28).
After studying on his own, Lincoln became registered by the Sangamon County Court as a man of good moral character-a necessary step to becoming a lawyer in Illinois during the 1830s. He then summoned up the courage to take his bar exam-an oral questioning by practicing attorneys on the history and technical nuances of the law. Lincoln answered the questions without a fault, received his license (September 9, 1836), and immediately took on cases.
Because of their sparse population, many counties of the day could not yet sustain a fulltime judge. Back in 1789 the first Congress of the United States had adopted a system whereby state supreme court justices would complete a circuit of local county seats twice a year to hear cases. In Illinois in the early 1800s, riding the circuit of local county seats took three months at a time, so that anyone who rode the circuit twice would be gone from home for roughly six months a year. Lawyers such as Lincoln, who lived in the larger centers, could earn money by traveling with the justices to help handle the local disputes.
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