ELECTIONEERING IN 1832 IN ILLINOIS.—LINCOLN DEFEATED OF ELECTION TO THE
ASSEMBLY.—BUYS A STORE.
On returning to New Salem, Lincoln at once plunged into electioneering.
He ran as “an avowed Clay man,” and the county was stiffly Democratic.
However, in those days political contests were almost purely personal.
If the candidate was liked he was voted for irrespective of principles.
“The Democrats of New Salem worked for Lincoln out of their personal
regard for him,” said Stephen T. Logan, a young lawyer of Springfield,
who made Lincoln’s acquaintance in the campaign. “He was as stiff as a
man could be in his Whig doctrines. They did this for him simply because
he was popular; because he was Lincoln.”
It was the custom for the candidates to appear at every gathering which
brought the people out, and, if they had a chance, to make speeches.
Then, as now, the farmers gathered at the county-seat, or at the largest
town within their reach, on Saturday afternoons, to dispose of produce,
buy supplies, see their neighbors, and get the news. During election
times candidates were always present, and a regular feature of the day
was listening to their speeches. Public sales, also, were gatherings
which they never missed, it being expected that after the “vandoo” the
candidates would take the auctioneer’s place.
Lincoln let none of these chances to be heard slip. Accompanied by his
friends, generally including a few Clary’s Grove Boys, he always was
present. The first speech he made was after a sale at Pappsville. What
he said there is not remembered; but an illustration of the kind of man
he was, interpolated into his discourse, made a lasting impression. A
fight broke out in his audience while he was on the stand, and observing
that one of his friends was being worsted, he bounded into the group of
contestants, seized the fellow who had his supporter down, threw him
“ten or twelve feet,” remounted the platform, and finished the speech.
Sangamon County could appreciate such a performance, and the crowd that
day at Pappsville never forgot Lincoln.
[Illustration:
SCENE OF STILLMAN’S DEFEAT.
From a photograph loaned by S. J. Dodds of Lena, Illinois.
]
His appearance at Springfield at this time was of great importance to
him. Springfield was not then a very attractive place. Bryant, visiting
it in June, 1832, said that the houses were not as good as at
Jacksonville, “a considerable proportion of them being log cabins, and
the whole town having an appearance of dirt and discomfort.”
Nevertheless it was the largest town in the county, and among its
inhabitants were many young men of education, birth, and energy. One of
these men Lincoln had become well acquainted with in the Black Hawk War,
Major John Stuart,[17] at that time a lawyer, and, like Lincoln, a
candidate for the General Assembly. He met others at this time who were
to be associated with him more or less closely in the future in both law
and politics, such as Judge Logan and William Butler. With these men the
manners which had won him the day at Pappsville were of no value; what
impressed them was his “very sensible speech,” and his decided
individuality and originality.
Footnote 17:
There were many prominent Americans in the Black Hawk War, with some
of whom Lincoln became acquainted. Among the best known were General
Robert Anderson; Colonel Zachary Taylor; General Scott, afterwards
candidate for President, and Lieutenant-General; Henry Dodge, Governor
of the Territory of Wisconsin, and United States Senator; Hon. William
L. D. Ewing and Hon. Sidney Breese, both United States Senators from
Illinois; William S. Hamilton, a son of Alexander Hamilton; Colonel
Nathan Boone, son of Daniel Boone; Lieutenant Albert Sydney Johnston,
afterwards a Confederate general. Jefferson Davis was not in the war,
according to the muster-rolls of his company, which report him absent
on furlough from March 26 to August 18, 1832.
[Illustration:
From a photograph in the war collection of Mr. Robert Coster.
MAJOR ROBERT ANDERSON.
Born in Kentucky in 1805. In 1825 graduated at West Point. Anderson
was on duty at the St. Louis Arsenal when the Black Hawk War broke
out. He asked permission to join General Atkinson, who commanded the
expedition against the Indians; was placed on his staff as Assistant
Inspector-General, and was with him until the end of the war.
Anderson twice mustered Lincoln into the service and once out. When
General Scott was sent to take Atkinson’s place, Anderson was
ordered to report to the former for duty, and was sent by him to
take charge of the Indians captured at Bad Axe. It was Anderson who
conducted Black Hawk to Jefferson Barracks. His adjutant in this
task was Lieutenant Jefferson Davis. From 1835–37 Anderson was an
instructor at West Point. He served in the Florida War in 1837–38,
and was wounded at Molino del Rey in the Mexican War. In 1857 he was
appointed Major of the First Artillery. On November 20, 1860,
Anderson assumed command of the troops in Charleston Harbor. On
April 14th he surrendered Fort Sumter, marching out with the honors
of war. He was made brigadier-general by Lincoln for his service. On
account of failing health he was relieved from duty in October,
1861. In 1865 he was brevetted major-general. He died in France in
1871.
]
The election came off on August 6th. Lincoln was defeated. “This was the
only time Abraham was ever defeated on a direct vote of the people,” say
his autobiographical notes. He had a consolation in his defeat, however,
for in spite of the pronounced Democratic sentiments of his precinct, he
received two hundred and seventy-seven votes out of three hundred cast.
The facts upon this point are here stated for the first time. The
biographers, as a rule, have agreed that Lincoln received all of the
votes cast in the New Salem precinct, except three. Mr. Herndon places
the total vote at 208; Nicolay and Hay, at 277; and Mr. Lincoln himself,
in his autobiography, has said that he received all but seven of a total
of 277 votes, basing his statement, no doubt, upon memory. An
examination of the official poll-book in the county clerk’s office at
Springfield shows that all of these figures are erroneous; exactly three
hundred votes were cast. Of these Lincoln received 277. The fact
remains, however—and it is a fact which has been commented upon by
several of the biographers as showing his phenomenal popularity—that the
vote for Lincoln was far in excess of that given any other candidate.
The twelve candidates, with the number of votes of each, were: Abraham
Lincoln, 277; John T. Stewart, 182; William Carpenter, 136; John Dawson,
105; E. D. Taylor, 88; Archer G. Herndon, 84; Peter Cartwright, 62;
Achilles Morris, 27; Thomas M. Neal, 21; Edward Robeson, 15; Zachariah
Peters, 4; Richard Dunston, 4.
Of the twenty-three who did not vote for Lincoln, ten refrained from
voting for representative at all, thus leaving only thirteen votes
actually cast against Lincoln. Lincoln is not recorded as voting. This
defeat did not take him out of politics. The first civil office Lincoln
ever held was that of clerk of the next election, in September. The
report in his hand still exists; as far as we know, it is his first
official document.
LOOKING FOR WORK.
It was in August, 1832, that Lincoln made his unsuccessful canvass for
the Illinois Assembly. The election over, he began to look for work. One
of his friends, an admirer of his physical strength, advised him to
become a blacksmith, but it was a trade which afforded little leisure
for study, and for meeting and talking with men; and he had already
resolved, it is evident, that books and men were essential to him. The
only employment in New Salem which offered both support and the
opportunities he sought, was clerking in a store. But the stores of New
Salem were in more need of customers than of clerks. The business had
been greatly overdone. In the fall of 1832 there were at least four
stores in New Salem. The most pretentious was that of Hill and McNeill,
which carried a large line of dry goods. The three others, owned
respectively by the Herndon brothers, Reuben Radford, and James
Rutledge, were groceries.
[Illustration:
BAD AXE BATTLE-GROUND.
From a copy of a painting by Samuel M. Brookes, in the Museum of the
Wisconsin Historical Society. The remnant of Black Hawk’s force was
slaughtered here on August 1st and 2d, while attempting to cross the
Mississippi. Only about one hundred and fifty of his original band
of one thousand escaped.
]
DECIDES TO BUY A STORE.
Failing to secure employment at any of these establishments, Lincoln
resolved to _buy_ a store. He was not long in finding an opportunity to
purchase. James Herndon had already sold out his half interest in
Herndon Brothers’ store to William F. Berry; and Rowan Herndon, not
getting along well with Berry, was only too glad to find a purchaser of
his half in the person of “Abe” Lincoln. Berry was as poor as Lincoln;
but that was not a serious obstacle, for their notes were accepted for
the Herndon stock of goods. They had barely hung out their sign when
something happened which threw another store into their hands. Reuben
Radford had made himself obnoxious to the Clary’s Grove Boys, and one
night they broke in his doors and windows, and overturned his counters
and sugar barrels. It was too much for Radford, and he sold out next day
to William G. Green for a four-hundred-dollar note signed by Green. At
the latter’s request, Lincoln made an inventory of the stock, and then
offered him six hundred and fifty dollars for it—a proposition which was
cheerfully accepted. Berry and Lincoln, being unable to pay cash,
assumed the four-hundred-dollar note payable to Radford, and gave Green
their joint note for two hundred and fifty dollars. The little grocery
owned by James Rutledge was the next to succumb. Berry and Lincoln
bought it at a bargain, their joint note taking the place of cash. The
three stocks were consolidated. Their aggregate cost must have been not
less than fifteen hundred dollars. Berry and Lincoln had secured a
monopoly of the grocery business in New Salem. Within a few weeks two
penniless men had become the proprietors of three stores, and had
stopped buying only because there were no more to purchase.
William F. Berry, the partner of Lincoln, was the son of a Presbyterian
minister, the Rev. John Berry, who lived on Rock Creek, five miles from
New Salem. The son had strayed from the footsteps of the father, for he
was a hard drinker, a gambler, a fighter, and “a very wicked young man.”
Lincoln cannot in truth be said to have chosen such a partner, but
rather to have accepted him from the force of circumstances. It required
only a little time to make plain that the partnership was wholly
uncongenial. Lincoln displayed little business capacity. He trusted
largely to Berry, and Berry rapidly squandered the profits of the
business in riotous living. Lincoln loved books as Berry loved liquor,
and hour after hour he was stretched out on the counter of the store, or
under a shade tree, reading Shakespeare or Burns.
His acquaintance with the works of these two writers dates from this
period. In New Salem there was one of those curious individuals
sometimes found in frontier settlements, half poet, half loafer,
incapable of earning a living in any steady employment, yet familiar
with good literature and capable of enjoying it—Jack Kelso. He repeated
passages from Shakespeare and Burns incessantly over the odd jobs he
undertook, or as he idled by the streams—for he was a famous
fisherman—and Lincoln soon became one of his constant companions. The
taste he formed in company with Kelso he retained through life.
[Illustration:
LINCOLN IN 1860.—HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.
From a photograph loaned by H. W. Fay of DeKalb, Illinois. After
Lincoln’s nomination for the presidency, Alexander Hesler of Chicago
published a portrait he had made of Lincoln in 1857 (see page 49).
At the same time he put out a portrait of Douglas. The contrast was
so great between the two, and in the opinion of the politicians so
much in Douglas’s favor, that they told Hesler he must suppress
Lincoln’s picture; accordingly the photographer wrote to
Springfield, requesting Lincoln to call and sit again. Lincoln
replied that his friends had decided that he remain in Springfield
during the canvass, but that if Hesler would come to Springfield he
would be “dressed up” and give him all the time he wanted. Hesler
went to Springfield, and made at least four negatives, three of
which are supposed to have been destroyed in the Chicago fire. The
fourth is owned by Mr. George Ayers of Philadelphia. The photograph
reproduced above is a print from one of the lost negatives.
]
William D. Kelley records an incident which shows that Lincoln had a
really intimate knowledge of Shakespeare. Mr. Kelley had taken
McDonough, an actor, to call at the White House, and Lincoln began the
conversation by saying:
“‘I am very glad to meet you, Mr. McDonough, and am grateful to Kelley
for bringing you in so early, for I want you to tell me something about
Shakespeare’s plays as they are constructed for the stage. You can
imagine that I do not get much time to study such matters, but I
recently had a couple of talks with Hackett—Baron Hackett, as they call
him—who is famous as Jack Falstaff, from whom I elicited few
satisfactory replies, though I probed him with a good many questions.’
“Mr. McDonough,” continues Mr. Kelley, “avowed his willingness to give
the President any information in his possession, but protested that he
feared he would not succeed where his friend Hackett had failed. ‘Well,
I don’t know,’ said the President, ‘for Hackett’s lack of information
impressed me with a doubt as to whether he had ever studied
Shakespeare’s text, or had not been content with the acting edition of
his plays.’ He arose, went to a shelf not far from his table, and having
taken down a well-thumbed volume of the ‘Plays’ of Shakespeare, resumed
his seat, arranged his glasses, and having turned to ‘Henry VI.’ and
read with fine discrimination an extended passage, said: ‘Mr. McDonough,
can you tell me why those lines are omitted from the acting play? There
is nothing I have read in Shakespeare, certainly nothing in “Henry VI.”
or the “Merry Wives of Windsor,” that surpasses its wit and humor.’ The
actor suggested the breadth of its humor as the only reason he could
assign for its omission, but thoughtfully added that it was possible
that if the lines were spoken they would require the rendition of
another or other passages which might be objectionable.
“‘Your last suggestion,’ said Mr. Lincoln, ‘carries with it greater
weight than anything Mr. Hackett suggested, but the first is no reason
at all;’ and after reading another passage, he said, ‘This is not
withheld, and where it passes current there can be no reason for
withholding the other.’... And, as if feeling the impropriety of
preferring the player to the parson [there was a clergyman in the room],
he turned to the chaplain and said: ‘From your calling it is probable
that you do not know that the acting plays which people crowd to hear
are not always those planned by their reputed authors. Thus, take the
stage edition of “Richard III.” It opens with a passage from “Henry
VI.,” after which come portions of “Richard III.,” then another scene
from “Henry VI.;” and the finest soliloquy in the play, if we may judge
from the many quotations it furnishes, and the frequency with which it
is heard in amateur exhibitions, was never seen by Shakespeare, but was
written—was it not, Mr. McDonough?—after his death, by Colley Cibber.’
[Illustration:
MONUMENT AT KELLOGG’S GROVE.
On June 24, 1832, Black Hawk attacked Apple River Fort, fourteen miles
east of Galena, Illinois, but was unable to drive out the inmates.
The next day he attacked a spy battalion of one hundred and fifty
men at Kellogg’s Grove, sixteen miles farther east. A detachment of
volunteers relieved the battalion, and drove off the savages, about
fifteen of whom were killed. The whites lost five men, who were
buried at various points in the grove. During the summer of 1886 the
remains of these men were collected and, with those of five or six
other victims of the war, were placed together under the monument
here represented.—See “The Black Hawk War,” by Reuben G. Thwaites,
Vol. XII. in Wisconsin Historical Collections. This account of the
Black Hawk War is the most trustworthy, complete, and interesting
that has been made.
]
“Having disposed, for the present, of questions relating to the stage
editions of the plays, he recurred to his standard copy, and ... read,
or repeated from memory, extracts from several of the plays, some of
which embraced a number of lines.... He interspersed his remarks with
extracts striking from their similarity to, or contrast with, something
of Shakespeare’s, from Byron, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and other English
poets.”[18]
Footnote 18:
“Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln.” Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice,
1886.
[Illustration:
JOHN REYNOLDS, GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS 1831–1834.
After a steel engraving in the Governor’s office, Springfield,
Illinois. John Reynolds, Governor of Illinois from 1831 to 1834, was
born in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, February 26, 1788. He was
of Irish parentage. When he was six months old his parents moved to
Tennessee. In 1800 they removed to Illinois. When twenty years old,
John Reynolds went to Knoxville, Tennessee, to college, where he
spent two years. He was admitted to the bar at Kaskaskia in 1812. In
the war of 1812 he rendered distinguished service, earning the title
of “the Old Ranger.” He began the practice of law in the spring of
1814. In 1818 he was made an associate justice of the Supreme Court;
in 1826 he was elected a member of the legislature; and in 1830,
after a stirring campaign, he was chosen Governor of Illinois. The
most important event of his administration was the Black Hawk War.
He was prompt in calling out the militia to subdue the Black Hawk,
and went upon the field in person. In November, 1834, just before
the close of his term as Governor, he resigned to become a member of
Congress. In 1837, aided by others, he built the first railroad in
the State—a short line of six miles from his coal mine in the
Mississippi bluff to the bank of the river opposite St. Louis. It
was operated by horse-power. He again became a member of the
legislature in 1846 and 1852, during the latter term being Speaker
of the House. In 1860, in his seventy-third year, he was an
anti-Douglas delegate to the Charleston convention, and received the
most distinguished attentions from the Southern delegates. After the
October elections, when it became apparent that Lincoln would be
elected, he issued an address advising the support of Douglas. His
sympathies were with the South, though in 1832 he strongly supported
President Jackson in the suppression of the South Carolina
nullifiers. He died in Belleville in May, 1865. Governor Reynolds
was a quaint and forceful character. He was a man of some learning;
but in conversation (and he talked much) he rarely rose above the
odd Western vernacular of which he was so complete a master. He was
the author of two books; one an autobiography, and the other “The
Pioneer History of Illinois.”
]