Flatboat--New Salem--Election Clerk--Store and Mill--Kirkham's
"Grammar"--"Sangamo Journal"--The Talisman--Lincoln's Address, March 9,
1832--Black Hawk War--Lincoln Elected Captain--Mustered out May 27,
1832--Reënlisted in Independent Spy Battalion--Finally Mustered out, June
16, 1832--Defeated for the Legislature--Blacksmith or Lawyer?--The
Lincoln-Berry Store--Appointed Postmaster, May 7, 1833--National Politics
The life of Abraham Lincoln, or that part of it which will interest
readers for all future time, properly begins in March, 1831, after the
winter of the "deep snow." According to frontier custom, being then
twenty-one years old, he left his father's cabin to make his own fortune
in the world. A man named Denton Offutt, one of a class of local traders
and speculators usually found about early Western settlements, had
probably heard something of young Lincoln's Indiana history,
particularly that he had made a voyage on a flatboat from Indiana to New
Orleans, and that he was strong, active, honest, and generally, as would
be expressed in Western phrase, "a smart young fellow." He was therefore
just the sort of man Offutt needed for one of his trading enterprises,
and Mr. Lincoln himself relates somewhat in detail how Offutt engaged
him and the beginning of the venture:
"Abraham, together with his stepmother's son, John D. Johnston, and
John Hanks, yet residing in Macon County, hired themselves to Denton
Offutt to take a flatboat from Beardstown, Illinois [on the Illinois
River], to New Orleans; and for that purpose were to join
him--Offutt--at Springfield, Illinois, so soon as the snow should go
off. When it did go off, which was about the first of March, 1831, the
county was so flooded as to make traveling by land impracticable, to
obviate which difficulty they purchased a large canoe, and came down the
Sangamon River in it. This is the time and the manner of Abraham's first
entrance into Sangamon County. They found Offutt at Springfield, but
learned from him that he had failed in getting a boat at Beardstown.
This led to their hiring themselves to him for twelve dollars per month
each, and getting the timber out of the trees and building a boat at Old
Sangamon town on the Sangamon River, seven miles northwest of
Springfield, which boat they took to New Orleans, substantially upon the
old contract."
It needs here to be recalled that Lincoln's father was a carpenter, and
that Abraham had no doubt acquired considerable skill in the use of
tools during his boyhood and a practical knowledge of the construction
of flatboats during his previous New Orleans trip, sufficient to enable
him with confidence to undertake this task in shipbuilding. From the
after history of both Johnston and Hanks, we know that neither of them
was gifted with skill or industry, and it becomes clear that Lincoln was
from the first leader of the party, master of construction, and captain
of the craft.
It took some time to build the boat, and before it was finished the
Sangamon River had fallen so that the new craft stuck midway across the
dam at Rutledge's Mill, at New Salem, a village of fifteen or twenty
houses. The inhabitants came down to the bank, and exhibited great
interest in the fate of the boat, which, with its bow in the air and its
stern under water, was half bird and half fish, and they probably
jestingly inquired of the young captain whether he expected to dive or
to fly to New Orleans. He was, however, equal to the occasion. He bored
a hole in the bottom of the boat at the bow, and rigged some sort of
lever or derrick to lift the stern, so that the water she had taken in
behind ran out in front, enabling her to float over the partly submerged
dam; and this feat, in turn, caused great wonderment in the crowd at the
novel expedient of bailing a boat by boring a hole in her bottom.
This exploit of naval engineering fully established Lincoln's fame at
New Salem, and grounded him so firmly in the esteem of his employer
Offutt that the latter, already looking forward to his future
usefulness, at once engaged him to come back to New Salem, after his New
Orleans voyage, to act as his clerk in a store.
Once over the dam and her cargo reloaded, partly there and partly at
Beardstown, the boat safely made the remainder of her voyage to New
Orleans; and, returning by steamer to St. Louis, Lincoln and Johnston
(Hanks had turned back from St. Louis) continued on foot to Illinois,
Johnston remaining at the family home, which had meanwhile been removed
from Macon to Coles County, and Lincoln going to his employer and
friends at New Salem. This was in July or August, 1831. Neither Offutt
nor his goods had yet arrived, and during his waiting he had a chance to
show the New Salemites another accomplishment. An election was to be
held, and one of the clerks was sick and failed to come. Scribes were
not plenty on the frontier, and Mentor Graham, the clerk who was
present, looking around for a properly qualified colleague, noticed
Lincoln, and asked him if he could write, to which he answered, in local
idiom, that he "could make a few rabbit tracks," and was thereupon
immediately inducted into his first office. He performed his duties not
only to the general satisfaction, but so as to interest Graham, who was
a schoolmaster, and afterward made himself very useful to Lincoln.
Offutt finally arrived with a miscellaneous lot of goods, which Lincoln
opened and put in order in a room that a former New Salem storekeeper
was just ready to vacate, and whose remnant stock Offutt also purchased.
Trade was evidently not brisk at New Salem, for the commercial zeal of
Offutt led him to increase his venture by renting the Rutledge and
Cameron mill, on whose historic dam the flatboat had stuck. For a while
the charge of the mill was added to Lincoln's duties, until another
clerk was engaged to help him. There is likewise good evidence that in
addition to his duties at the store and the mill, Lincoln made himself
generally useful--that he cut down trees and split rails enough to make
a large hog-pen adjoining the mill, a proceeding quite natural when we
remember that his hitherto active life and still growing muscles
imperatively demanded the exercise which measuring calico or weighing
out sugar and coffee failed to supply.
We know from other incidents that he was possessed of ample bodily
strength. In frontier life it is not only needed for useful labor of
many kinds, but is also called upon to aid in popular amusement. There
was a settlement in the neighborhood of New Salem called Clary's Grove,
where lived a group of restless, rollicking backwoodsmen with a strong
liking for various forms of frontier athletics and rough practical
jokes. In the progress of American settlement there has always been a
time, whether the frontier was in New England or Pennsylvania or
Kentucky, or on the banks of the Mississippi, when the champion wrestler
held some fraction of the public consideration accorded to the victor in
the Olympic games of Greece. Until Lincoln came, Jack Armstrong was the
champion wrestler of Clary's Grove and New Salem, and picturesque
stories are told how the neighborhood talk, inflamed by Offutt's fulsome
laudation of his clerk, made Jack Armstrong feel that his fame was in
danger. Lincoln put off the encounter as long as he could, and when the
wrestling match finally came off neither could throw the other. The
bystanders became satisfied that they were equally matched in strength
and skill, and the cool courage which Lincoln manifested throughout the
ordeal prevented the usual close of such incidents with a fight. Instead
of becoming chronic enemies and leaders of a neighborhood feud,
Lincoln's self-possession and good temper turned the contest into the
beginning of a warm and lasting friendship.
If Lincoln's muscles were at times hungry for work, not less so was his
mind. He was already instinctively feeling his way to his destiny when,
in conversation with Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster, he indicated his
desire to use some of his spare moments to increase his education, and
confided to him his "notion to study English grammar." It was entirely
in the nature of things that Graham should encourage this mental
craving, and tell him: "If you expect to go before the public in any
capacity, I think it the best thing you can do." Lincoln said that if he
had a grammar he would begin at once. Graham was obliged to confess that
there was no such book at New Salem, but remembered that there was one
at Vaner's, six miles away. Promptly after breakfast the next morning
Lincoln walked to Vaner's and procured the precious volume, and,
probably with Graham's occasional help, found no great difficulty in
mastering its contents. While tradition does not mention any other study
begun at that time, we may fairly infer that, slight as may have been
Graham's education, he must have had other books from which, together
with his friendly advice, Lincoln's intellectual hunger derived further
stimulus and nourishment.
In his duties at the store and his work at the mill, in his study of
Kirkham's "Grammar," and educational conversations with Mentor Graham,
in the somewhat rude but frank and hearty companionship of the citizens
of New Salem and the exuberant boys of Clary's Grove, Lincoln's life for
the second half of the year 1831 appears not to have been eventful, but
was doubtless more comfortable and as interesting as had been his
flatboat building and New Orleans voyage during the first half. He was
busy in useful labor, and, though he had few chances to pick up scraps
of schooling, was beginning to read deeply in that book of human nature,
the profound knowledge of which rendered him such immense service in
after years.
The restlessness and ambition of the village of New Salem was many times
multiplied in the restlessness and ambition of Springfield, fifteen or
twenty miles away, which, located approximately near the geographical
center of Illinois, was already beginning to crave, if not yet to feel,
its future destiny as the capital of the State. In November of the same
year that aspiring town produced the first number of its weekly
newspaper, the "Sangamo Journal," and in its columns we begin to find
recorded historical data. Situated in a region of alternating spaces of
prairie and forest, of attractive natural scenery and rich soil, it was
nevertheless at a great disadvantage in the means of commercial
transportation. Lying sixty miles from Beardstown, the nearest landing
on the Illinois River, the peculiarities of soil, climate, and primitive
roads rendered travel and land carriage extremely difficult--often
entirely impossible--for nearly half of every year. The very first
number of the "Sangamo Journal" sounded its strongest note on the then
leading tenet of the Whig party--internal improvements by the general
government, and active politics to secure them. In later numbers we
learn that a regular Eastern mail had not been received for three weeks.
The tide of immigration which was pouring into Illinois is illustrated
in a tabular statement on the commerce of the Illinois River, showing
that the steamboat arrivals at Beardstown had risen from one each in the
years 1828 and 1829, and only four in 1830, to thirty-two during the
year 1831. This naturally directed the thoughts of travelers and traders
to some better means of reaching the river landing than the frozen or
muddy roads and impassable creeks and sloughs of winter and spring. The
use of the Sangamon River, flowing within five miles of Springfield and
emptying itself into the Illinois ten or fifteen miles from Beardstown,
seemed for the present the only solution of the problem, and a public
meeting was called to discuss the project. The deep snows of the winter
of 1830-31 abundantly filled the channels of that stream, and the winter
of 1831-32 substantially repeated its swelling floods. Newcomers in that
region were therefore warranted in drawing the inference that it might
remain navigable for small craft. Public interest on the topic was
greatly heightened when one Captain Bogue, commanding a small steamer
then at Cincinnati, printed a letter in the "Journal" of January 26,
1832, saying: "I intend to try to ascend the river [Sangamo] immediately
on the breaking up of the ice." It was well understood that the chief
difficulty would be that the short turns in the channels were liable to
be obstructed by a gorge of driftwood and the limbs and trunks of
overhanging trees. To provide for this, Captain Bogue's letter added: "I
should be met at the mouth of the river by ten or twelve men, having
axes with long handles under the direction of some experienced man. I
shall deliver freight from St. Louis at the landing on the Sangamo River
opposite the town of Springfield for thirty-seven and a half cents per
hundred pounds." The "Journal" of February 16 contained an advertisement
that the "splendid upper-cabin steamer _Talisman_" would leave for
Springfield, and the paper of March 1 announced her arrival at St. Louis
on the 22d of February with a full cargo. In due time the citizen
committee appointed by the public meeting met the _Talisman_ at the
mouth of the Sangamon, and the "Journal" of March 29 announced with
great flourish that the "steamboat _Talisman_, of one hundred and fifty
tons burden, arrived at the Portland landing opposite this town on
Saturday last." There was great local rejoicing over this demonstration
that the Sangamon was really navigable, and the "Journal" proclaimed
with exultation that Springfield "could no longer be considered an
inland town."
President Jackson's first term was nearing its close, and the Democratic
party was preparing to reëlect him. The Whigs, on their part, had held
their first national convention in December, 1831, and nominated Henry
Clay to dispute the succession. This nomination, made almost a year in
advance of the election, indicates an unusual degree of political
activity in the East, and voters in the new State of Illinois were
fired with an equal party zeal. During the months of January and
February, 1832, no less than six citizens of Sangamon County announced
themselves in the "Sangamo Journal" as candidates for the State
legislature, the election for which was not to occur until August; and
the "Journal" of March 15 printed a long letter, addressed "To the
People of Sangamon County," under date of the ninth, signed A. Lincoln,
and beginning:
"FELLOW-CITIZENS: Having become a candidate for the honorable office of
one of your representatives in the next general assembly of this State,
in accordance with an established custom and the principles of true
republicanism, it becomes my duty to make known to you, the people whom
I propose to represent, my sentiments with regard to local affairs." He
then takes up and discusses in an eminently methodical and practical way
the absorbing topic of the moment--the Whig doctrine of internal
improvements and its local application, the improvement of the Sangamon
River. He mentions that meetings have been held to propose the
construction of a railroad, and frankly acknowledges that "no other
improvement that reason will justify us in hoping for can equal in
utility the railroad," but contends that its enormous cost precludes any
such hope, and that, therefore, "the improvement of the Sangamon River
is an object much better suited to our infant resources." Relating his
experience in building and navigating his flatboat, and his observation
of the stage of the water since then, he draws the very plausible
conclusion that by straightening its channel and clearing away its
driftwood the stream can be made navigable "to vessels of from
twenty-five to thirty tons burden for at least one half of all common
years, and to vessels of much greater burden a part of the time," His
letter very modestly touches a few other points of needed legislation--a
law against usury, laws to promote education, and amendments to estray
and road laws. The main interest for us, however, is in the frank avowal
of his personal ambition.
"Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or
not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being
truly esteemed of my fellow-men by rendering myself worthy of their
esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be
developed. I am young, and unknown to many of you. I was born, and have
ever remained, in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or
popular relations or friends to recommend me. My case is thrown
exclusively upon the independent voters of the country, and if elected
they will have conferred a favor upon me for which I shall be
unremitting in my labors to compensate. But if the good people in their
wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too
familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined."
This written and printed address gives us an accurate measure of the man
and the time. When he wrote this document he was twenty-three years old.
He had been in the town and county only about nine months of actual
time. As Sangamon County covered an estimated area of twenty-one hundred
and sixty square miles, he could know but little of either it or its
people. How dared a "friendless, uneducated boy, working on a flatboat
at twelve dollars a month," with "no wealthy or popular friends to
recommend" him, aspire to the honors and responsibilities of a
legislator? The only answer is that he was prompted by that intuition of
genius, that consciousness of powers which justify their claims by their
achievements. When we scan the circumstances more closely, we find
distinct evidence of some reason for his confidence. Relatively
speaking, he was neither uneducated nor friendless. His acquirements
were already far beyond the simple elements of reading, writing, and
ciphering. He wrote a good, clear, serviceable hand; he could talk well
and reason cogently. The simple, manly style of his printed address
fully equals in literary ability that of the average collegian in the
twenties. His migration from Indiana to Illinois and his two voyages to
New Orleans had given him a glimpse of the outside world. His natural
logic readily grasped the significance of the railroad as a new factor
in transportation, although the first American locomotive had been built
only one year, and ten to fifteen years were yet to elapse before the
first railroad train was to run in Illinois.
One other motive probably had its influence. He tells us that Offutt's
business was failing, and his quick judgment warned him that he would
soon be out of a job as clerk. This, however, could be only a secondary
reason for announcing himself as a candidate, for the election was not
to occur till August, and even if he were elected there would be neither
service nor salary till the coming winter. His venture into politics
must therefore be ascribed to the feeling which he so frankly announced
in his letter, his ambition to become useful to his fellow-men--the
impulse that throughout history has singled out the great leaders of
mankind.
In this particular instance a crisis was also at hand, calculated to
develop and utilize the impulse. Just about a month after the
publication of Lincoln's announcement the "Sangamo Journal" of April 19
printed an official call from Governor Reynolds, directed to General
Neale of the Illinois militia, to organize six hundred volunteers of his
brigade for military service in a campaign against the Indians under
Black Hawk, the war chief of the Sacs, who, in defiance of treaties and
promises, had formed a combination with other tribes during the winter,
and had now crossed back from the west to the east side of the
Mississippi River with the determination to reoccupy their old homes in
the Rock River country toward the northern end of the State.
In the memoranda which Mr. Lincoln furnished for a campaign biography,
he thus relates what followed the call for troops:
"Abraham joined a volunteer company, and, to his own surprise, was
elected captain of it. He says he has not since had any success in life
which gave him so much satisfaction. He went to the campaign, served
near three months, met the ordinary hardships of such an expedition, but
was in no battle." Official documents furnish some further interesting
details. As already said, the call was printed in the "Sangamo Journal"
of April 19. On April 21 the company was organized at Richland, Sangamon
County, and on April 28 was inspected and mustered into service at
Beardstown and attached to Colonel Samuel Thompson's regiment, the
Fourth Illinois Mounted Volunteers. They marched at once to the hostile
frontier. As the campaign shaped itself, it probably became evident to
the company that they were not likely to meet any serious fighting, and,
not having been enlisted for any stated period, they became clamorous to
return home. The governor therefore had them and other companies
mustered out of service, at the mouth of Fox River, on May 27. Not,
however, wishing to weaken his forces before the arrival of new levies
already on the way, he called for volunteers to remain twenty days
longer. Lincoln had gone to the frontier to perform real service, not
merely to enjoy military rank or reap military glory. On the same day,
therefore, on which he was mustered out as captain, he reënlisted, and
became Private Lincoln in Captain Iles's company of mounted volunteers,
organized apparently principally for scouting service, and sometimes
called the Independent Spy Battalion. Among the other officers who
imitated this patriotic example were General Whiteside and Major John T.
Stuart, Lincoln's later law partner. The Independent Spy Battalion,
having faithfully performed its new term of service, was finally
mustered out on June 16, 1832. Lincoln and his messmate, George M.
Harrison, had the misfortune to have their horses stolen the day before,
but Harrison relates:
"I laughed at our fate and he joked at it, and we all started off
merrily. The generous men of our company walked and rode by turns with
us, and we fared about equal with the rest. But for this generosity our
legs would have had to do the better work; for in that day this dreary
route furnished no horses to buy or to steal, and, whether on horse or
afoot, we always had company, for many of the horses' backs were too
sore for riding."
Lincoln must have reached home about August 1, for the election was to
occur in the second week of that month, and this left him but ten days
in which to push his claims for popular indorsement. His friends,
however had been doing manful duty for him during his three months'
absence, and he lost nothing in public estimation by his prompt
enlistment to defend the frontier. Successive announcements in the
"Journal" had by this time swelled the list of candidates to thirteen.
But Sangamon County was entitled to only four representatives and when
the returns came in Lincoln was among those defeated. Nevertheless, he
made a very respectable showing in the race. The list of successful and
unsuccessful aspirants and their votes was as follows:
E.D. Taylor................ 1127
John T. Stuart.............. 991
Achilles Morris............. 945
Peter Cartwright............ 815
Under the plurality rule, these four had been elected. The unsuccessful
candidates were:
A.G. Herndon.............. 806
W. Carpenter............... 774
J. Dawson.................. 717
A. Lincoln................. 657
T.M. Neale................ 571
R. Quinton................. 485
Z. Peter................... 214
E. Robinson................ 169
---- Kirkpatrick........... 44
The returns show that the total vote of the county was about twenty-one
hundred and sixty-eight. Comparing this with the vote cast for Lincoln,
we see that he received nearly one third of the total county vote,
notwithstanding his absence from the canvass, notwithstanding the fact
that his acquaintanceship was limited to the neighborhood of New Salem,
notwithstanding the sharp competition. Indeed, his talent and fitness
for active practical politics were demonstrated beyond question by the
result in his home precinct of New Salem, which, though he ran as a
Whig, gave two hundred and seventy-seven votes for him and only three
against him. Three months later it gave one hundred and eighty-five for
the Jackson and only seventy for the Clay electors, proving Lincoln's
personal popularity. He remembered for the remainder of his life with
great pride that this was the only time he was ever beaten on a direct
vote of the people.
The result of the election brought him to one of the serious crises of
his life, which he forcibly stated in after years in the following
written words:
"He was now without means and out of business, but was anxious to remain
with his friends, who had treated him with so much generosity,
especially as he had nothing elsewhere to go to. He studied what he
should do; thought of learning the blacksmith trade, thought of trying
to study law, rather thought he could not succeed at that without a
better education."
The perplexing problem between inclination and means to follow it, the
struggle between conscious talent and the restraining fetters of
poverty, has come to millions of young Americans before and since, but
perhaps to none with a sharper trial of spirit or more resolute
patience. Before he had definitely resolved upon either career, chance
served not to solve, but to postpone his difficulty, and in the end to
greatly increase it.
New Salem, which apparently never had any good reason for becoming a
town, seems already at that time to have entered on the road to rapid
decay. Offutt's speculations had failed, and he had disappeared. The
brothers Herndon, who had opened a new store, found business dull and
unpromising. Becoming tired of their undertaking, they offered to sell
out to Lincoln and Berry on credit, and took their promissory notes in
payment. The new partners, in that excess of hope which usually attends
all new ventures, also bought two other similar establishments that were
in extremity, and for these likewise gave their notes. It is evident
that the confidence which Lincoln had inspired while he was a clerk in
Offutt's store, and the enthusiastic support he had received as a
candidate, were the basis of credit that sustained these several
commercial transactions.
It turned out in the long run that Lincoln's credit and the popular
confidence that supported it were as valuable both to his creditors and
himself as if the sums which stood over his signature had been gold coin
in a solvent bank. But this transmutation was not attained until he had
passed through a very furnace of financial embarrassment. Berry proved a
worthless partner, and the business a sorry failure. Seeing this,
Lincoln and Berry sold out again on credit--to the Trent brothers, who
soon broke up and ran away. Berry also departed and died, and finally
all the notes came back upon Lincoln for payment. He was unable to meet
these obligations, but he did the next best thing. He remained, promised
to pay when he could, and most of his creditors, maintaining their
confidence in his integrity, patiently bided their time, till, in the
course of long years, he fully justified it by paying, with interest
every cent of what he learned to call, in humorous satire upon his own
folly, the "national debt."
With one of them he was not so fortunate. Van Bergen, who bought one of
the Lincoln-Berry notes, obtained judgment, and, by peremptory sale,
swept away the horse, saddle, and surveying instruments with the daily
use of which Lincoln "procured bread and kept body and soul together,"
to use his own words. But here again Lincoln's recognized honesty was
his safety. Out of personal friendship, James Short bought the property
and restored it to the young surveyor, giving him time to repay. It was
not until his return from Congress, seventeen years after the purchase
of the store, that he finally relieved himself of the last instalments
of his "national debt." But by these seventeen years of sober industry,
rigid economy, and unflinching faith to his obligations he earned the
title of "Honest old Abe," which proved of greater service to himself
and his country than if he had gained the wealth of Croesus.
Out of this ill-starred commercial speculation, however, Lincoln derived
one incidental benefit, and it may be said it became the determining
factor in his career. It is evident from his own language that he
underwent a severe mental struggle in deciding whether he would become a
blacksmith or a lawyer. In taking a middle course, and trying to become
a merchant, he probably kept the latter choice strongly in view. It
seems well established by local tradition that during the period while
the Lincoln-Berry store was running its fore-doomed course from bad to
worse, Lincoln employed all the time he could spare from his customers
(and he probably had many leisure hours) in reading and study of various
kinds. This habit was greatly stimulated and assisted by his being
appointed, May 7, 1833, postmaster at New Salem, which office he
continued to hold until May 30, 1836, when New Salem partially
disappeared and the office was removed to Petersburg. The influences
which brought about the selection of Lincoln are not recorded, but it is
suggested that he had acted for some time as deputy postmaster under the
former incumbent, and thus became the natural successor. Evidently his
politics formed no objection, as New Salem precinct had at the August
election, when he ran as a Whig, given him its almost solid vote for
representative notwithstanding the fact that it was more than two thirds
Democratic. The postmastership increased his public consideration and
authority, broadened his business experience, and the newspapers he
handled provided him an abundance of reading matter on topics of both
local and national importance up to the latest dates.
Those were stirring times, even on the frontier. The "Sangamo Journal"
of December 30, 1832, printed Jackson's nullification proclamation. The
same paper, of March 9, 1833, contained an editorial on Clay's
compromise and that of the 16th had a notice of the great nullification
debate in Congress. The speeches of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster were
published in full during the following month, and Mr. Lincoln could not
well help reading them and joining in the feelings and comments they
provoked.
While the town of New Salem was locally dying, the county of Sangamon
and the State of Illinois were having what is now called a boom. Other
wide-awake newspapers, such as the "Missouri Republican" and "Louisville
Journal," abounded in notices of the establishment of new stage lines
and the general rush of immigration. But the joyous dream of the New
Salemites, that the Sangamon River would become a commercial highway,
quickly faded. The _Talisman_ was obliged to hurry back down the rapidly
falling stream, tearing away a portion of the famous dam to permit her
departure. There were rumors that another steamer, the _Sylph_, would
establish regular trips between Springfield and Beardstown, but she
never came. The freshets and floods of 1831 and 1832 were succeeded by a
series of dry seasons, and the navigation of the Sangamon River was
never afterward a telling plank in the county platform of either
political party.