Author: Hannah Dugan

The pride of the American legal profession visited Milwaukee only once, and for merely a day. Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln came to Milwaukee not at the behest of Wisconsin bar colleagues, [1] but rather at the behest of the State Agricultural Society of Wisconsin. He came not as a skilled litigator, but rather as a celebrity. And he did not disappoint. He came to the 1859 version of the Wisconsin State Fair, during which he earned some speaker’s fees and gained some political friends. Within five months, he headed to New York to deliver his career-changing Cooper Union Speech,...