My grandfather on my mother’s side was a self-taught lawyer. His jurisprudence was practiced in Socorro, New Mexico in the late 1800s. Some of my relatives say that he lobbied for statehood, though that effort didn’t succeed in New Mexico until 1912.
It was more than 50 years earlier, in 1860, that another self-taught lawyer was lobbying his case against a field of 11 at the Republican National Convention held in the bustling city of Chicago, Illinois. A little-known Illinois country attorney, Abraham Lincoln, was seeking the Republican nomination for president.
Lincoln was anti-slavery and pro-Union. While the Northern and Southern states had drawn lines on the slavery issue, it was the Northwest Territories, including future states like New Mexico, that loomed as an unknown in terms of whether they would reject or accept slavery. Where they landed on the issue would add or detract from allegiances already established in the East….