I'm not a Lincoln scholar but I am from Illinois. So, for my first official post on MoneyLaw, I write to honor his remarkable life. He was a MoneyLaw president and a lawyer to boot. Letter to John M. Brockman on September 25, 1860
J. M. Brockman, Esq.Dear Sir: Yours of the 24th. asking "the best mode of obtaining a thorought knowledge of the law" is received. The mode is very simple, though laborious, and tedious. It is only to get the books, and read, and study them carefully. Begin with Blackstone's Commentaries, and after reading it carefully through, say twice, take up Chitty's Pleadings, Greenleaf's Evidence, & Story's Equity &c. in succession. Work, work, work, is the main thing.
Yours very truly
A. Lincoln
"Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."
Lincoln's Cooper Institute Address, February 27, 1860.