| This dissertation examines the interaction between lawyers and society in the territories and states of the Old Northwest, from its opening to large-scale white settlement after the War of 1812 until the Civil War. The antebellum Midwest is a fruitful period and region to study the role of the bar in the developing middle class, expanding market economy, and growing communities. This dissertation argues that during this period lawyers connected themselves to the middle class and made themselves indispensible to the settlement and growth of town society. Yet the profession also struggled to regain the cultural standing it held before the American Revolution. How did lawyers come to identify themselves professionally after the fragmentation of the unified bar of the pre-Revolution years? What methods did aspiring and senior members of the bar employ to improve on legal education during a time of declension in the profession's apprenticeship and training requirements? And finally, how did lawyers maintain professional connections while also strengthening their position in the wider, non-lawyer, society of northwestern towns during a time of rapid change? To answer these questions, this dissertation focuses on the personal stories of lawyers in Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, employing demographic data, personal writings, business correspondence, legal records, and reminiscences. It examines lawyers' experiences in the settlement of the antebellum Midwest, in education and the formation of legal partnerships, in family life, and in circuit and town practices. This dissertation challenges earlier studies of the nineteenth-century bar as a separate elite or as a disorganized and deflated profession and instead finds that the development of middle-class town society and modern professional legal culture occurred in tandem and for mutual benefit. |
