LEGISLATIVE EXPERIENCE
The election of Mr. Lincoln to the Legislature may be said to have
closed the pioneer portion of his life. He was done with the wild
carelessness of the woods, with the jolly ruffianism of Clary's Grove,
with the petty chaffering of grocery stores, with odd jobs for daily
bread, with all the uncouth squalor of the frontier poverty. It was
not that his pecuniary circumstances were materially improved. He was
still, and for years continued to be, a very poor man, harassed by
debts which he was always working to pay, and sometimes in distress
for the means of decent subsistence. But from this time forward his
associations were with a better class of men than he had ever known
before, and a new feeling of self-respect must naturally have grown up
in his mind from his constant intercourse with them--a feeling which
extended to the minor morals of civilized life. A sophisticated reader
may smile at the mention of anything like social ethics in Vandalia in
1834; but, compared with Gentryville and New Salem, the society which
assembled in the winter at that little capital was polished and
elegant. The State then contained nearly 250,000 inhabitants, and the
members of the Legislature, elected purely on personal grounds,
nominated by themselves or their neighbors without the intervention of
party machinery, were necessarily the leading men, in one way or
another, in their several districts. Among the colleagues of Lincoln
at Vandalia were young men with destinies only less brilliant than his
own. They were to become governors, senators, and judges; they were to
organize the Whig party of Illinois, and afterwards the Republican;
they were to lead brigades and divisions in two great wars. Among the
first persons he met there--not in the Legislature proper, but in the
lobby, where he was trying to appropriate an office then filled by
Colonel John J. Hardin--was his future antagonist, Stephen A. Douglas.
Neither seemed to have any presentiment of the future greatness of the
other. Douglas thought little of the raw youth from the Sangamon
timber, and Lincoln said the dwarfish Vermonter was "the least man he
had ever seen." To all appearance, Vandalia was full of better men
than either of them--clever lawyers, men of wit and standing, some of
them the sons of provident early settlers, but more who had come from
older States to seek their fortunes in these fresh fields.
During his first session Lincoln occupied no especially conspicuous
position. He held his own respectably among the best. One of his
colleagues tells us he was not distinguished by any external
eccentricity; that he wore, according to the custom of the time, a
decent suit of blue jeans; that he was known simply as a rather quiet
young man, good-natured and sensible. Before the session ended he had
made the acquaintance of most of the members, and had evidently come
to be looked upon as possessing more than ordinary capacity. His
unusual common-sense began to be recognized. His name does not often
appear in the records of the year. He introduced a resolution in favor
of securing to the State a part of the proceeds of the sales of public
lands within its limits; he took part in the organization of the
ephemeral "White" party, which was designed to unite all the anti-
Jackson elements under the leadership of Hugh L. White, of Tennessee;
he voted with the minority in favor of Young against Robinson for
senator, and with the majority that passed the Bank and Canal bills,
which were received with great enthusiasm throughout Illinois, and
which were only the precursors of those gigantic and ill-advised
schemes that came to maturity two years later, and inflicted
incalculable injury upon the State.
Lincoln returned to New Salem, after this winter's experience of men
and things at the little capital, much firmer on his feet than ever
before. He had had the opportunity of measuring himself with the
leading men of the community, and had found no difficulty whatever in
keeping pace with them. He continued his studies of the law and
surveying together, and became quite indispensable in the latter
capacity--so much so that General Neale, announcing in September,
1835, the names of the deputy surveyors of Sangarnon County, placed
the name of Lincoln before that of his old master in the science, John
Calhoun. He returned to the Legislature in the winter of 1835-6, and
one of the first important incidents of the session was the election
of a senator to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of Elias Kent
Kane. There was no lack of candidates. A journal of the time says:
"This intelligence reached Vandalia on the evening of the 26th of
December, and in the morning nine candidates appeared in that place,
and it was anticipated that a number more would soon be in, among them
'the lion of the North,' who, it is thought, will claim the office by
preemption." [Footnote: "Sangamo Journal," January 2.] It is not
known who was the roaring celebrity here referred to, but the
successful candidate was General William L. D. Ewing, who was elected
by a majority of one vote. Lincoln and the other Whigs voted for him,
not because he was a "White" man, as they frankly stated, but because
"he had been proscribed by the Van Buren party." Mr. Semple, the
candidate for the regular Democratic caucus, was beaten simply on
account of his political orthodoxy.
A minority is always strongly in favor of independent action and
bitterly opposed to caucuses, and therefore we need not be surprised
at finding Mr. Lincoln, a few days later in the session, joining in
hearty denunciation of the convention system, which had already become
popular in the East, and which General Jackson was then urging upon
his faithful followers. The missionaries of this new system in
Illinois were Stephen A. Douglas, recently from Vermont, the shifty
young lawyer from Morgan County, who had just succeeded in having
himself made circuit attorney in place of Colonel Hardin, and a man
who was then regarded in Vandalia as a far more important and
dangerous person than Douglas, Ebenezer Peck, of Chicago. Peck was
looked upon with distrust and suspicion for several reasons, all of
which seemed valid to the rural legislators assembled there. He came
from Canada, where he had been a member of the provincial parliament;
it was therefore imagined that he was permeated with secret hostility
to republican institutions; his garb, his furs, were of the fashion of
Quebec; and he passed his time indoctrinating the Jackson men with the
theory and practice of party organization, teachings which they
eagerly absorbed, and which seemed sinister and ominous to the Whigs.
He was showing them, in fact, the way in which elections were to be
won; and though the Whigs denounced his system as subversive of
individual freedom and private judgment, it was not long before they
were also forced to adopt it, or be left alone with their virtue. The
organization of political parties in Illinois really takes its rise
from this time, and in great measure from the work of Mr. Peck with
the Vandalia Legislature. There was no man more dreaded and disliked
than he was by the stalwart young Whigs against whom he was organizing
that solid and disciplined opposition. But a quarter of a century
brings wonderful changes. Twenty-five years later Mr. Peck stood
shoulder to shoulder with these very men who then reviled him as a
Canadian emissary of tyranny and corruption,--with S. T. Logan, 0. H.
Browning, and J. K. Dubois,--organizing a new party for victory under
the name of Abraham Lincoln.
[Illustration: O. H. Browning.]
The Legislature adjourned on the 18th of January, having made a
beginning, it is true, in the work of improving the State by statute,
though its modest work, incorporating canal and bridge companies and
providing for public roads, bore no relation to the ambitious essays
of its successor. Among the bills passed at this session was an
Apportionment act, by which Sangamon County became entitled to seven
representatives and two senators, and early in the spring eight
"White" statesmen of the county were ready for the field--the ninth,
Mr. Herndon, holding over as State Senator. It seems singular to us of
a later day that just eight prominent men, on a side, should have
offered themselves for these places, without the intervention of any
primary meetings. Such a thing, if we mistake not, was never known
again in Illinois. The convention system was afterwards seen to be an
absolute necessity to prevent the disorganization of parties through
the restless vanity of obscure and insubordinate aspirants. But the
eight who "took the stump" in Sangamon in the summer of 1836 were
supported as loyally and as energetically as if they had been
nominated with all the solemnity of modern days. They became famous in
the history of the State, partly for their stature and partly for
their influence in legislation. They were called, with Herndon, the
"Long Nine;" their average height was over six feet, and their
aggregate altitude was said to be fifty-five feet. Their names were
Abraham Lincoln, John Dawson, Dan Stone, Ninian W. Edwards, William F.
Elkin, R. L. Wilson, and Andrew McCormick, candidates for the House of
Representatives, and Job Fletcher for the Senate, of Illinois.
Mr. Lincoln began his canvass with the following circular:
NEW SALEM/June 13, 1836.
To the Editor of the "Journal."
In your paper of last Saturday I see a communication over the
signature "Many Voters" in which the candidates who are announced in
the "Journal" are called upon to "show their hands." Agreed. Here's
mine.
I go for all sharing the privileges of the Government who assist in
bearing its burdens. Consequently I go for admitting all whites to the
right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding
females).
If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my
constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me.
While acting as their representative I shall be governed by their will
on all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing what their will
is, and upon all others I shall do what my own judgment teaches me
will best advance their interests. Whether elected or not, I go for
distributing the proceeds of the sales of the public lands to the
several States, to enable our State, in common with others, to dig
canals and construct railroads without borrowing money and paying
interest on it.
If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for Hugh L.
White for President. [Footnote: This phrase seems to have been adopted
as a formula by the anti-Jackson party. The "cards" of several
candidates contain it.]
Very respectfully,
A. LINCOLN.
It would be hard to imagine a more audacious and unqualified
declaration of principles and intentions. But it was the fashion of
the hour to promise exact obedience to the will of the people, and the
two practical questions touched by this circular were the only ones
then much talked about. The question of suffrage for aliens was a
living problem in the State, and Mr. Lincoln naturally took liberal
ground on it; and he was also in favor of getting from the sale of
public lands a portion of the money he was ready to vote for internal
improvements. This was good Whig doctrine at that time, and the young
politician did not fancy he could go wrong in following in such a
matter the lead of his idol, Henry Clay.
He made an active canvass, and spoke frequently during the summer. He
must have made some part of the campaign on foot, for we find in the
county paper an advertisement of a horse which had strayed or been
stolen from him while on a visit to Springfield. It was not an
imposing animal, to judge from the description; it was "plainly marked
with harness," and was "believed to have lost some of his shoes"; but
it was a large horse, as suited a cavalier of such stature, and
"trotted and paced" in a serviceable manner. In July a rather
remarkable discussion took place at the county-seat, in which many of
the leading men on both sides took part. Ninian Edwards, son of the
late Governor, is said to have opened the debate with much effect. Mr.
Early, who followed him, was so roused by his energetic attack that he
felt his only resource was a flat contradiction, which in those days
meant mischief. In the midst of great and increasing excitement Dan
Stone and John Calhoun made speeches which did not tend to pour oil on
the waters of contention, and then came Mr. Lincoln's turn. An article
in the "Journal" states that he seemed embarrassed in his opening, for
this was the most important contest in which he had ever been engaged.
But he soon felt the easy mastery of his powers come back to him, and
he finally made what was universally regarded as the strongest speech
of the day. One of his colleagues says that on this occasion he used
in his excitement for the first time that singularly effective clear
tenor tone of voice which afterwards became so widely known in the
political battles of the West. The canvass was an energetic one
throughout, and excited more interest, in the district than even the
presidential election, which occurred some months later. Mr. Lincoln
was elected at the head of the poll by a majority greatly in excess of
the average majority of his friends, which shows conclusively how his
influence and popularity had increased. The Whigs in this election
effected a revolution in the politics of the county. By force of their
ability and standing they had before managed to divide the suffrages
of the people, even while they were unquestionably in the minority;
but this year they completely defeated their opponents and gained that
control of the county which they never lost as long as the party
endured.
If Mr. Lincoln had no other claims to be remembered than his services
in the Legislature of 1836-7, there would be little to say in his
favor. Its history is one of disaster to the State. Its legislation
was almost wholly unwise and hurtful. The most we can say for Mr.
Lincoln is that he obeyed the will of his constituents, as he promised
to do, and labored with singular skill and ability to accomplish the
objects desired by the people who gave him their votes. The especial
work intrusted to him was the subdivision of the county, and the
project for the removal of the capital of the State to Springfield.
[Footnote: "Lincoln was at the head of the project to remove the seat
of government to Springfield; it was entirely intrusted to him to
manage. The members were all elected on one ticket, but they all
looked to Lincoln as the head" STEPHEN T, LOGAN.] In both of these he
was successful. In the account of errors and follies committed by the
Legislature to the lasting injury of the State, he is entitled to no
praise or blame beyond the rest. He shared in that sanguine epidemic
of financial and industrial quackery which devastated the entire
community, and voted with the best men of the country in favor of
schemes which appeared then like a promise of an immediate millennium,
and seem now like midsummer madness.
[Sidenote: Ford, p. 102.]
[Footnote: Reynolds, "Life and Times."]
He entered political life in one of those eras of delusive prosperity
which so often precede great financial convulsions. The population of
the State was increasing at the enormous rate of two hundred percent
in ten years. It had extended northward along the lines of the wooded
valleys of creeks and rivers in the center to Peoria; on the west by
the banks of the Mississippi to Galena; on the east with wide
intervals of wilderness to Chicago. The edge of the timber was
everywhere pretty well occupied, though the immigrants from the forest
States of Kentucky and Tennessee had as yet avoided the prairies. The
rich soil and equable climate were now attracting an excellent class
of settlers from the older States, and the long-neglected northern
counties were receiving the attention they deserved. The war of Black
Hawk had brought the country into notice; the utter defeat of his
nation had given the guarantee of a permanent peace; the last lodges
of the Pottawatomies had disappeared from the country in 1833. The
money spent by the general Government during the war, and paid to the
volunteers at its close, added to the common prosperity. There was a
brisk trade in real estate, and there was even a beginning in Chicago
of that passion for speculation in town lots which afterwards became a
frenzy.
It was too much to expect of the Illinois Legislature that it should
understand that the best thing it could do to forward this prosperous
tendency of things was to do nothing; for this is a lesson which has
not yet been learned by any legislature in the world. For several
years they had been tinkering, at first modestly and tentatively, at a
scheme of internal improvements which should not cost too much money.
In 1835 they began to grant charters for railroads, which remained in
embryo, as the stock was never taken. Surveys for other railroads were
also proposed, to cross the State in different directions; and the
project of uniting Lake Michigan with the Illinois River by a canal
was of too evident utility to be overlooked. In fact, the route had
been surveyed, and estimates of cost made, companies incorporated, and
all preliminaries completed many years before, though nothing further
had been done, as no funds had been offered from any source. But at
the special session of 1835 a law was passed authorizing a loan of
half a million dollars for this purpose; the loan was effected by
Governor Duncan the following year, and in June, aboard of canal
commissioners having been appointed, a beginning was actually made
with pick and shovel.
[Sidenote: Ford, p. 181.]
A restless feeling of hazardous speculation seemed to be taking
possession of the State. "It commenced," says Governor Ford, in his
admirable chronicle, "at Chicago, and was the means of building up
that place in a year or two from a village of a few houses to be a
city of several thousand inhabitants. The story of the sudden fortunes
made there excited at first wonder and amazement; next, a gambling
spirit of adventure; and lastly, an all-absorbing desire for sudden
and splendid wealth. Chicago had been for some time only one great
town-market. The plots of towns for a hundred miles around were
carried there to be disposed of at auction. The Eastern people had
caught the mania. Every vessel coming west was loaded with them, their
money and means, bound for Chicago, the great fairy-land of fortunes.
But as enough did not come to satisfy the insatiable greediness of the
Chicago sharpers and speculators, they frequently consigned their
wares to Eastern markets. In fact, lands and town lots were the staple
of the country, and were the only article of export." The contagion
spread so rapidly, towns and cities were laid out so profusely, that
it was a standing joke that before long there would be no land left in
the State for farming purposes.
The future of the State for many years to come was thus discounted by
the fervid imaginations of its inhabitants. "We have every requisite
of a great empire," they said, "except enterprise and inhabitants,"
and they thought that a little enterprise would bring the inhabitants.
Through the spring and summer of 1836 the talk of internal
improvements grew more general and more clamorous. The candidates for
office spoke about little else, and the only point of emulation among
the parties was which should be the more reckless and grandiose in its
promises. When the time arrived for the assembling of the Legislature,
the members were not left to their own zeal and the recollection of
their campaign pledges, but meetings and conventions were everywhere
held to spur them up to the fulfillment of their mandate. The
resolutions passed by the principal body of delegates who came
together in December directed the Legislature to vote a system of
internal improvements "commensurate with the wants of the people," a
phrase which is never lacking in the mouth of the charlatan or the
demagogue.
[Sidenote: "Ford's History," p. 184.]
These demands were pressed upon a not reluctant Legislature. They
addressed themselves at once to the work required of them, and soon
devised, with reckless and unreasoning haste, a scheme of railroads
covering the vast uninhabited prairies as with a gridiron. There was
to be a rail-road from Galena to the mouth of the Ohio River; from
Alton to Shawneetown; from Alton to Mount Carmel; from Alton to the
eastern State boundary--by virtue of which lines Alton was to take the
life of St. Louis without further notice; from Quincy to the Wabash
River; from Bloomington to Pekin; from Peoria to Warsaw;--in all, 1350
miles of railway. Some of these terminal cities were not in existence
except upon neatly designed surveyor's maps. The scheme provided also
for the improvement of every stream in the State on which a child's
shingle-boat could sail; and to the end that all objections should be
stifled on the part of those neighborhoods which had neither railroads
nor rivers, a gift of two hundred thousand dollars was voted to them,
and with this sop they were fain to be content and not trouble the
general joy. To accomplish this stupendous scheme, the Legislature
voted eight million dollars, to be raised by loan. Four millions were
also voted to complete the canal. These sums, monstrous as they were,
were still ridiculously inadequate to the purpose in view. But while
the frenzy lasted there was no consideration of cost or of
possibilities. These vast works were voted without estimates, without
surveys, without any rational consideration of their necessity. The
voice of reason seemed to be silent in the Assembly; only the
utterances of fervid prophecy found listeners. Governor Ford speaks of
one orator who insisted, amid enthusiastic plaudits, that the State
could well afford to borrow one hundred millions for internal
improvements. The process of reasoning, or rather predicting, was easy
and natural. The roads would raise the price of land; the State could
enter large tracts and sell them at a profit; foreign capital would be
invested in land, and could be heavily taxed to pay bonded interest;
and the roads, as fast as they were built, could be operated at a
great profit to pay for their own construction. The climax of the
whole folly was reached by the provision of law directing that work
should be begun at once at the termini of all the roads and the
crossings of all rivers.
It is futile and disingenuous to attempt, as some have done, to fasten
upon one or the other of the political parties of the State the
responsibility of this bedlam legislation. The Governor and a majority
of the Legislature were elected as Jackson Democrats, but the Whigs
were as earnest in passing these measures as their opponents; and
after they were adopted, the superior wealth, education, and business
capacity of the Whigs had their legitimate influence, and they filled
the principal positions upon the boards and commissions which came
into existence under the acts. The bills were passed,--not without
opposition, it is true, but by sufficient majorities,--and the news
was received by the people of the State with the most extravagant
demonstrations of delight. The villages were illuminated; bells were
rung in the rare steeples of the churches; "fire-balls,"--bundles of
candle-wick soaked in turpentine,--were thrown by night all over the
country. The day of payment was far away, and those who trusted the
assurances of the sanguine politicians thought that in some mysterious
way the scheme would pay for itself.
Mr. Lincoln is continually found voting with his friends in favor of
this legislation, and there is nothing to show that he saw any danger
in it. He was a Whig, and as such in favor of internal improvements in
general and a liberal construction of constitutional law in such
matters. As a boy, he had interested himself in the details of local
improvements of rivers and roads, and he doubtless went with the
current in Vandalia in favor of this enormous system. He took,
however, no prominent part in the work by which these railroad bills
were passed. He considered himself as specially commissioned to
procure the removal of the State capital from Vandalia to Springfield,
and he applied all his energies to the accomplishment of this work.
The enterprise was hedged round with difficulties; for although it was
everywhere agreed, except at Vandalia, that the capital ought to be
moved, every city in the State, and several which existed only on
paper, demanded to be made the seat of government. The question had
been submitted to a popular vote in 1834, and the result showed about
as many cities desirous of opening their gates to the Legislature as
claimed the honor of being the birthplace of Homer. Of these
Springfield was only third in popular estimation, and it was evident
that Mr. Lincoln had need of all his wits if he were to fulfill the
trust confided to him. It is said by Governor Ford that the "Long
Nine" were not averse to using the hopes and fears of other members in
relation to their special railroads to gain their adherence to the
Springfield programme, but this is by no means clear. We are rather
inclined to trust the direct testimony of Jesse K. Dubois, that the
success of the Sangamon County delegation in obtaining the capital was
due to the adroit management of Mr. Lincoln--first in inducing all the
rival claimants to unite in a vote to move the capital from Vandalia,
and then in carrying a direct vote for Springfield through the joint
convention by the assistance of the southern counties. His personal
authority accomplished this in great part. Mr. Dubois says: "He made
Webb and me vote for the removal, though we belonged to the southern
end of the State. We defended our vote before our constituents by
saying that necessity would ultimately force the seat of government to
a central position. But in reality we gave the vote to Lincoln because
we liked him, because we wanted to oblige our friend, and because we
recognized him as our leader." To do this, they were obliged to
quarrel with their most intimate associates, who had bought a piece of
waste land at the exact geographical center of the State and were
striving to have the capital established there in the interest of
their own pockets and territorial symmetry.
The bill was passed only a short time before the Legislature
adjourned, and the "Long Nine" came back to their constituents wearing
their well-won laurels. They were complimented in the newspapers, at
public meetings, and even at subscription dinners. We read of one at
Springfield, at the "Rural Hotel," to which sixty guests sat down,
where there were speeches by Browning, Lincoln, Douglas (who had
resigned his seat in the Legislature to become Register of the Land
Office at the new capital), S. T. Logan, Baker, and others, whose wit
and wisdom were lost to history through the absence of reporters.
Another dinner was given them at Athens a few weeks later. Among the
toasts on these occasions were two which we may transcribe: "Abraham
Lincoln: He has fulfilled the expectations of his friends, and
disappointed the hopes of his enemies"; and "A. Lincoln: One of
Nature's noblemen."