When Lincoln was admitted to the bar the practice of the law was in a very crude condition in Illinois. General principles gathered from a few text-books formed the simple basis upon which lawyers tried cases and framed arguments in improvised court-rooms. But the advance was rapid and carried Lincoln forward with it. The raw material, if the phrase may be pardoned, was excellent; there were many men in the State who united a natural aptitude for the profession with high ability, ambition, and a progressive spirit. Lincoln was brought in contact with them all, whether they rode his circuit or not, because the federal courts were held only in Springfield. Among them were Stephen A. Douglas, Lyman Trumbull, afterward for a long while chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the national Senate, David Davis, afterward a senator, and an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; O.H. Browning, Ninian W. Edwards, Edward D. Baker, Justin Butterfield, Judge Logan, and more. Precisely what position Lincoln occupied among these men it is difficult to say with accuracy, because it is impossible to know just how much of the praise which has been bestowed upon him is the language of eulogy or of the brotherly courtesy of the bar, and how much is a discriminating valuation of his qualities. That in the foregoing list there were better and greater lawyers than he is unquestionable; that he was primarily a politician and only secondarily a lawyer is equally beyond denial. He has been described also as "a case lawyer," that is to say, a lawyer who studies each case as it comes to him simply by and for itself, a method which makes the practitioner rather than the jurist. That Lincoln was ever learned in the science is hardly pretended. In fact it was not possible that the divided allegiance which he gave to his profession for a score of years could have achieved such a result.[50] But it is said, and the well-known manner of his mental operations makes it easy to believe, that his arguments had a marvelous simplicity and clearness, alike in thought and in expression. To these traits they owed their great force; and a legal argument can have no higher traits; fine-drawn subtlety is undeniably an inferior quality. Noteworthy above all else was his extraordinary capacity for statement; all agree that his statement of his case and his presentation of the facts and the evidence were so plain and fair as to be far more convincing than the argument which was built upon them. Again it may be said that the power to state in this manner is as high in the order of intellectual achievement as anything within forensic possibilities.