Judging Lincoln

Foreword

Foreword D  famous Illinois senatorial debates of , challenger Abraham Lincoln liked to goad his opponent incumbent, Stephen A. Douglas, by referring to him by a name clearly meant in those days to disparage him: judge. With Lincoln, it was never “Senator Douglas.” It was always “Judge Douglas.” The old debate transcripts still fairly crackle with the subtle but disparaging inflection that Lincoln must have brought to the task of so teasing “the Little Giant.” It was not that Lincoln held the entire judiciary in disregard. In fact, he counted several judges as friends and political allies, among them David W. Davis, whom he would one day name to the United States Supreme Court. And Lincoln himself had served as a judge from time to time, presiding over the occasional case on the Illinois Eighth Judicial Circuit when preassigned jurists became unavailable. But in , Lincoln was also deep in a war of criticism against the Supreme Court’s recent Dred Scott decision, which he believed emblematic of a Democratic Party conspiracy to nationalize slavery. Douglas huffed in reply that his rival was doing nothing less than “making war” on a decision made by the nation’s highest tribunal. Lincoln disagreed. In a stinging reply at the Quincy debate on October , Lincoln reminded his audience that Douglas himself had years earlier worked “to reverse a decision ” of Illinois’s own state supreme court, in the bargain winning the judgeship that Lincoln now enjoyed ridiculing. “Did he not go and make speeches in the lobby and show how it was villainous,” Lincoln asked, “and did he not succeed in procuring the reorganizing of the court, and did he not succeed in sitting on the bench, getting his name of Judge in that way?” Clearly, being a judge was no certain avenue to respect where Lincoln was concerned. xiii John D. Whiting, [Lincoln and Douglas in Debate]. Undated. Oil painting, ½ ⫻ inches. This illustrator captured the great difference in height between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. Harold Holzer, who published this image in his Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete, Unexpurgated Text (New York: HarperCollins, ), believes that the scene represents the debate at Ottawa, Quincy, or Alton, each of which occurred in a town square much like the one depicted here. From The Frank and Virginia Williams Collection of Lincolniana; photograph by Virginia Williams. But then, Abraham Lincoln never knew Frank J. Williams. One suspects that if he had, Lincoln would have cheerfully referred to him as “judge,” too—but without a whit of sarcasm. On the other hand, Judge Williams—now Chief Justice Williams of the Rhode Island Supreme Court—certainly knows Abraham Lincoln. He has spent a lifetime not only studying Lincoln but doing his best to emulate him. Inspired by him as a student, Williams went on to practice law for the same number of years as Lincoln did a century earlier. He then won a place on the Rhode Island Superior Court and, from there, nomination by his governor and unanimous confirmation by his state legislature as the state’s chief justice . Not even Lincoln ever won an election without a dissenting vote. What is most extraordinary about Rhode Island’s top jurist, however, is that throughout his long and busy career in the law (he has also attended a state constitutional convention and served as a town moderator in his “spare time”), he has managed to emerge as the country’s most influential, successful , and popular Lincoln organizational leader. This I can say from firsthand experience, having served with him on the executive board of the Abraham Lincoln Association during a few of the nine years he led that group as president and enlarged the organization significantly. I am also a fellow director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, which Judge Williams serves as president , too. And I am vice chair of the Lincoln Forum, the national organization that Judge Williams cofounded and has chaired since its inception, transforming it from a mere idea into a genuine national treasure: a true public forum on cutting-edge Lincoln scholarship, regularly made available to millions of viewers on -. Wherever he has served in the Lincoln sphere, in fact, Judge Williams has stirred interest, increased membership, built a loyal following, and fostered appreciation of Lincoln and his era. Both of us were honored in  with appointments to the United States Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission —his, a nomination from the Republican side of the aisle, mine from the Democratic...