Fifty Years of Public Service | Page 7

I told him that I wanted to be released from my contract; that I had deliberately come to the conclusion that I could make my living some other way--that I intended to study law. My father did not hesitate to relieve me of my obligations, and the succeeding October, 1853, I started for Springfield to enter upon the study of law. I consulted with Abraham Lincoln, and on his advice I entered the law offices of Stuart and Edwards, both of whom were Whigs and friends of my father. They were both very good men and distinguished lawyers.
At that time Abraham Lincoln and Stephen T. Logan and Stuart and Edwards were the four ablest lawyers of the capital city. I studied two years in the offices of Stuart and Edwards, pursuing the usual life of a law student in a country law office, and was admitted to the Bar in 1855, and elected City Attorney the same year.
Meanwhile, however, I had been ill of typhoid fever for several months. During the period of my convalescence, I was advised to return to my home in the country and spend much time riding horseback. I did so, but the time seemed to drag, and finally I went to the city of Peoria to learn whether I could direct my restorative exercise to an additional profitable end. The result was that for several ensuing weeks I rode about the countryside, buying hogs for Ting & Brotherson; at the expiration of which time I had regained my health, was richer by about five hundred dollars, and was thus enabled to return at once to Springfield and take up again my interrupted studies.
Having been inducted into the office of City Attorney, I was fairly launched upon a political career, exceeding in length of unbroken service that of any other public man in the country's history. In fact I never accepted but two executive appointments: the first was an unsought appointment by Abraham Lincoln, after he had become the central figure of his time, if not of all time; and, second, an appointment from President McKinley as chairman of the Hawaiian Commission.
CHAPTER II
SERVICE AS CITY ATTORNEY AT SPRINGFIELD 1855 and 1856
My election as City Attorney of Springfield signalized at once my active interest in politics at the very moment when the war cloud was beginning to take shape in the political heavens--a portentous cloud, but recognized as such at that time by comparatively few of the thinking people. It had seemed certain for years that a struggle was sure to come. Being a very young man, I suppose I did not realize the horrors of a civil war, but I watched with keen interest the signs of dissolution in political parties, and realignments in party ties.
In 1854 the country seemed on the verge of a war with Spain over Cuba which happily was averted. The Black Warrior had been seized in Havana Harbor, and the excitement throughout the country when Congress prepared to suspend the neutrality laws between the United States and Spain was intense.
It was about this time also that the famous Ostend manifesto was issued without authority from any one. The American representatives at the Courts of England, France, and Spain met at Ostend to confer on the best method of settling the difficulties concerning Cuba and obtaining possession of the island. They issued a manifesto in which they recommended that Cuba should be purchased if possible, failing which that it should be taken by force:
"If Spain, actuated by stubborn pride and a false sense of honor, should refuse to sell Cuba to the United States, then by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain, if we possess the power."
The Ostend manifesto was repudiated; but it is certain that we would have then intervened in favor of freeing Cuba, had it not been for the dark war clouds which were so quickly gathering over our own country.
Among the other vital conditions which helped to keep the country's interest and attention divided at this critical time was the Missouri Compromise repeal, May 30, 1855. This repealing act early began to bear political fruit. Already treaties had been made with half a score of the Indian Nations in Kansas, by which the greater part of the soil for two hundred miles west was opened. Settlers, principally from Missouri, immediately began to flock in, and with the first attempt to hold an election a bloody epoch set in for that region between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions, fanned by attempts in Massachusetts and other Eastern States to make of Kansas a Free State.
By methods of intimidation, Whitfield, a slave-holder, was elected the first delegate to Congress. At a second election thirteen State Senators and twenty-six members of a Lower House