The Lincoln Connection

What’s our Lincoln Connection? As you all know, here in Illinois we are crazy about Abraham Lincoln. Illinois lawyers are no exception. As a group, we hold Lincoln writing contests, sponsor statues of Lincoln, and provide a Lincoln portrait to every courthouse in Illinois. So, in the spirit of the “Lincoln slept here” stories, our resident historian, Sean Tolley , shares Quinn Law & Mediation’s Lincoln Connection.

Justice David Overstreet and Judge Chris Webber present Abraham Lincoln’s portrait to the Crawford County Courthouse.

In 1939, George W. Smith, Professor Emeritus of History at Illinois State Teachers College in Carbondale (SIUC), came to the offices of Quinn Law and Mediation, LLC, looking for Abraham Lincoln.

Of course, the 106 year old house at 901 North Street that we call our “office” was then a 25 year old house called “home” by its builder and resident, Judge William T. Pace. Judge Pace, referred to as “Willie” in John Wall’s 1909 History of Jefferson County, served two terms as county judge in the 1880s. When Professor Smith visited in 1939, he found Judge Pace to be “hale and hearty, a walking cyclopedia, approaching his 86th birthday.”

Professor Smith had come to Mt. Vernon as part of his research for an upcoming book When Lincoln Came to Egypt. He had come to see Judge Pace because his grandfather, Harvey T. Pace had been “one of Lincoln’s co-laborer’s in the 9th, 10th, and 11th sessions of the legislature,” serving two and a half terms as a Democrat in the Illinois House of Representatives. Harvey T. Pace had cultivated a close friendship with the lanky Whig from Sangamon County.

The Pace family of Mt. Vernon was one of the earlier families that settled in the region. Harvey T. Pace was a young man of twenty or more at the time of the arrival of the family from Kentucky. His eldest son, James M. Pace, was born in 1826 and a grandson, William T. Pace, was born December 22, 1853. Harvey T. Pace became moderately wealthy operating a general goods store on the southwest corner of Tenth and Main streets in Mt. Vernon.

Lincoln found occasion to come to Mt. Vernon oftener perhaps than to any other city in Southern Illinois. Lincoln served in the 9th, 10th, and 11th sessions of the legislature with Harvey T. Pace of Mt. Vernon. And while these two men were of different political faiths, they were warm personal friends.

The sittings of the supreme court for the Southern supreme district were held in Mt. Vernon from 1848 to 1870, after which they were moved to Springfield. Lincoln’s duties as an attorney brought him to this Egyptian city. On the occasions of his visits, he was always a welcome caller at the home of Harvey T. Pace, a wealthy, generous Kentuckian.

In 1840 Lincoln was a Whig candidate for Presidential elector. John A. McClernand of Shawneetown was a Democratic candidate for the same office. During the Tippecanoe canvass these two candidates met in a friendly debate in Mt. Vernon. Harvey T. Pace and James M. Pace, then 14 years old, listened to this debate.

Perrin’s History of Jefferson County (1883, 311) tells an odd story about this debate. Mr. McClernand spoke in the forenoon in a church in which court was generally held. He had a good hearing. Lincoln was to speak in the afternoon. When Lincoln and his audience arrived in the afternoon they found the room occupied. The sheriff and the judge, both of whom were Democrats, had decided that the church ought not to be used for political purposes and had opened a session of the court. Lincoln and his audience adjourned to the shady side of the Kirby Hotel, where Lincoln spoke from a goods box.

By the time of Prof. Smith’s interview with Judge Pace, the Kirby Hotel had long since been torn down and replaced with “The Lincoln Building” – a tall, brick structure that housed a furniture/coffin retailer.

Today, the Lincoln Building has long since been replaced by Community First Bank. However, the bronze plaque dedicated and affixed to the front of the Lincoln Building in 1923 by the Joel Pace Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in commemoration of Lincoln’s speech can still be seen today affixed to the front of the bank.

Today, Harvey Pace’s home (302 N. 10th, where Lincoln a “welcome caller”) is a vacant lot opposite Central Christian Church (itself, probably Harvey Pace’s greatest legacy, but an entirely different story…).

*

So, did Judge Pace ever meet the future POTUS?

According to Prof. Smith, the Judge recalled attending the Jonesboro Lincoln-Douglas debate with his father, James, on September 15, 1858. And while his memories were those of a preschooler, embroidered by 82 years of telling and re-telling, he claimed to remember “very well” the “appearance of the speakers”:

When the Judge was reminded that he was only five years old [sic] at that time, he said, “Shucks, in 1856 I nearly yelled my head off hollering for Fremont, while all the other Paces were yelling for Buchanan.”

Shucks, indeed.

The post The Lincoln Connection appeared first on Quinn Law & Mediation, LLC.