Although born over a decade after Abraham Lincoln's death, Carl Sandburg spent a large part of his life writing about the deeds and accomplishments of this American leader. Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, commonly referred to as simply The Prairie Years, was the first of several works that Sandburg would publish about his favorite personality. Because of the inclusion of myths and unsubstantiated anecdotes about Lincoln along with its more factual content, the work is perhaps most aptly identified as folk biography rather than a genuine life story of the real man.
The legal circuit. In the early 1800s, only a handful of law schools existed, primarily in the East, but most lawyers of the period preferred learning about the law through hands-on experience rather than in a classroom. Many were taken on as apprentices by more experienced practitioners who taught them firsthand how to effectively argue a case. Lincoln, however, taught himself the law without an apprenticeship, memorizing Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws ofEngland. He also learned by heart "Greenleaf on evidence, Chitty's Pleadings, and Story's Equity, rehearsing cases aloud, analyzing some legal point from various angles until he understood the essence of the problem" (Oates, With Malice toward None, p.
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