Famously, Abraham Lincoln wrote that he the “aggregate of all his schooling did not amount to one year.” He added that he “was never in a college or Academy as a student; and never inside of a college or academy building til since he had a law-license.” And yet, Lincoln is a college guy, of sorts.
Lincoln’s formal schooling was “by littles.” As was common on the frontier, children attended school only during the winter months – after the fall harvest and before the spring planting. That is, if there was a teacher available, usually by subscription. Teachers were scarce despite no qualifications beyond “readin, writin, and cipherin’ to the Rule of Three.” The state of education on the frontier was so limited that “if a straggler supposed to understand Latin, happened to so-journ in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard.” Of course, Lincoln did what he could to “pick up from time to time under the pressure of necessity” any other education. To give him proper credit, that included teaching himself English grammar, Euclid geometry, surveying, and the law. No small achievements.
But he never went to college. To become a lawyer on the frontier, all he needed to do was pass an oral exam (done informally while walking with his mentor) and have someone vouch for his personal character (done by another mentor). He joked that the only time he walked the halls of college was during the Lincoln-Douglas debate in Galesburg, Illinois, held on the campus of Knox College. To reach the platform Lincoln, Douglas, and other dignitaries needed to enter the building and crawl out a window. The self-taught Lincoln, according to tradition, noted that “At last I have gone through…college.”
All this said, because of his life’s work, Lincoln has been awarded several honorary degrees. Two years after he debated Douglas on its campus, Knox College awarded Lincoln an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1860. The following year, Columbia College (now Columbia University) awarded him the Doctor of Laws, as did the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) in 1864. More recently, Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois, awarded an honorary Bachelor of Arts degree in 2009 concurrent with the dedication of a statue of Lincoln. Lincoln’s law partner, William Herndon, is an alumnus of the College.
Lincoln’s son Robert attended Harvard College (now Harvard University), graduating in 1864. He attended Harvard Law School from September 1864 to January 1865, but dropped out to join the army as an aide to General Ulysses S. Grant. Never returning, Robert was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1893.
So yes, Abraham Lincoln, College Guy.
[Photo: Lincoln statue on campus of Illinois College, by David J. Kent 2019]
David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America. His newest Lincoln book is scheduled for release in February 2022. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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This led down a really interesting rabbit hole wanting to know more about Lincoln’s reading list. The University of Michigan’s, “Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association,” has an interesting article here (replace the “[DOT]”):
quod.lib.umich[DOT]edu/j/jala/2629860.0028.204?view=text;rgn=main
Indeed, I’ve spent a lot of time in the Bray article and the book he wrote based on the article. They show he was a lot more educated than he let on, with the majority of it self-study. I talk more about it in my forthcoming book, especially the math and science aspects.
Looking through the list with an eye on those with high confidence would seem to reveal that Lincoln was rather an orator, which makes perfect sense. Beyond the surprising amounts of poetry and song, legal works and texts, the issue of slavery, and the mathematics associated with basic land survey seem to stand out. Some most interesting to me are: Joseph Story’s, “Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence”, and Thomas Jefferson’s letters. Likewise are the juxtapositions of works such as Thomas Paine’s, “The Age of Reason”, and John Hyde’s, “Mormonism” (full title: “Mormonism: its leaders and designs”). I detect perhaps some degree of religious skepticism with a shift to Enlightenment thinking as filtered through a few early American perspectives. All of this would certainly have influenced his thinking in terms of “property”.
Despite having just sent about a third of my library off to the book recycler (from which I salvaged a 1949, Paul Angle edited edition of William H. Herndon’s, “Life of Lincoln”), I just ordered a copy of Bray’s book out of pure curiosity. I’ll add here that Herndon wrote of Lincoln recommending acquiring a knowledge of law through a “laborious and tedious” studying of “Blackstone’s Commentaries, Chitty’s Pleadings, Greenleaf’s Evidence, and Story’s Equity in succession.” All, of course, appear in Bray’s list.
He definitely was well read, though perhaps not some of the usual classic fare. His religiosity (or lack of, depending on who you listen to) is still an area of contentious debate, including its evolution from skepticism (to put it mildly) to the profuse religious themes in his second inaugural. He really didn’t talk about his personal views much, and using religious language to reach the masses, many of whom had limited reading beyond the Bible, was common at the time. I’m not sure how much he thought about Mormonism, but early in his career he, like many in Illinois, were not too crazy about having what was seen as a grifter society stop in Nauvoo for a spell after being chased out of the East before moving on to the Utah territory. Supposedly Mormons thought he treated them favorably once president, but it’s not an area I’ve read much on.
Bray’s book is not light reading, but it does give some further insights not in the article. Unlike some of the earlier catalogers of Lincoln’s reading (including some rather dubious listings), Bray dug pretty deep to determine which ones Lincoln is sure to have, or at least most likely to have, read. Of course, “read” could mean deep reading repeatedly or it could mean scanned or skipped most while reading the good bits. Either way, it’s an impressive list given how hard it was to obtain books on the frontier at that time. One thing I did for my book was dig up PDF copies of a lot of the old, obscure texts (in addition to the ones I have on my shelf). Pretty cool to see first hand what was actually in the books.
Associate Illinois Supreme Court Justice, Samuel Drake Lockwood, interviewed Lincoln for his law license. As there was no protocol written or oral exam for budding attorneys in those days, the test was administered on a walk through Vandalia, then the state capitol. The talk was extremely casual and, we might think, simple. Later, the only question of three officials queries that L recalled was: “What river forms the western boundary of our state?” In context, that was not so easy to answer as most Illinois citizens were quite unaware of our geographic outline. When Judge Lockwood retired from the court in 1848, he built Lockwood Hall in Batavia, IL, and moved there @1850. Lockwood Hall still stands, privately occupied, just a few blocks south of Bellevue Place, where Mrs. Lincoln stayed in `875. When his friend, Mr. Lincoln, was elected POTUS, the judge sent at least five letters to him at the Executive Mansion, as the White House was then known. These letters, requesting federal appointments for Lockwood’s associates, are still available for review at the National Archives. One of the letters includes handwritten notes by Mr. Lincoln, presumable for posterity’s sake, describing his, Mrs. Lincoln’s, and their sons’ relationships with the Lockwoods years before in Springfield.
Thanks for the additional info about Lockwood. I wasn’t aware Lockwood Hall still stands in Batavia, so I missed it the last time I was there. Will put it on the list for the next time.
There is also a theory that his “Notes for a Law Lecture” were prepared for a lecture he was invited to give at Ohio State Union and College in Cleveland in 1858. We don’t know if this was so, or if he ever actually delivered that lecture. But I suppose one could argue this made him sort of a “college guy” as well.
Thanks, Brian. Perhaps he spent more time in “college” than we’ll ever know.
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