Abraham Lincoln obtained his license to practice law in 1837 and spent approximately 20 years as an attorney riding the Eighth Illinois Judicial Circuit. With a group of lawyers and a judge, the law was “brought to the people” in 14 central Illinois counties. Twice a year for 10 to 12 weeks — in the spring and fall — mostly civil disputes were heard and adjudicated by this traveling legal team.

It was during Lincoln’s early years on the judicial circuit that his prowess and reputation as a first-rate storyteller first came to light. He often used humorous stories and anecdotes to make a point during a trial. It was also a way for apprising the all-male juries that Lincoln was one of them, a country boy, not some big city lawyer. He didn’t hesitate to use bawdy jokes to get a point across.

On at least one occasion, he told jurors about a small boy who ran to summon his father. “Paw, come quick,” he panted. “The hired man and sis are up in the haymow, and he’s a-pullin’ down his pants and she’s a-liftin’ up her skirts. And paw, they’re gettin’ ready to pee all over our hay!” The father replied: “Son, you’ve got your facts absolutely right, but you’ve drawn a completely wrong conclusion.” Lincoln told the jury that opposing counsel was doing the same thing.

Circuit attorneys routinely stayed at boarding houses, and after the evening meal, the stories and joke-telling began. Lincoln historian F. Lauriston Bullard put it this way: “Life on the circuit was so ordered that storytelling tournaments were practically ordained for the nights and week ends” after the court’s business was completed. One observer noted that Lincoln took pride in his reputation “as the best spinner of yarns in the state.”

Some of Lincoln’s favorite stories were about himself, especially his physical appearance. “I’m reminded of the day when I was out chopping wood,” Lincoln began, “and a woman come by on a horse, and she stopped and she looked at me and said: ‘My, you’re the ugliest man I ever saw.’ And I said to her: ‘Well, ma’am, there isn’t a lot I can do about it.’ And she said: ‘Well, you could have stayed home.’

During one of the seven Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, incumbent Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas accused his opponent of being “two-faced.” Lincoln replied: “If I had another face, would I be wearing this one?”

One of the most frequently cited Lincoln stories was his tale (there is no evidence it ever happened) about Ethan Allen, Revolutionary War hero and leader of the (Vermont) Green Mountain Boys. On a trip to England after the war, Allen found that Americans in general, and George Washington in particular, were ridiculed. Returning from the outhouse, Allen was asked by his condescending host if he noticed the portrait of George Washington. Allen said he did not, but asserted the privy was the perfect location for it, “as there was nothing that will make an Englishman defecate so quick as the sight of General Washington.”

Lincoln’s longtime law partner and friend William H. Herndon wrote that when telling a story, the future president’s “countenance and all his features seemed to take part in the performance. As he neared the pith or point of the story, every vestige of seriousness disappeared from his face. His gray eyes sparkled … his frame quivered with suppressed excitement; and when the nub of the story — as he called it — came, no one’s laugh was heartier than his.”

One might assume that Lincoln stopped telling stories and jokes when he became president. To the contrary, Lincoln routinely engaged in this practice for a variety of reasons: to make a point, reinforce a position, diffuse a difficult situation, change a topic, end a conversation and ridicule opponents.

When Ohio Congressman James Ashley disapproved of a story Lincoln had just told, the President responded: “Ashley, I have great confidence in you and great respect for you, and I know how sincere you are. But if I couldn’t tell these stories, I would die.” Lincoln said a good story “has the same effect on me that I think a good square drink of whiskey has to the old roper. It puts new life into me …”

William Herndon wrote: “Lincoln’s melancholy never failed to impress any man who ever knew him. The perpetual look of sadness was his most dominant feature …his melancholy dripped from him as he walked.” According to historian Joshua Wolf Shenk, the sixteenth president suffered from melancholy and occasional deep depression.

Melancholy, from the Greek word “melancholia,” describes pervasive feelings of intense sadness and hopelessness — an inability to experience pleasure regardless of the experience. Melancholia has long been thought to have biological origins. Depression — including debilitating depression — is more likely to be triggered by a specific event or events, the death of a loved one, a major disappointment or upheaval in one’s life, for example.

Telling stories and jokes was Lincoln’s respite from deep, all but overwhelming sadness. Indiana Congressman, George W. Julian, recalled that Lincoln “entered into the enjoyment of his stories with all his heart…I believe his anecdotes were his great solace and safeguard in seasons of severe mental depression.”

Consider the tragedies and mental depression Lincoln endured in the first 18 months of his presidency. In February 1862, two of his sons were sick with typhoid fever. Eleven-year-old Willie died and nine-year-old Tad barely survived. After Willie’s death, Lincoln tried desperately to comfort his wife, whose grief was profound. Inconsolable and mentally unstable, Mary Lincoln was bedridden for weeks.

The first major battle of the Civil War (Bull Run in July 1861) was a humiliating Union defeat. Two months after Willie died, there were over 13,000 Union casualties — killed, wounded, captured and missing — at the Battle of Shiloh. In September 1862, at the Battle of Antietam, 12,000 more Union casualties. And the worst of the fighting was yet to come, two-and-a-half more years of suffering and death, in the Union and Confederacy.

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George J. Bryjak lives in Bloomingdale and is retired after 24 years of teaching sociology at the University of San Diego.