Now that the store was closed and his surveying increased, Lincoln
had an excellent opportunity to extend his acquaintance, for he was
travelling about the country. Everywhere he won friends. The surveyor
naturally was respected for his calling's sake, but the new deputy
surveyor was admired for his friendly ways, his willingness to lend
a hand indoors as well as out, his learning, his ambition, his
independence. Throughout the county he began to be regarded as "a
right smart young man." Some of his associates appear even to have
comprehended his peculiarly great character and dimly to have foreseen
a splendid future. "Often," says Daniel Green Burner, Berry and
Lincoln's clerk in the grocery, "I have heard my brother-in-law, Dr.
Duncan, say he would not be surprised if some day Abe Lincoln got to
be Governor of Illinois. Lincoln," Mr. Burner adds, "was thought to
know a little more than anybody else among the young people. He was a
good debater, and liked it. He read much, and seemed never to forget
anything."
Lincoln was fully conscious of his popularity, and it seemed to him
in 1834 that he could safely venture to try again for the legislature.
Accordingly he announced himself as a candidate, spending much of the
summer of 1834 in electioneering. It was a repetition of what he
had done in 1832, though on the larger scale made possible by wider
acquaintance. In company with the other candidates, he rode up and
down the county, making speeches in the public squares, in shady
groves, now and then in a log school-house. In his speeches he soon
distinguished himself by the amazing candor with which he dealt with
all questions, and by his curious blending of audacity and humility.
Wherever he saw a crowd of men he joined them, and he never failed
to adapt himself to their point of view in asking for votes. If the
degree of physical strength was their test for a candidate, he was
ready to lift a weight or wrestle with the country-side champion; if
the amount of grain a man could cradle would recommend him, he seized
the cradle and showed the swath he could cut. The campaign was well
conducted, for in August he was elected one of the four assemblymen
from Sangamon. The vote at this election stood: Dawson, 1390; Lincoln,
1376; Carpenter, 1170; Stuart, 1164.[3]
[Illustration: MAJOR JOHN T. STUART, THE MAN WHO INDUCED LINCOLN TO
STUDY LAW.
Born in Kentucky in 1807. At twenty-one, on being admitted to the bar,
he removed to Springfield, Illinois, and was soon prominent in his
profession. He was a member of the legislature from 1832 to 1836.
In 1838 he defeated Stephen A. Douglas for Congress, and served
two terms--as a Whig. In 1863 and 1864 he served a third term--as a
Democrat. He served also in the State Senate, and was a major in the
Black Hawk War. He died in 1885.]