Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency
Historical notes by Guy Fraker
Lincoln in Vermilion County
Mr. Lincoln again stepped out and addressing himself to the enthusiastic gathering remarked that if he had any blessings to dispense, he would certainly dispense the largest and roundest to his good ole friends of Vermilion County.
New York Herald February 12, 1861 reporting on Lincoln’s February 11th stop in Danville on his way to Washington, his last time in Illinois.
Lincoln in Woodford County
Upon my admission to the Bar in 1858, I located at Metamora, a village of 500 inhabitants, about 40 miles northwest of Bloomington. It was beautifully and quietly situated eight miles from the railroad and was at the time the county seat of Woodford County, one of the finest agricultural portions of Illinois. Metamora contained many delightful families and a cordial welcome was accorded me.
Adlai Stevenson, I – 1909
Lincoln in Macon County
BOOKENDS
The story of Abraham Lincoln in Decatur forms bookends of his years in Illinois, the first place in Illinois to which he came in 1830 and one of the last places he visited as he headed east to the Presidency in 1861. These two events illustrate the parallel course of Lincoln and central Illinois over the years, parallels that shaped Lincoln and propelled him to leadership of the nation.
Lincoln in Logan County
The presence of Abraham Lincoln in the early history of Logan County is pervasive; he dominates that history. He performed surveys there, represented the county in his four terms in the Illinois legislature and in his one term in Congress. He was the principal mover in the formation of the county. He was its lawyer in each of the two moves of the county seat that occurred in its first fifteen years. Throughout his legal career he had an active practice in the county, its leading lawyer, representing some of its most prominent citizens. He played a major role in the founding of the city of Lincoln. It is, in fact, the only city named for Abraham Lincoln before fame came to him, so named at its beginning in 1853, 7 years before his election of the presidency. The history of the first 20 years of Logan County cannot be told without repeatedly mentioning Abraham Lincoln’s name.
Lincoln in Champaign County
Champaign County was part of the Eighth Judicial Circuit from 1841 to 1861, the year Abraham Lincoln went to Washington. The Circuit was Lincoln’s home away from home. At its largest, from 1847 to 1853, the Circuit included fourteen counties running from the Illinois River to the Indiana line and from Shelbyville to Metamora. The Circuit Court held sessions in each county, spring and fall, in consecutive weeks and the lawyers would travel from county to county following the circuit judge. The trip took approximately eleven weeks and was approximately 400 miles. The roads varied in quality from vague tracks to more established ways. Initially there were no bridges, so the streams had to be forded or even swum, a fairly treacherous business during the floods of spring.
ON THE ROAD
The Champaign County section of the Circuit was in the middle of this two-month trek and saw the intrepid lawyers coming from Clinton then Monticello, to Urbana, then on to Danville and south to Paris before heading back west.
The traveling lawyers often had to overnight between towns, sometimes in the occasional farmsteads along their way, sometimes in primitive taverns. One of these is Kelley’s Tavern which was located in Old St. Joseph, south of the present town, east of the river and north of the old state road where it crosses Salt Fork. Built in the early 1830’s by Cyrus Strong, the tavern was split log with four rooms when first built. The river was crossed by a ford when the water was low and a ferry when it was high. A bridge was built in 1837 for $426, but high water swept it away within a year.
Joseph Kelley, born in Virginia in 1802, arrived from the vicinity of the namesake Urbana, Champaign County, Ohio in March of 1831 and became the proprietor of the tavern from 1849 to 1864. It served as the post office – named for Kelley by a passing patron of the tavern with influence over the Postal Service in Washington, D.C. Champaign County attorney Henry Clay Whitney recalled first meeting Abraham Lincoln, David Davis, Bloomington attorney Leonard Swett, and David Campbell, the State’s attorney for the Circuit at the tavern on June 3, 1854, traveling in a two-seated open spring wagon.
Another tavern where Lincoln is said to have stayed on occasion between 1853 and 1856 was Mahomet’s “Nine Girl Tavern” allegedly so named because one of the proprietors had nine red-headed daughters. The tavern was a rambling two-story house, south of the road, located east of the point at which the Bloomington road, now Route 150, crossed the Sangamon. The ford is today marked by an old trestle north of the highway.
Lincoln was the only lawyer who traveled the entire Circuit and who stayed out the entire time, seldom returning to Springfield. As a consequence he became a part of the communities, forming close and important friendships and associations. Champaign County was no exception. Like the other settlements of the Circuit, it grew and prospered as Lincoln grew and prospered.