ABSTRACT
In 1803 when Daniel began his legal training, there was only one proprietary law school in all New England, Litchfield Law School. The stress came to a head in 1804 when he appeared at the Supreme Court as counsel to the president in Coxe v. Pennington, a case brought to the court to determine the viability of Jefferson's 1802 repeal of John Adams's excise tax on domestic goods. Levi's enemies in the Federalist press gleefully pounced and made hay of his embarrassment, adding it to the spiteful arsenal they had already used to discredit him. Rumors circulated that Jefferson was so embarrassed by Lincoln's performance that he wanted to fire him. Worcester instituted a voluntary militia in 1781 during the Revolutionary War, but by 1803 it had degenerated into a motley conglomeration of transient young men whose attendance at meetings was irregular, whose uniforms were slovenly, and whose interest in defending Worcester, if ever put to the test, was questionable.
