In Lincoln's steps

"I wonder if Lincoln had to turn around this much," the Navigator said, map splayed across her lap in the passenger seat.

I had just spun the steering wheel for our fifth or sixth U-turn of the day on yet another placid two-lane highway indistinguishable in its beauty from every other one we'd seen that day. Hence all the U-turns.

In addition to his better-known achievements -- uniter of a fractured nation, freer of the slaves, 16th president -- I was ready to heap one more laudatory title upon Abraham Lincoln: deft traveler of the Illinois countryside.

The Navigator and I were somewhere between Middletown (pop. 420, according to a U.S. Census Bureau estimate) and Tremont (pop. 2,072), in the heart of what was once the Eighth Judicial Circuit. The circuit included 14 counties (later reduced to eight) that didn't have their own court staff in the mid-19th century, so the prosecutor, defense attorney and judge came to them. Usually acting as the defense, Honest Abe traversed this land largely by carriage or horseback every fall and spring for 23 years. At night, the lawyers slept two in a bed, three or four beds jammed in a room. Each trip lasted about three months and covered 450 miles.

Down here they say the experience made the man. Lincoln spent eight years in the state's General Assembly and two years in the U.S. House of Representatives, but for the bulk of his pre-presidential career, he worked as a lawyer. At home in Springfield, he was in private practice. But nearly half his year was spent traveling the circuit, where he took on his share of oddities, such as defending a woman accused of murdering her husband with a piece of firewood or successfully prosecuting a man accused of stealing a herd of cows.

To note the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, the Navigator and I set out to retrace his route as closely as possible. The good news: Historical organizations long ago planted markers at each county line to guide travelers on the same path Lincoln took. The bad news: The route includes dozens of intersections that are just wisps on the map and miles from a paved road. In the name of honesty, I should say we got turned around more than once. But when we finished four days later, the Navigator had a new appreciation for the man.

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"Instead of playing golf, I got serious about Lincoln," said Fraker, whose book, "The 8th Judicial Circuit: Lincoln's Ladder to the White House," is to be published next year by Southern Illinois University Press.

He has driven the circuit several times and memorized much of it, a near wonder considering it involves an unbelievable number of quick turns on tiny roads. For navigation, I set out recruiting and settled on an old friend whom I figured could A) be in a car with me for four days without arguing about music and B) get lost with me many, many times during those four days without arguing about being lost.

She and I started in Springfield, where we visited the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum and the modest two-story house where he lived with his wife and children. Both were interesting, but light on circuit history. And the Navigator squealed when she found on display in the museum a wooden folding mirror that Lincoln used for shaving while on the circuit.

"It would be pretty bulky to take with you," she said. "I can see why he would want to start growing that beard."

About 10 miles north of Springfield we found a spot where a marker was supposed to have been. Near Delavan we passed the first existing marker -- a bird had built a nest inside -- before getting to Tremont, the no-stoplight former seat of Tazewell County, where the Tremont Museum and Historical Society is open from 2 to 4 p.m. on the second Sunday of each month.

We couldn't find the house, a private home, during a quick spin through Tremont's quiet streets, so we stopped into one of the few businesses on the town's main street -- an insurance office. I explained the house we were looking for, and Bob Wettstein immediately knew where to send us.

"That was my grandpa's house," said Wettstein, 30.

After marveling at the house, we pushed on past another marker and landed in Metamora (pop. 3,324). There, in the former seat of Woodford County, is one of the bigger finds on the trip: one of the two courthouses on Lincoln's circuit still standing in its original location.

Built in 1845, that creaky two-story brick courthouse has been refashioned as a museum and state historic site. The second-floor courtroom is simple and tidy. "The floorboards are original, so you're literally walking in Lincoln's footsteps up here," said curator Jean Myers.

The Metamora courtroom looks onto a park where, Myers said, Lincoln would meet potential clients and mediate disputes that he thought shouldn't go to court. Sometimes he would bring those mediations to the tavern "to get them lubricated a little bit," Myers said. He called it an example of Lincoln being a peacemaker who was a step ahead of everyone else.

The next morning, Fraker gave us his tour of relevant Lincoln spots in downtown Bloomington, which include a few buildings where the future president worked. Some have sat untouched for decades, but not in an effort to preserve history; they just haven't been redeveloped yet.

After a tour of the David Davis Mansion -- Davis was the judge on the circuit and helped get Lincoln elected president -- the Navigator and I headed back to the countryside, passing Marker 4 on the desolate, snowy border between McLean and Logan counties.

After a night in Urbana, we headed east on a lovely strip called Lincoln Trail Road, one of the original, crooked paths Lincoln traversed.

In Danville, another spare city puncturing our idyllic rural escape, we stopped at the Vermilion County Museum, where we saw a desk used by Lincoln. Next door, and part of the museum, is the home of Dr. William Fithian, who served in the General Assembly with Lincoln and put him up when the circuit came through town. The highlight: a walnut, half-canopy bed on which Honest Abe slept.

We roared past another marker, but stopped in Paris (pop. 8,785) to see the Milton Alexander house, where Lincoln stayed. Then it was on to Charleston (pop. 20,296), where one of his legendary debates with Stephen Douglas was held. On the way, we passed Marker 10.