. Each spring and fall Lincoln traveled the district for nine to ten weeks at a time, netting around $150 for each ten-week circuit. On the road, lawyers and judges lived in cheap hotels, with two lawyers to a bed; six or eight men to a room. Lincoln's reputation for integrity and fairness on the circuit led to him being in high demand both from clients and local attorneys who needed assistance. It was during his time riding the circuit that he picked up one of his lasting nicknames, "Honest Abe". The clients he represented, the men he rode the circuit with, and the lawyers he met along the way became some of Lincoln's most loyal political supporters. One of these was David Davis, a fellow Whig who, like Lincoln, promoted nationalist economic programs and opposed slavery without actually becoming an abolitionist. Davis joined the circuit in 1848 as a judge and would occasionally appoint Lincoln to fill in for him. They traveled the circuit for eleven years, and Lincoln would eventually appoint him to the United States Supreme Court. Another close associate was Ward Hill Lamon, an attorney in Danville, Illinois. Lamon, the only local attorney with whom Lincoln had a formal working agreement, accompanied Lincoln to Washington in 1861. Case load and income Unlike other attorneys on the circuit, Lincoln did not supplement his income by engaging in real estate speculation or operating a business or a farm. His income was generally what he earned practicing law. In the 1840s this amounted to $1,500 to $2,500 a year, increasing to $3,000 in the early 1850s, and was $5,000 by the mid-1850s. Criminal law made up the smallest portion of Lincoln and Herndon's case work. In 1850 the firm was involved in eighteen percent of the cases on the Sangamon County Circuit; by 1853 it had grown to thirty-three percent. On his return from his single term in the U.S. House of Representatives, Lincoln turned down an offer of a partnership in a Chicago law firm. Based strictly on the volume of cases, Lincoln was "undoubtedly one of the outstanding lawyers of central Illinois." Lincoln was also in demand on the federal courts. He received important retainers from cases in the United States Northern District Court in Chicago. Lincoln was involved in at least two cases involving slavery. In an 1841 Illinois Supreme Court case, Bailey v. Cromwell, Lincoln