Abraham Lincoln. His license was granted on September 15, 1850, and was signed by S. H. Treat, Chief Justice, and Lyman Trumbull, Associate Justice.
He practiced law as opportunity offered and wrote editorials for the Journal until the latter part of 1852, when he secured a clerkship in the pension department in Washington, D. C. With the change of the national administration from Whig to Democratic by the inauguration of Franklin Pierce as President on March 4, 1853, Mr. Craig, being a Whig, was removed. Then he started to Oregon via the Isthmus, but upon arriving at Panama found employment on the Panama Daily Star, as a type setter and an editorial writer. Mr. Craig's services were very useful to this paper, because part of it was printed in the Spanish language, with which he was familiar. He could speak and write the Spanish language and translate it into English with equal facility. Not only so, but his knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, Latin and French enabled him to translate the same into English when necessary.
Mr. Craig acquired these languages without a teacher, aside from his father, before he was sixteen years old. His knowledge of mathematics was acquired in the same way. When about nineteen years old the authorities of a certain academy near Springfield, Ill., examined him in all the studies required in the curriculum of that institution and he passed an excellent examination and was offered a position upon the submission of his diploma—b, document he never had—and therefore was unable to comply with the requirements of the academic authorities.
Mr. Craig arrived in Portland on Nov. 25, 1853, on the steamship Columbia, five days from San Francisco. Among his fellow passengers were Gov. John W. Davis, of Indiana, bearing his commission as governor of Oregon Territory, signed by President Franklin Pierce, and Henry W. Corbett. Upon this trip a friendship sprang up between Mr. Corbett and Mr. Craig, which lasted the remainder of their lives.
Early in December following Mr. Craig went to Salem and
