STUART, John Todd, lawyer, born near Lexington, Kentucky, 10 November, 1807; died in Springfield, Illinois, 28 November, 1885. His ancestry was Scotch-Irish; his father, Robert Stuart, was a Presbyterian clergyman, and his maternal grandfather was Levi Todd, one of the survivors of the disastrous Indian battle at the Blue Licks in 1782. He was graduated at Centre college, Kentucky, in 1826, was admitted to the bar, and removed to Springfield, Illinois, at the age of twenty-one. He took at once a high place in his profession, and held it actively for nearly sixty years, to the day of his death. He was a Whig until the formation of the Republican party, served in the legislature from 1832 till 1836, and was de-feared in a congressional contest in the latter year, being then the recognized leader of his party. He renewed the contest in 1838, with Stephen A. Douglas as his opponent, and was successful after a campaign that excited national attention. After two terms in congress he declined a re-election. Mr. Stuart was a member of the state senate from 1848 till 1852, and was distinguished for the part he took in settling the charter of the Illinois Central railroad, front the provisions of which the state derives an annual revenue that amounted in 1887 to $396,315.07, the total revenue of the state in the same year being $3,185,607.56. He remained out of public life until 1862, when he was again elected to congress, but now as a Democrat, serving one term. The last special public service of Mr. Stuart was as a commissioner in the erection of the new state-house. He was also chairman of the executive committee of the National Lincoln monument association. He served as a major in the Black Hawk war in 1832, and this title was always used in addressing him. In this campaign he met Abraham Lincoln, and thus began a life-long intimacy. They were fellow-members of the legislature in 1834. He induced Mr. Lincoln to study law, lent him the necessary books, and took him as a partner as soon as he was admitted to practice. This partnership lasted until April, 1841; in 1843 Mr. Stuart associated with himself in legal business Benjamin S. Edwards, and in 1860 his son-in-law, Christopher C. Brown, and their firm was at Mr. Stuart's death the oldest in the state. In personal character Mr. Stuart was a model of kindness, fidelity, purity, and nobility, and in his busy career as a lawyer and legislator he found time for the exercise in many directions of a wise public spirit, which made him for more than half a century one of the most notable citizens of the community in which he lived.