Lincoln's Ladder to the Presidency: The Eighth Judicial Circuit

7. Edgar, Shelby, Moultrie, Macon, Christian, Menard, Mason

117 7. Edgar, Shelby, Moultrie, Macon, Christian, Menard, Mason z Edgar The lawyers left Danville and headed south about thirty-five miles to Edgar County. They traveled along the renowned Vincennes Trace, straight south out of Danville through Abraham Smith’s Ridge Farm, where they crossed the county line. It passes through Bloomfield, where Lincoln sometimes stayed at the hotel of Alexander Sommerville. Lincoln is said to have given a temperance lecture here with George W. Riley during the 1830s. The Vincennes Trace crosses several branches of Brouilletts Creek and yet another Sugar Creek just north of Paris.1 David Davis described the scene in 1847 from Danville: “The country the whole distance is beautiful to the eye—much better improved than in McLean and Tazewell.” He notes the courthouse in the center of the Paris public square and “trees of thirteen years’ growth in full bloom” around it. The town was more attractive than Danville, “with houses generally painted or whitewashed and surrounded with trees.”2 Edgar, Shelby, and Sangamon were the only counties in the circuit whose eventual boundaries included settlers at the time of statehood in 1818. The early settlers were mostly Kentuckians, and their influence accounts for the counties’ tolerance of slavery throughout the antebellum era. Edgar County was created in 1823, and the county seat was placed on twenty-six acres Samuel Vance donated. He stipulated that the town 118 Counties of the Eighth Judicial Circuit be named Paris, though the reason for the name is unknown. Its first courthouse, a frame building, was completed in 1824 at the south end of the town square. A year earlier, Milton K. Alexander, a native of Georgia, settled in Paris and opened the county’s first store. In 1826, while continuing to run the store, he also took the office of postmaster, which he held for thirty-two years. Alexander was a veteran of the War of 1812 (and the 1832 Black Hawk War in which he had also fought as a brigadier general of volunteers). He acquired considerable wealth investing in Illinois land, and in 1828, he built a grand home in Paris, the first brick building in the county, evidence of the advance of Paris compared to future circuit sites to the north and west. Lincoln stayed in this home, and Stephen A. Douglas visited there, courting Alexander’s daughter, Jane.3 Alexander, a Democrat, hired Lincoln as an attorney in cases in DeWitt County after Lincoln opposed him in two collection cases Alexander brought in 1851 in Edgar County, his attorney being Kirby Benedict.4 Alexander’s engagement of Lincoln enhanced Lincoln’s professional stature in the area. Another early settler with eventual connections to Lincoln was Elvis P. Shaw. His father, Smith Shaw, came to Paris from North Carolina in 1821 with a land grant from James Monroe and built the town’s first permanent residence in 1823. Elvis, born in 1816, was in the livery and grocery business in Paris. Lincoln got to know him as a youth carrying mail from Paris to Springfield. Lincoln successfully represented Elvis in a dispute in 1842 over ownership of two mares. Elvis built a graceful vernacular I-house in 1853 with Greek Revival elements that Lincoln visited.5 Another leading citizen was Leander Munsell, a native of Cincinnati born in 1793 who fought in the War of 1812. He came to Paris in 1832 and built the more elaborate second courthouse, a brick, coffee-mill-style, twostory building that served throughout Lincoln’s practice. With a contract price of $4,250, it was the first of four Lincoln-era courthouses, all in the coffee-mill style, that Munsell built, the others in Coles (not part of the circuit), McLean, and Macon Counties. He became a successful merchant, owning stores in four counties, and built the first steam mill in Paris in 1834. A dispute with his partner, William McReynolds, ended up in court with Lincoln and Usher Linder representing McReynolds and Benedict representing Munsell.6 119 Edgar, Shelby, Moultrie, Macon, Christian, Menard, Mason Edgar County’s first attorney was Garland Shelledy, born in 1802 in Kentucky . After attending Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, Shelledy began his law practice in Paris in 1828. He asked Lincoln and Stephen T. Logan to “attend to” his bankruptcy cases in the federal court in Springfield, the state’s only federal court at the time, and outlined the terms...