As soon as the Assembly closed, Lincoln returned to New Salem; but it
was not to stay. He had determined to go to Springfield. Major John
Stuart, the friend who had advised him to study law and who had lent
him books and with whom he had been associated closely in politics,
had offered to take him as a partner. It was a good opening, for
Stuart was one of the leading lawyers and politicians of the State,
and his influence would place Lincoln at once in command of more or
less business. From every point of view the change seems to have been
wise; yet Lincoln made it with foreboding.
To practise law he must abandon his business as surveyor, which was
bringing him a fair income; he must for a time, at least, go without
any certain income. If he failed, what then? The uncertainty weighed
on him heavily, the more so because he was burdened by the debts left
from his store and because he was constantly called upon to aid his
father's family. Thomas Lincoln had remained in Coles County, but he
had not, in these six years in which his son had risen so rapidly,
been able to get anything more than a poor livelihood from his farm.
The sense of responsibility Lincoln had towards his father's family
made it the more difficult for him to undertake a new profession. His
decision was made, however, and as soon as the session of the Tenth
Assembly was over he started for Springfield. His first appearance
there is as pathetic as amusing.
"He had ridden into town," says Joshua Speed, "on a borrowed horse,
with no earthly property save a pair of saddle-bags containing a few
clothes. I was a merchant at Springfield, and kept a large country
store, embracing dry-goods, groceries, hardware, books, medicines,
bed-clothes, mattresses--in fact, everything that the country needed.
Lincoln came into the store with his saddle-bags on his arm. He
said he wanted to buy the furniture for a single bed. The mattress,
blankets, sheets, coverlid, and pillow, according to the figures made
by me, would cost seventeen dollars. He said that perhaps was cheap
enough; but small as the price was, he was unable to pay it. But if I
would credit him till Christmas, and his experiment as a lawyer was a
success, he would pay then; saying in the saddest tone, 'If I fail in
this I do not know that I can ever pay you.' As I looked up at him I
thought then, and I think now, that I never saw a sadder face.
"I said to him: 'You seem to be so much pained at contracting so small
a debt, I think I can suggest a plan by which you can avoid the debt,
and at the same time attain your end. I have a large room with a
double bed upstairs, which you are very welcome to share with me.'
"'Where is your room?' said he.
"'Upstairs,' said I, pointing to a pair of winding stairs which led
from the store to my room.
"He took his saddle-bags on his arm, went upstairs, set them on the
floor, and came down with the most changed expression of countenance.
Beaming with pleasure, he exclaimed:
"'Well, Speed, I am moved.'"
Another friend, William Butler, with whom Lincoln had become intimate
at Vandalia, took him to board; life at Springfield thus began under
as favorable auspices as he could hope for.
After Chicago, Springfield was at that day the most promising city in
Illinois. It had some fifteen hundred inhabitants, and the removal of
the capital was certain to bring many more. Already, in fact, the town
felt the effect. Houses and blocks were started; lawyers, politicians,
tradesmen, laborers, were pouring in. Hitherto most of the dwellings
had been of log or frame; now, however, there was an increase in brick
buildings.
The effect was apparent too, in society. "We used to eat all
together," said an old man who in the early thirties came to
Springfield as a hostler; "but about this time some one came along and
told the people they oughtn't to do so, and then the hired folks ate
in the kitchen." This differentiation was apparent to Lincoln and
a little discouraging. He was thinking vaguely, at the time of this
removal to Springfield, that perhaps he best marry a Miss Mary Owens,
with whom he had become intimately acquainted in 1836 in New Salem;
but Springfield society, and the impossibility of his supporting a
wife in it, discouraged him.
"I am often thinking of what we said about your coming to live
at Springfield," he wrote her in May.
"I am afraid you would not be satisfied. There is a great deal
of flourishing about in carriages here, which it would be your
doom to see without sharing it. You would have to be poor,
without the means of hiding your poverty. Do you believe you
could bear that patiently? Whatever woman may cast her lot
with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do
all in my power to make her happy and contented; and there is
nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to
fail in the effort. I know I should be much happier with you
than the way I am, provided I saw no signs of discontent in
you. What you have said to me may have been in the way of
jest, or I may have misunderstood it. If so, then let it be
forgotten; if otherwise, I much wish you would think seriously
before you decide. What I have said I will most positively
abide by, provided you wish it. My opinion is that you had
better not do it. You have not been accustomed to hardship,
and it may be more severe than you now imagine. I know you
are capable of thinking correctly on any subject, and if you
deliberate maturely upon this before you decide, then I am
willing to abide your decision."
[Illustration: (MAP OF ILLINOIS ILLUSTRATING "_An Act to establish and
maintain a General System of Internal Improvements, in force 27th Feb.
1837_")
When the Illinois legislature adopted the above plan of internal
improvement in 1837, there was in the whole United States only about
eleven hundred miles of railroad. The above scheme provided for
thirteen hundred and fifty. The basis of the outlines used by
the committee in developing the plan was contained in a series of
resolutions offered in the beginning of the session by Stephen A.
Douglas. In the house the vote on the bill stood sixty-one in favor to
twenty-five against.]
This decidedly dispassionate view of their relation seems not to
have brought any decision from Miss Owens; for three months later
Mr. Lincoln wrote her an equally judicial letter, telling her that
he could not think of her "with entire indifference," that he in all
cases wanted to do right and "most particularly so in all cases with
women," and summing up his position as follows:
"What I do wish is that our further acquaintance shall depend
upon yourself. If such further acquaintance would contribute
nothing to your happiness, I am sure it would not to mine. If
you feel yourself in any degree bound to me, I am now willing
to release you, provided you wish it; while, on the other
hand, I am willing and even anxious to bind you faster, if I
can be convinced that it will in any considerable degree add
to your happiness. This, indeed, is the whole question with
me. Nothing would make me more miserable than to believe you
miserable--nothing more happy than to know you were so."
Miss Owens had enough discernment to recognize the disinterestedness
of this love-making, and she refused Mr. Lincoln's offer. She found
him "deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a
woman's happiness," she said. The affair seems to have been a rather
vigorous flirtation on her part, which had interested and perhaps
flattered Mr. Lincoln. In the sincerity of his nature he feared he had
awakened a genuine attachment, and his notions of honor compelled
him to find out. When finally refused, he wrote a description of the
affair to a friend, in which he ridiculed himself unmercifully:
"I was mortified, it seemed to me, in a hundred different
ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the reflection that I
had so long been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at
the same time never doubting that I understood them perfectly;
and also that she, whom I had taught myself to believe nobody
else would have, had actually rejected me with all my fancied
greatness. And, to cap the whole, I then for the first time
began to suspect that I was really a little in love with her.
But let it all go! I'll try and outlive it. Others have been
made fools of by the girls, but this can never with truth be
said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool
of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again
to think of marrying; and for this reason--I can never be
satisfied with any one who would be blockhead enough to have
me."