to do.

CHAPTER V.

Canvass of 1840-Impressions of Harrison and Van Buren-Disappointment of the Whig party-Scale of legal fees and prices of lands— My marriage in 1842-Lawyers as politicians-Elected probate justice of the peace in 1843.

I have now reached a period at which almost every kind of business was abandoned, and the people gave themselves up to the excitement which attended the memorable political canvass of 1840.

Mr. Van Buren was the Democratic candidate for the presidency, and General William Henry Harrison was the candidate of the Whigs. Mr. Van Buren, elected in 1836 as the favorite of General Jackson, was never popular in the West or South. General Jackson had, by the vigor of his administration, his determined purpose and efforts to crush out the dangerous heresy of nullification given mortal offense to Mr. Calhoun, its author and champion, and his followers.

He had also made enemies of the commercial classes by his overthrow of the bank of the United States. The enemies of Mr. Van Buren, who were also the enemies of General Jackson, pretended to attribute to the advice and management of Mr. Van Buren those acts of General Jackson, of which they complained (commercial distress not attributable to the financial policy of Jackson or Van Buren, but to the wild and unreasonable spirit of speculation), which prevailed all over the country and especially in the West, filled the minds of the people with the most profound and widespread dis

content.

General Harrison, too, had considerable military reputation acquired during the then late war in campaigns against the British and the Indians in the Northwest.

These causes enabled the opponents of Mr. Van Buren to unite upon General Harrison, whose amiable personal qualities and negative political character repelled none. No political contest in the history of the country was characterized by more bitterness than that of 1840.

Men of all classes participated in the canvass, while popular partisan orators never distinguished themselves more. The Whig party in Illinois at that time contained. many men distinguished for eloquence; among the most. eminent were Colonel E. D. Baker, then a resident of Springfield (who afterwards distinguished himself in congress, representing in succession two districts remote from each other in Illinois, and afterwards in California by his matchless funeral oration upon Broderick, and then as senator from Oregon, and who perished at Ball's Bluff, during the civil war, in one of those affairs where his bravery by no means atoned for his want of prudence), Lincoln, Browning and John Hogan, then a Methodist preacher; while Douglas and Breese, Lamborn and Calhoun, their equals, championed the Democracy.

The state elections held in August before the presidential election, then as now held in November, indicated the defeat of Mr. Van Buren, but did not give warning of the total overthrow of the Democratic party which happened in November.

I took part in the canvass for Mr. Van Buren, and believed then, as I do now, that he was a great statesman, devoted to sound principles and eminently patriotic. The election of General Harrison was soon after followed by his death, and the discordant elements, which had united to elect "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too," separated, never again to be reunited-their only bond of union was their opposition to Mr. Van Buren. The political combination which placed Harrison and Tyler upon the same ticket had no common principles, and the accession of Tyler to the presidency destroyed it.

The Whig party proper, which was made up of the