LINCOLN'S ELECTION TO THE TENTH ASSEMBLY.--ADMISSION TO THE
BAR.--REMOVAL TO SPRINGFIELD.
The first twenty-six years of Abraham Lincoln's life have been traced
in the preceding chapters. We have seen him struggling to escape
from the lot of a common farm laborer, to which he seemed to be born;
becoming a flatboatman, a grocery clerk, a store-keeper, a postmaster,
and finally a surveyor. We have traced his efforts to rise above
the intellectual apathy and the indifference to culture which
characterized the people among whom he was reared, by studying with
eagerness every subject on which he could find books,--biography,
state history, mathematics, grammar, surveying, and finally law. We
have followed his growth in ambition and in popularity from the day
when, on a keg in an Indiana grocery, he debated the contents of the
Louisville "Journal" with a company of admiring elders, to the
time when, purely because he was liked, he was elected to the State
Assembly of Illinois by the people of Sangamon County. His joys and
sorrows have been reviewed from his childhood in Kentucky to the day
of the death of the woman he loved and had hoped to make his wife.
These twenty-six years form the first period of Lincoln's life. It was
a period of makeshifts and experiments, ending in a tragic sorrow;
but at its close he had definite aims, and preparation and experience
enough to convince him that he dared follow them. Law and politics
were the fields he had chosen, and in the first year of the second
period of his life, 1836, he entered them definitely.
The Ninth General Assembly of Illinois, in which Lincoln had done his
preparatory work as a legislator, was dissolved, and in June, 1836,
he announced himself as a candidate for the Tenth Assembly. A few days
later the "Sangamon Journal" published his simple platform:
NEW SALEM, _June 13, 1836_.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'JOURNAL':
"In your paper of last Saturday I see a communication over the
signature of '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 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 the
interest on it.
"If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for
Hugh L. White for President.
"Very respectfully,
"A. LINCOLN."
The campaign which Lincoln began with this letter was in every way
more exciting for him than those of 1832 and 1834. Since the last
election a census had been taken in Illinois which showed so large
an increase in the population that the legislative districts had been
reapportioned and the General Assembly increased by fifty members. In
this reapportionment Sangamon County's delegation had been enlarged
to seven representatives and two senators. This gave large new
opportunity to political ambition, and doubled the enthusiasm of
political meetings.
But the increase of the representation was not all that made the
campaign exciting. Party lines had never before been so clearly drawn,
nor personal abuse quite so intense. One of Lincoln's first acts was
to answer a personal attack. He did it in a letter marked by candor,
good-humor, and shrewdness.
"NEW SALEM, _June 21, 1836_.
"DEAR COLONEL:
"I am told that during my absence last week you passed through
the place and stated publicly that you were in possession of
a fact or facts which, if known to the public, would entirely
destroy the prospects of N.W. Edwards and myself at the
ensuing election; but that through favor to us you would
forbear to divulge them. No one has needed favors more than I,
and generally few have been less unwilling to accept them; but
in this case favor to me would be injustice to the public, and
therefore I must beg your pardon for declining it. That I
once had the confidence of the people of Sangamon County is
sufficiently evident; and if I have done anything, either by
design or misadventure, which if known would subject me to a
forfeiture of that confidence, he that knows of that thing and
conceals it is a traitor to his country's interest.
"I find myself wholly unable to form any conjecture of what
fact or facts, real or supposed, you spoke; but my opinion of
your veracity will not permit me for a moment to doubt that
you at least believed what you said. I am flattered with the
personal regard you manifested for me; but I do hope that
on mature reflection you will view the public interest as a
paramount consideration and therefore let the worst come.
"I assure you that the candid statement of facts on your part,
however low it may sink me, shall never break the ties of
personal friendship between us.
"I wish an answer to this, and you are at liberty to publish
both if you choose.
"Very respectfully,
"A. LINCOLN."
"COLONEL ROBERT ALLEN."
Usually during the campaign Lincoln was obliged to meet personal
attacks, not by letter, but on the platform. Joshua Speed, who later
became the most intimate friend that Lincoln probably ever had, tells
of one occasion when he was obliged to meet such an attack on the
very spur of the moment. A great mass-meeting was in progress at
Springfield, and Lincoln had made a speech which had produced a deep
impression. "I was then fresh from Kentucky," says Mr. Speed, "and had
heard many of her great orators. It seemed to me then, as it seems to
me now, that I never heard a more effective speaker. He carried the
crowd with him, and swayed them as he pleased. So deep an impression
did he make that George Forquer, a man of much celebrity as a
sarcastic speaker and with a great reputation throughout the State
as an orator, rose and asked the people to hear _him_. He began his
speech by saying that this young man would have to be taken down, and
he was sorry that the task devolved upon him. He made what was called
one of his 'slasher-gaff' speeches, dealing much in ridicule
and sarcasm. Lincoln stood near him, with his arms folded, never
interrupting him. When Forquer was done, Lincoln walked to the stand,
and replied so fully and completely that his friends bore him from the
court-house on their shoulders.
"So deep an impression did this first speech make upon me that I
remember its conclusion now, after a lapse of thirty-eight years. Said
he:
"'The gentleman commenced his speech by saying that this young man
would have to be taken down, and he was sorry the task devolved upon
him. I am not so young in years as I am in the tricks and trade of a
politician; but live long or die young, I would rather die now than,
like the gentleman, change my politics and simultaneous with the
change receive an office worth three thousand dollars a year, and
then have to erect a lightning-rod over my house to protect a guilty
conscience from an offended God.'
"To understand the point of this it must be explained that Forquer
had been a Whig, but had changed his politics, and had been appointed
Register of the Land Office; and over his house was the only
lightning-rod in the town or country. Lincoln had seen the
lightning-rod for the first time on the day before."
[Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1860.--HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.
From a carbon enlargement, made by Sherman and McHugh of New York
City, of an ambrotype owned by Mr. A. Montgomery of Columbus, Ohio,
to whose generosity we owe the right of reproduction. This portrait
of Lincoln was made in June, 1860, by Butler, a Springfield (Illinois)
photographer. On July 4th of that year, Mr. Lincoln delivered an
address at Atlanta, Illinois, where he was the guest of Mr. Vester
Strong. Before leaving town he handed Mr. Strong the ambrotype which
we copy here. Mr. Strong valued the picture highly, but as he had no
children to whom to leave it, and as he wished it to be in the care of
one who would appreciate its value, he gave it a few years ago to Mr.
Montgomery.]
This speech has never been forgotten in Springfield, and on my visits
there I have repeatedly had the site of the house on which this
particular lightning-rod was placed pointed out, and one or another of
the many versions which the story has been given, related to me.
It was the practice at that date in Illinois for two rival candidates
to travel over the district together. The custom led to much
good-natured raillery between them; and in such contests Lincoln was
rarely, if ever, worsted. He could even turn the generosity of his
rival to account by his whimsical treatment, as the following shows:
He had driven out from Springfield in company with a political
opponent to engage in joint debate. The carriage, it seems, belonged
to his opponent. In addressing the gathering of farmers that met them,
Lincoln was lavish in praise of the generosity of his friend. "I am
too poor to own a carriage," he said, "but my friend has generously
invited me to ride with him. I want you to vote for me if you will;
but if not, then vote for my opponent, for he is a fine man." His
extravagant and persistent praise of his opponent appealed to the
sense of humor in his farmer audience, to whom Lincoln's inability to
own a carriage was by no means a disqualification.[1]
The election came off in August, and resulted in the choice of a
delegation from Sangamon County famous in the annals of Illinois. The
nine successful candidates were Abraham Lincoln, John Dawson, Daniel
Stone, Ninian W. Edwards, William F. Elkins, R.L. Wilson, Andrew
McCormick, Job Fletcher, and Arthur Herndon. Each one of these men
was over six feet in height, their combined stature being, it is said,
fifty-five feet. The "Long Nine" was the name Sangamon County gave
them.
[Illustration: EBENEZER PECK.
Ebenezer Peck, who was chiefly instrumental in introducing the
convention system into Illinois politics, was born in Portland, Maine,
May 22, 1805. He lived for some time in Peacham, Vermont, where he
was educated. While yet a boy, removed with his parents to Canada. He
studied law at Montreal, and practised there; became King's Counsel
for Canada East, and was finally elected to the provincial parliament
on the Reform ticket. In the summer of 1835 he removed to Chicago, and
there, as a lawyer and a politician, he at once made his mark. He was
a delegate to the first Democratic State convention in Illinois,
held at Vandalia, December 7, 1835, and was the chief advocate of the
general adoption of the convention system--a system which was at first
opposed and ridiculed by the Whigs, but which very soon they were
forced to adopt. In 1837 Mr. Peck was made one of the Internal
Improvement Commissioners. In 1838 he was elected to the State Senate,
and in 1840 to the House. He was clerk of the Supreme Court from
1841 to 1848, and reporter of that court from 1849 to 1863. His
anti-slavery sentiments led him to abandon the Democratic party in
1853, and in 1856 he helped establish the Republican party in the
State. He was again elected to the legislature in 1858. In 1863
President Lincoln appointed him a judge of the Court of Claims, and
he held this position until 1875. He died May 25, 1881.--_J. McCan
Davis._]