Stephen A. Douglas | Page 6

license to practice law and no law books. He was assured that a
license was a matter of no consequence, since anyone could practice
before a justice of the peace, and he could procure one at his leisure. As
for books, McConnell, with true Western generosity, offered to loan
such as would be of immediate use. So again Douglass took up his
travels. At Meredosia, the nearest landing on the river, he waited a
week for the boat upstream. There was no other available route to Pekin.
Then came the exasperating intelligence, that the only boat which plied
between these points had blown up at Alton. After settling accounts
with the tavern-keeper, he found that he had but fifty cents left.[27]
There was now but one thing to do, since hard manual labor was out of
the question: he would teach school. But where? Meredosia was a
forlorn, thriftless place, and he had no money to travel. Fortunately, a
kind-hearted farmer befriended him, lodging him at his house over
night and taking him next morning to Exeter, where there was a
prospect of securing a school. Disappointment again awaited him; but
Winchester, ten miles away, was said to need a teacher. Taking his coat
on his arm--he had left his trunk at Meredosia--he set off on foot for
Winchester.[28]
Accident, happily turned to his profit, served to introduce him to the
townspeople of Winchester. The morning after his arrival, he found a
crowd in the public square and learned that an auction sale of personal
effects was about to take place. Everyone from the administrator of the
estate to the village idler, was eager for the sale to begin. But a clerk to
keep record of the sales and to draw the notes was wanting. The eye of
the administrator fell upon Douglass; something in the youth's
appearance gave assurance that he could "cipher.". The impatient
bystanders "'lowed that he might do," so he was given a trial. Douglass
proved fully equal to the task, and in two days was in possession of five

dollars for his pains.[29]
Through the good will of the village storekeeper, who also hailed from
Vermont, Douglass was presented to several citizens who wished to see
a school opened in town; and by the first Monday in December he had
a subscription list of forty scholars, each of whom paid three dollars for
three months' tuition.[30] Luck was now coming his way. He found
lodgings under the roof of this same friendly compatriot, the village
storekeeper, who gave him the use of a small room adjoining the
store-room.[31] Here Douglass spent his evenings, devoting some
hours to his law books and perhaps more to comfortable chats with his
host and talkative neighbors around the stove. For diversion he had the
weekly meetings of the Lyceum, which had just been formed.[32] He
owed much to this institution, for the the debates and discussions gave
him a chance to convert the traditional leadership which fell to him as
village schoolmaster, into a real leadership of talent and ready wit. In
this Lyceum he made his first political speech, defending Andrew
Jackson and his attack upon the Bank against Josiah Lamborn, a lawyer
from Jacksonville.[33] For a young man he proved himself
astonishingly 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.]
[Footnote 3: Vermont Historical Gazetteer, III, p. 457.]
[Footnote 4: Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society, 1901,
p. 115.]
[Footnote