On Thursday October 11, 2007 at 7:00 pm, the Kentucky Live! program, organized by the WKU Libraries, presented “Lincoln the Lawyer” by Anderson University professor Brian Dirck at Barnes & Noble Booksellers.
If you missed out the presentation, you can still view a photo album of the event and listen to Prof. Brian Dirck’s speech. You can event listen to it on the go by subscribing to our Libraries’ Podcast.
“A lot of people forget that Lincoln was a lawyer, and a very good one,†Dirck points out, “in fact, he is the most experienced trial attorney we ever put in the White House.†Despite historians’ focus on the man as president and politician, Abraham Lincoln lived most of his adult life as a practicing lawyer. It was as a lawyer that he fed his family, made his reputation, bonded with Illinois, and began his political career.
Lawyering was also how Lincoln learned to become an expert mediator between angry antagonists, as he applied his knowledge of the law and of human nature to settle one dispute after another. Frontier lawyers worked hard to establish respect for the law and encourage people to resolve their differences without intimidation or violence. These were the very skills Lincoln used so deftly to hold a crumbling nation together during his presidency.
