This political service interfered to some
extent with his work at the Bar, but he did not permit political
interests to stand in the way of any obligations that had been assumed
to his clients. He simply accepted fewer cases, and to this extent
reduced his very moderate earnings. In his work as a lawyer, he never
showed any particular capacity for increasing income or for looking
after his own business interests. It was his principle and his practice
to discourage litigation. He appears, during the twenty-five years in
which he was in active practice, to have made absolutely no enemies
among his professional opponents. He enjoyed an exceptional reputation
for the frankness with which he would accept the legitimate contentions
of his opponents or would even himself state their case. Judge David
Davis, before whom Lincoln had occasion during these years to practise,
says that the Court was always prepared to accept as absolutely fair and
substantially complete Lincoln's statement of the matters at issue.
Davis says it occasionally happened that Lincoln would supply some
consideration of importance on his opponent's side of the case that the
other counsel had overlooked. It was Lincoln's principle to impress upon
himself at the outset the full strength of the other man's position.
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