Law Schools

Abraham Lincoln And The First 'JD Advantage' Job

We remember the railsplitting and the presidenting, but what massive financial burden of a job did young lawyer Lincoln spend years paying off?

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In honor of Presidents’ Day (technically “Washington’s Birthday (Observed),” but who stands on such formality), let’s revisit the early career of one of our landmark lawyerly presidents. Somewhere between being a railsplitter, a lawyer, and a president, Abraham Lincoln spent several years locked in a less savory occupation, at least by the social mores of the day. Indeed, years later Stephen Douglas would use this job to mock Lincoln during their legendary debates. But Lincoln couldn’t help it. Even armed with his law license, Lincoln remained bound to this non-legal position because he simply couldn’t get a practice going.

Lincoln was a bartender.

In a sense, Lincoln had the first “JD Advantage” job, if you define that as a money-losing, non-legal job a lawyer has to suffer through because there are no available practice opportunities. Even in an era where the ABA didn’t force prospective lawyers to earn a law degree — Lincoln was self-taught — there was just no escaping a bad legal market.

In January 1833, he partnered with his friend from his militia days, William F. Berry, to purchase a small store, which they named Berry and Lincoln. Stores could sell alcohol in quantities greater than a pint for off-premises consumption, but it was illegal to sell single drinks to consume at the store without a license. In March 1833, Berry and Lincoln were issued a tavern, or liquor, license, which cost them $7 and was taken out in Berry’s name. Stores that sold liquor to consume on the premises were called groceries.

In case you’re interested in what you could get down at Berry and Lincoln, the drink menu has actually survived (all prices in cents):

French Brandy per ½ pint
25
Peach
18 ¾
Apple
12
Holland Gin
18 ¾
Domestic Gin
12 ½
Wine
25
Rum
18 ¾
Whiskey
12 ½

Around this time, Lincoln resolved to become a lawyer and started reading Blackstone’s Commentaries in his downtime, when he wasn’t chatting up customers and slinging drinks like Tom Cruise in Cocktail. Or maybe he didn’t. For his part, Lincoln claimed to have never served alcohol by the drink. A quirk of the legal regime at work in 1800s Illinois, Berry and Lincoln was licensed as a liquor store for a couple of months prior to becoming a proper bar. Lincoln’s decision to sell his interest in Berry and Lincoln came immediately after the store shifted into the more frowned upon bar trade. Logic suggests that Lincoln, who already expressed a long-term interest in public office, sold his interest for purely optical reasons and otherwise kept running the bar, but we call the guy “Honest Abe” so we’re supposed to trust that he walked away from the bar forever. Even though there’s some evidence he ran a post office out of the joint (which kind of also makes Lincoln the first Cliff Clavin) for a while. Hmmm.

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Even if we give Lincoln the benefit of the doubt that he turned his back on the establishment as soon as it crossed into a proper gin joint, Lincoln was still stuck with the financially struggling bar despite theoretically selling off his ownership interest.

Berry died two years later, and Lincoln assumed the debts from the business. It wasn’t until 1848, when Lincoln was a congressman, that he was able to pay off the whole debt.

So it took Lincoln 13 years to pay off the debt from the business he ran (and then sold and then inherited) while he studied for the bar on his own. Maybe this wasn’t the first JD Advantage job as much as the first modern law school experience. Remember, the concept of the bankrupting law school is of much more recent vintage. The preeminent law school of that era charged $160 total for a two year education — that’s less than having one French Brandy a day for two years at Berry and Lincoln.

Perhaps Lincoln should have just gone to law school instead.

Bartender-In-Chief: Abraham Lincoln Owned A Tavern [Chicagoist]
Lincoln’s New Salem [UMDL Texts]
5 Famous People With Crazy Second Lives Nobody Knows About [Cracked]

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