Meanwhile, there were other, far heavier drafts upon that meager purse. Its strings reached all the way to the little cabin on Goose Nest Prairie, in Coles County, where, after repeated migrations, Thomas and Sarah Lincoln had taken up their last abode. The family, or what remained of it, was not more prosperous then, we need hardly add, than of yore. In fact, financial embarrassments appear to have increased, and frequent were the calls upon Abraham for aid. How he responded may be inferred from what he once wrote to his stepbrother, John D. Johnston: “You already know I desire that neither father nor mother shall be in want of any comfort, either in health or sickness, while they live.”[iv-54]

A fitting pendant is furnished by a letter which had been sent to Thomas Lincoln, himself, some years previous. It read:—

When occasion served, moreover, the writer’s customary contributions to the family fund were supplemented by the proceeds of some near-by case. This happened in 1845, when he won a Coles County slander suit that had been tried at Charleston. His client, in lieu of fees, assigned thirty-five dollars of the judgment to Mr. Lincoln, who, instead of collecting the money, instructed the clerk of the court to turn the entire sum, when it was received, over to his father. The old gentleman, they say, came in from Goose Nest Prairie, accompanied by his stepson, to get the present. And this took place at a time when fees were far from plentiful with the donor, whose total receipts for a term of court, as one of his partners states, did not, in some instances, exceed fifty dollars.

More generous still was Lincoln’s course in the matter of two hundred dollars which, it is said, his parents were sorely in need of. Having paid over the money, he determined to make sure that at least part of the property held by them should not slip through their fingers. To this end, forty acres of the home place were deeded to him by Thomas and Sarah, with a reservation to the effect that the old folks should have “entire control of said tract ... during both and each of their natural lives.”[iv-56] This was doubtless done, in the main, for the protection of his dearly beloved stepmother. To give her money or to supply her with comforts failed, as he thought, to balance the long account of affectionate service which stood between them. He went further, and secured her this piece of property at his expense for as long as she lived: secured it, indeed, against her own fond forgetfulness of self. For no sooner had Thomas Lincoln died than Sarah’s own son, the good-natured, idle, happy-go-lucky John, tried to sell the place, and only Abraham’s firmness in maintaining his rights as the owner kept the land under the old lady’s feet. Still there was no ill-will between the brothers. When Johnston, who appears to have been perpetually impecunious, appealed for assistance on his own account, Lincoln usually responded with the desired funds. And once, when for obvious reasons the money was not forthcoming, a generous proposition accompanied the kindly refusal.[iv-57] This warm-hearted man, then, meeting the claims of the old home as well as of the new, smoothing out from year to year a coil of debts, and indulging his fancy, at the same time, for occasional little acts of benevolence, might surely have used a much larger income to advantage.

Yet apparently none of these demands upon Lincoln’s resources quickened in him, to the least degree, any tendency toward cupidity. Even certain notable ventures on the uncertain seas of politics, that brought up now and then, as we shall learn, financial straits, failed to disturb his perfect poise with regard to money matters. Nor did he attempt to better the range of his professional opportunities, and when Judge Grant Goodrich, one of the leading Chicago lawyers, offered him a partnership in a highly lucrative practice, Lincoln declined the flattering proposal. He preferred his life on the circuit, with its freedom and smaller fees, to the grind of a wealth-producing hopper in that rapidly expanding city. As a result of all this Lincoln naturally failed to attain a competency. After more than twenty years of active practice at the bar, during which his services were eagerly sought for in the Federal Courts, as well as throughout the Eighth Judicial Circuit; after a record of labors unsurpassed, if indeed it was equaled, by any of his contemporaries who attended the Illinois Supreme Court, the highest appellate tribunal in the State; after enjoying a standing that brought him important cases to be tried in distant places, and retainers to appear before the United States Supreme Court,—this powerful advocate, successful in every respect but one, closed his legal career a poor man. The circumstance once led Judge Davis to remark: “I question whether there was a lawyer in the circuit who had been at the bar as long a time whose means were not larger.”

How much Lincoln might, then, be considered actually worth, as the phrase goes, has been variously estimated. It is safe to say, however, that his estate consisted, for the most part, of his home with its contents at Springfield, a tract of land comprising one hundred and sixty acres in Crawford County, Iowa, granted by the United States Government for military service during the Black Hawk War, and a lot in the new town of Lincoln.[iv-58] If there were other similar possessions of importance, they must have escaped notice, and ready money was evidently far from plentiful. Mr. Lincoln, himself, rated his net assets, it is said, low enough. While in New York, during the month of February, 1860, he met, so the story goes, one of his former Illinois friends, who, when questioned as to how the fickle goddess had treated him, replied that she had only yielded up one hundred thousand dollars.

“Isn’t that enough?” asked Lincoln. “I should call myself a rich man if I had that much. I’ve got my house at Springfield and about three thousand dollars.”

Somewhat larger amounts figure in other versions of this interview, but at best the total sum must have been comparatively small.[iv-59] Indeed, such scattering indications as can now be collected all warrant the inference that a banker’s balance-sheet, struck in those days between Mr. Lincoln’s debits and credits, would have disclosed no very sizable net surplus.

But there is another system of accounting which results in quite a different showing. It deals not with dollars and cents, nor with real estate, nor securities; yet until this method too has been applied, no such appraisement can be deemed complete. Its values are expressed in terms of honor, its profits are to be found in the hearts of the people; and by this reckoning, Abraham Lincoln’s career at the bar was a brilliant success. He may, it is true, have had less property to show for all these years of toil than any of his colleagues; still, not one of them was so rich in the love and confidence of the entire region. The old circuit—judges, lawyers, and laymen—united to award him a prize that money cannot buy. They sent him out laden with the fine gold of a spotless reputation. They introduced him to the nation as their ideal of a true man, at a time when the true man was sorely needed; at a time when any but a true man placed where he was placed must have gone down in defeat with perhaps as great a cause as has ever been committed to a single champion; and to this day, his name remains a synonym throughout the land for honest dealing.

CHAPTER V

HONESTY IN POLITICS

Early during the spring of 1832, while still a clerk in Denton Offutt’s grocery store at New Salem, Lincoln announced himself to be an aspirant for electoral honors. How this came about is not without interest. According to his own explanation, offered in a little speech made at the time, he had been “solicited by many friends”[v-1] to become a candidate for the State Legislature. The phrase doubtless passed more nearly at its face value on that occasion than is usual with such euphemisms of the stump. For in very truth, this young man—newcomer though he was, and but just past his twenty-third birthday—had won the good will of the people about him to a remarkable degree. Sunning themselves in the charm of his kindly nature, laughing at his jokes and applauding his feats of physical strength, admiring the scanty learning which he employed with so much common sense, and confiding, above everything, in an integrity that had already been subjected, as we have seen, to numerous little tests, the voters of New Salem might well have “solicited” Lincoln to enter the political field. They had known him, it is true, less than nine months, but may not that brief period have teemed with as many experiences as ordinarily fill the corresponding number of years in more conservative communities? For time seems measured by heartbeats, so to say, rather than by hours, when it is quickened with the stress and strain of life on a Western frontier. Under the primitive conditions that prevail there, elemental qualities push to the front, men stand revealed for what they really are, and true leadership comes speedily into its own. So the smiling young clerk, whose tall, angular form towered above Offutt’s counter, impressed himself upon his customers as a suitable person to be entrusted with the not too onerous duties of representing them in the General Assembly. They had seen enough of him to believe that those ungainly lines overlay a group of faculties which might be relied on for effective political service; and, what was infinitely more important, they felt assured that whenever these faculties were exerted, they would move in harmony with the laws of honor.

Honor, in the fine, exalted sense of the term, however, hardly entered at this time into the calculations of the New Salem constituents. No far-reaching moral principle apparently claimed their attention, and such interests as they had in that particular election itself were commonplace enough. The voters desired a member who could be trusted to look loyally, with unsoiled hands, after their material needs at the State Capital. They wanted good faith there, rather than high ideals. The candidate—not less practical, for that matter, and a politician true to type in the making—wanted an office. To say that he entered upon this initial canvass with any exceptionally lofty programme, is to anticipate the full-orbed halo of later days, at a period when only the first faint prophetic glow might, perhaps, now and then have been discernible. In sober truth, as Lincoln frankly explained, “Offutt’s business was failing—had almost failed.” [v-2] It would soon become necessary to find a new job, and the pay of a Representative, though limited to day’s wages for short terms, with mileage, looked sufficiently inviting. Moreover, this call from “among his immediate neighbors,” [v-2] to quote him again, touched perhaps the most vulnerable point in Abe’s character—his personal ambition. The “last infirmity of noble mind” may sometimes also be the first. From Lincoln’s earliest youth the passion to surpass others had dominated him at every turn. Pitting his strength, whether of mind or body, against that of his associates, he had lost no opportunity of excelling them, until it seemed almost second nature for this homely mixture of modesty and self-assertion, of good humor and mastery, to become the central figure in every group through which he moved. So confirmed grew these habits of leadership that as Lincoln reached manhood the craving for distinction, the aspiration to be big where once he had been little, must have entered into the very core of his being. It was not overstating the case, accordingly, for him to tell his “fellow-citizens,” in a printed address issued at the beginning of this canvass: “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.”[v-3]

These phrases, stripped of their conventional wrappings, really meant that the writer had set his heart, above all things, upon popularity.

The very intensity of such an aspiration must have put him severely to the test. How far he went in gratifying it, and to what extent, if any, inconvenient moral scruples were allowed to impede his eager progress, are pertinent questions. Was he, in other words, under the absolute sway of the master passion, as so many eager souls have been, or did an alert conscience at crucial points apply the controlling brake? Conclusive answers to these queries can, we are aware, be given only after a survey of the man’s entire career; yet back there, almost at the beginning of things, on the threshold, so to say, of his public life, one group of circumstances dimly prefigured, in a way, the whole story.

When Lincoln essayed this first short flight into politics, Democratic men and measures were supreme on well-nigh every hand. The reign of Andrew Jackson was at its height. Under his imperious leadership—he had just completed three years in the White House—“radical doctrines,” so-called, commanded ever-increasing support; while his own magnetic personality attracted many followers who were as ardent in their support of him as they grew intolerant of those who opposed him. No predecessor had carried the rewarding of friends and the punishing of enemies to such an extreme. Partisanship was in the saddle. Proscription became the order of the day. Taking their cue from the despotic decrees issued, time and again at Washington, the “whole-hog Jackson men,” as the most zealous among the President’s adherents were not inaptly called, stationed themselves across the highways to preferment and crushed out the political lives of candidates who failed to respond with the familiar shibboleths of the party.[v-4] When methods so coercive are pursued by a powerfully intrenched majority, place-hunters in great numbers throng to its standard. Their huzzas may be heard above the voices of the faithful, and patronage, rather than political creed, directs—if indeed it does not control—the devious operations of partisan machinery. Such was the scene that presented itself to the young Lincoln’s anxious eyes, as he looked over this new, this untried field for a point of vantage from which a beginner might try his wings.

Nor was the prospect nearer home essentially different. There, too, the uncompromising Democracy that swayed so much of the country at large seemed all powerful. Illinois, in fact, was counted by this potent majority among its rock-ribbed strongholds, and though factional differences, from time to time, disturbed local harmony, the journalist who described “Jacksonism” as dominating that State with “the strength of Gibraltar,”[v-5] hardly overdrew the picture. Sangamon County, it is true, contained a considerable number who did not favor the President, yet even there his majorities were decisive. So, all in all, an ambitious tyro, making a maiden appeal to the voters of that district from the obscure little village of New Salem, had every incentive, apparently, for enrolling himself in the ranks of these triumphant Democrats.

Such a course would not have run counter one whit to Lincoln’s early sympathies. His father, we are told, was a Democrat, or a Democratic Republican, to use the older designation; his own youthful associations had been largely with people of the same stripe; and, like many other lads of the period, he regarded the picturesque chieftain of the party with a personal admiration which neither time nor political changes wholly effaced.[v-6] But as Abraham reached manhood, a greater statesman—greater in not a few requisites of leadership—had attracted his favor; and he found himself, ere long, at one with those who were enlisted under the banner of Henry Clay.

That eminent campaigner’s personality captivated the younger man’s imagination. It presented a magnet to which the true metal in Lincoln’s nature could not but respond. There were elements, moreover, in “gallant Harry’s” character, no less than in his achievements so far as they had then been unfolded, that compelled profound respect. Clay’s early poverty, of which no sordid traces were perceptible in a singularly winning presence, his breadth of human sympathy and largeness of vision, a chivalrous manner that accorded well with an ardently sanguine temperament, his unswerving integrity with regard to pecuniary matters, the lofty standard that he had set himself for the practice of his profession as a lawyer, his equally lofty standards of public duty,—then still unshaken by the shifts of a beguiling ambition,—the splendid courage, not to say genius, with which he rose to the demands of great political occasions, a generous patriotism that inspired him to carry peace-winning concessions across the barriers raised by conflicting parties, his steadily expanding record which at every turn, whether in the Kentucky Legislature, the United States Senate, the House of Representatives, the Speaker’s chair, the diplomatic service, or the President’s Cabinet, had thus far been marked by the élan and dash of a brilliant intellect, an eloquence that baffled description, yet left his audiences for the rest of their days under the spell of its witchery,—all this and more had brought Lincoln to a point well-nigh bordering upon hero-worship.

Naturally, so strong a preference for “the Great Commoner” himself extended, in a way, to his public policies. Clay’s political programme, comprising by that time three notable issues,—the demands for a federal bank, a high protective tariff, and a continental scheme of internal improvements,—may also be said to have left its impress upon Lincoln’s mind. He was not deeply concerned, it is true, during those callow days, with national questions; yet so far as he held any views on such matters, they favored “Clay’s American System” and the principles generally of the National Republican Party.

So it happened that when Lincoln came to make his first political campaign, he enlisted on the weaker side. “An avowed Clay man,” to quote the candidate himself, he declared for a leader who, with all his attainments, had already been severely routed in a contest for the Presidency, and what is more, who was destined to encounter still further disasters of the same nature. Yet no heroics, no fine flourish of trumpets, so far as is known, accompanied this decision. A poor, obscure young man, in need of an office and eager for distinction, was merely following his convictions rather than his apparent interests by enrolling himself under colors doomed to repeated reverses, and in opposition to the most ruthlessly intolerant majority that the political processes of the country had thus far evolved. The result must have been a foregone conclusion. Lincoln’s canvass came to grief. Commenting on the episode, twenty-eight years later, in that brief autobiography written as the basis for a “campaign life,” he said: “This was the only time Abraham was ever beaten on a direct vote of the people.”[v-7]

And even that beating looks now, in certain respects, more like a victory than a defeat. Lincoln did not, it is conceded, prevail at the polls; but in one of those astonishing reversals whereby the X-ray of history sometimes reveals material failure to be spiritual success, this experience should rank among his greatest triumphs.

There was another reason, less obscure at the moment, for not regarding the campaign as wholly disastrous. It established Lincoln’s claim to political consideration by a remarkable circumstance. Although he failed to receive the requisite number of votes throughout the county,—standing eighth on the list of thirteen candidates who ran,—his own neighbors in the precinct which contained New Salem gave him 277 marks out of the entire 290 recorded for Representatives.[v-8] The full significance of these figures can be appreciated only after it is added that the same citizens, a few weeks later, cast 115 more votes for General Jackson’s Presidential electors than they gave to Mr. Clay’s;[v-9] and further, that this well-nigh unanimous support of their youthful townsman, without regard to his politics, was bestowed during a period noted in our annals for its intensely bitter partisanship. Explaining the phenomenon, many years thereafter, another promising young politician of those days, wrote: “The Democrats of New Salem worked for Lincoln out of their personal regard for him. That was the general understanding of the matter here at the time. In this he made no concession of principle whatever. 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.”[v-10]

Because—the writer might have continued—they had weighed and measured Offutt’s clerk, while he was weighing and measuring commodities behind the grocery-store counter; because—what is still more to the purpose—both sets of accounts, however dissimilar they must have seemed in the making, tallied peculiarly with each other in the final reckoning. And when, with almost one accord, the Democrats among these people who knew the candidate best threw party obligations aside to register their approval of him at the polls, they placed on record the first notable judgment passed by the voting public upon his character. Favorable verdicts without number have been passed upon politicians, great and small. Merely national reputations are as common among them as printer’s ink is purchasable. But one must search well through our whole list of eminent statesmen to find the few who achieved, at any time in their careers, what Lincoln started with—an almost perfect reputation at home.

Nor was this big local vote the only expression of confidence in the “avowed Clay man” manifested by Jacksonians during those militant days. Before another summer arrived, he had received an appointment from “Old Hickory” himself, as the reader will remember, to the postmastership at New Salem; and soon thereafter, John Calhoun, the surveyor for Sangamon County, an ardent local Administration leader, made him, it may also be recalled, one of his deputies. That these politicians—high and low—should so far forego the fruits of the spoils system, looks creditable not only to the object of their lenity, but to themselves as well. Still, in the case of the President, it may be doubted whether much attention was paid to the act which bestowed upon this obscure appointee an equally obscure office.

The place could hardly have been of less consequence. How insignificant it really was can be appreciated only when we bear in mind that a far from regular mail service, scheduled for twice a week, sufficed to meet the needs of this sparsely settled district; and that even then the high rate of postage, not to mention the low rate of scholarship, kept the business transacted there within meager bounds. Indeed, tradition goes so far as to picture Lincoln carrying the office, for the most part, “in his hat.” Under its ample crown letters or papers addressed to outlying settlers are said to have been snugly tucked away until opportunities came for making deliveries—rural free deliveries, we should call them to-day—at people’s doors.[v-11] This conscientious young postmaster may therefore be credited with having anticipated by more than sixty years a now highly esteemed branch of the postal service. Nor did his usefulness cease there. If the recipient of a letter was, as not infrequently happened, illiterate, Abe’s ability to read and write was promptly called into play. If, on the other hand, our postman brought a newspaper, he usually came prepared to discuss its contents. For the privilege of reading before delivering all printed matter that passed through his hands appears to have been a cherished perquisite of the office. Lincoln certainly made the most of it. Too poor to subscribe himself for the various “organs” which professed to reflect, inform, and guide public opinion, he read with avidity such of them as appeared in the New Salem mails. This practice laid the foundation, so to say, of his political education. Indeed, what he was taught by these sheets during the three years in which he held the post constituted perhaps Lincoln’s most valued returns from an otherwise poorly paid occupation.[v-12]

The office of deputy surveyor for Sangamon County, on the other hand, was more lucrative and of far greater importance: so much so, in fact, that Lincoln hesitated to accept it at the hands of an official whose politics were of the opposite stripe. True, he needed a job, just then, with a good day’s pay attached, if any man ever did; but “man”—that is to say this kind of man—“doth not live by bread alone,” nor is he content to live in pursuit of bread alone, when to do so brings his sincerity into question. Lincoln’s first impulse had been to decline Calhoun’s offer. It came through a common friend, Pollard Simmons, who, at the surveyor’s request, had hastened from Springfield to New Salem with a tender of the appointment. Elated over what he regarded as Lincoln’s good fortune, Simmons—so the story goes—sought him out in the woods, where he was splitting rails, and told the glad news. It did not meet with the reception that the messenger had anticipated. So, sitting down together upon a log, they discussed the proposition from their conflicting points of view. To Abe’s mind, after a momentary flush of pleased surprise, two drawbacks presented themselves. He had no knowledge of surveying, and he would not tamper with his political principles to secure a berth however soft. The one obstacle a little study might, of course, remove. But how about the other? So they talked it all over until Lincoln finally said: “If I can be perfectly free in my political action, I will take the office; but if my sentiments, or even expression of them, is to be abridged in any way, I would not have it or any other office.”[v-13]

When the speaker presented himself, a few days later, before the surveyor in Springfield, all of his objections were, as we have seen, brushed aside. Calhoun needed an able man of unquestioned integrity—needed him more, at that particular time, than the Democratic Party needed recruits. How he assisted Lincoln to master the rudiments of surveying, and how fully he guaranteed him his political independence, have already been told. To what a remarkable degree, moreover, this strangely chosen deputy justified the other’s confidence has also been pointed out. It only remains to be said that, though most of the incidents which flecked John Calhoun’s eventful career have been forgotten, he still abides in our memories as the politician who, when seeking a trustworthy assistant, could see through the mists of partisan prejudice clearly enough to appraise Abraham Lincoln, thus early, at his true worth.

The holding of these two places under the Jacksonian régime had no ill-effects—interesting to relate—upon the young “Clay man’s” standing. His political sincerity apparently remained unquestioned. What was more, the good account that he gave of himself as a public servant, and the enlarged opportunities offered by those offices,—each in its own way,—contributed not a little toward the growth of an ever-increasing popularity. It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find him at the next election, in the summer of 1834, making another, and that time successful, canvass for the State Legislature. The list of candidates was as long as it had been two years before. Yet of the four who were now elected, Lincoln, running but fourteen votes behind the leader, received the second highest number cast.[v-14]

For this splendid victory he was again largely indebted to Democratic favor. In fact, prominent members of the opposing party had gone so far as to offer him their formal endorsement,—an honor which, after some hesitation and several anxious consultations with his colleagues on the ticket, Lincoln had accepted. There is no reason to infer that in so doing he had taken any unfair advantage of them, as has been suggested, or that his political principles had undergone any trimming whatsoever in the acquisition of this alien support. How it came about is obvious enough. The same confidence and good will which New Salem, regardless of party, had manifested toward him to so notable an extent at the preceding election, should merely be credited with having spread, during the intervening two years, though in a lesser degree, perhaps, through Sangamon County. That section, moreover, so far as local politics went, was giving a gracious hearing at the time to new ideas and new leaders. Under the influence of certain able young tacticians with whom Lincoln had become associated, Jacksonism itself grew less rampant in the county. There, as elsewhere, the swift alchemy of popular enthusiasm was at work, fusing hitherto unrelated elements into a novel political unit, and by a coalition of Clay’s followers with other anti-Jackson factions, helping to form a great national fellowship—the American Whig Party. It was as an exponent of this vigorous though untried organization that the Representative-elect from New Salem took his seat in the Ninth General Assembly.

Those must have been strenuous days. The Whigs were in a minority; yet they began, from the fall of the gavel, to exert an influence upon legislation out of all proportion to their numbers. This required skillful team-play, and the leaders were doubtless wary of employing novices. At any rate, no important part on the programme, so far as now appears, was entrusted to Lincoln. His appointment to the Committee on Public Accounts and Expenditures seems appropriate enough, in view of the sobriquet with which he had entered the House; but the transactions of that committee afforded him slender scope, if the record may be followed, for displaying financial honesty or, in fact, honesty of any sort. Nor was he more active during this first session in general legislation. Several bills of no great moment, service on a few select committees, occasional routine motions, the presentation of an unsuccessful petition, and a resolution concerning monies received from the sales of public lands apparently made up the sum of his doings on the floor. For the rest, as behooved a fledgling, he kept modestly in the background. By the time this Legislature reassembled, however, at the special session of 1835-36, Lincoln’s downright sincerity, his homely common sense, and a certain capacity for parliamentary work began to dawn upon his colleagues. He attracted favorable notice too, some say, by the zeal with which he labored, when the legislative districts were reapportioned that winter, toward securing for Sangamon a considerable increase of representation. Under the law then passed, his county, though not the most populous in the State, was awarded the heaviest membership in the House of Representatives. So that its delegation to the General Assembly became enlarged from four members in the House and two in the Senate to seven in the House and two in the Senate—changes which were destined to exert a memorable influence upon the political history of Illinois as well as upon the fortunes of Abraham Lincoln.

His popularity among the people had meanwhile suffered no diminution. They liked him, trusted him, and now some of them felt grateful toward him. It was to a pleased constituency, therefore, from more than one point of view, that he appealed during the following summer for reëlection. The contest appears to have been warmly waged on every side, and though the enlarged list of candidates included several doughty campaigners,—Democrats as well as Whigs,—Lincoln regained his seat with the highest vote given by Sangamon to any nominee for the House of Representatives. What is more, the entire legislative ticket of the new party in that district was elected. The Whigs, by a signal victory, had revolutionized the neighborhood; and so complete—we may add in passing—was their triumph throughout the county that the control which they then gained over its affairs could at no time, during several succeeding decades of Democratic ascendancy elsewhere in the State, be successfully disputed there.

Clean sweeps presuppose stalwart brooms. The newly elected Sangamon Representatives, together with the Senators who held over, did in fact make a notable group of men. They were as tall as they were vigorous. Their average weight is said to have exceeded two hundred pounds, and their average height six feet. When they appeared at Vandalia for the session of 1836-37, some wag dubbed them the “Long Nine”—an appellation that stuck. For even in the capital of a State dedicated, as the Indian tradition has it, to “superior men,” their appearance no less than their achievements attracted attention. The stature, moreover, which one of these tall politicians eventually attained in the world’s history lends peculiar interest to the whole coterie. On that account, if on no other, a chronicle of his doings would seem incomplete without the names of those eight colleagues. They comprised, in the House, John Dawson, Ninian W. Edwards, Robert L. Wilson, Daniel Stone, William F. Elkin, and Andrew McCormick; in the Senate, Archer G. Herndon and Job Fletcher, Sr. These men, fresh from the exaltation of a thoroughgoing party victory, took their seats in the Legislature with the avowed purpose of accomplishing great things. And they had need of all their courage. The particular task which awaited them was no easy one. They were expected to capture the State Capital for Sangamon County by having the seat of government transferred from Vandalia to Springfield.

The management of this enterprise was entrusted to Lincoln. He had then already evinced some of the qualities that go to make a political leader, and his associates in the “Long Nine,” as if by common consent, looked to him for guidance. But the honor was apparently not welcome just then. Suffering from illness and from one of those attacks of morbid depression that at times possessed him, he entered upon the session, unlike the others, in no conquering mood. Nevertheless, under his direction the Sangamon delegation straightway began a spirited campaign to the greater glory of Springfield. That town was not by any means the favorite among some half-dozen places which actively aspired to the capital prize.[v-15] Yet so vigorously were its claims put forth that competitors came to regard it as their most formidable rival, and for a time the contest looked as if all the other municipalities in the field were combined against this one.

The odds bore heavily against the “Long Nine”—so heavily that some of the big men, at critical points in the unequal, at times well-nigh futile, struggle, lost heart. But their leader did not flinch. What might have dismayed more seasoned parliamentary chieftains merely stimulated Lincoln to renewed efforts. He seemed prepared to stake the entire session, if necessary, upon the success of the Springfield project. That measure was, in fact, thrown into the scales whenever the advocates of pending legislation sought Sangamon support.

And such calls came frequently enough, because well-nigh every member of this remarkable Assembly had his own particular interest to serve. It took the form, generally speaking, of some scheme for so-called “internal improvements,” whereby the politicians tried to satisfy a mania for overnight development that had recently obsessed the inhabitants of the State—a mania which was now about to reach its culmination in a series of extravagant enactments. One eager statesman came charged by his constituents with the duty of securing a railroad; another must obtain an appropriation for a canal, another a State road; still another was under orders to have this stream or that made more widely navigable; and so on through the whole range of public betterments. A hungrier crowd of the people’s chosen Representatives has seldom been seen to clamor around the “pork barrel.” It seemed as if each man’s political life depended upon securing and carrying home a generous helping. To that end, other interests were freely sacrificed, while “log-rolling,” as the expressive idiom for the trading of votes sometimes phrased it, became the order of the day.

Few if any among these struggling legislators appear to have marketed their influence more profitably than did the members from Sangamon County; and the most able “log-roller” in even that proficient band is said, beyond a question, to have been Abraham Lincoln. Maneuvering his followers so as to take advantage of every turn, arraying their united strength solidly for or against the designs of other delegations, as those delegations declared themselves during the preliminary skirmishes to be allies or opponents of Springfield, winning over some members by appeals to personal interests, others by appeal to sheer good-fellowship,—adroit, tireless, unruffled,—Lincoln at last surmounted all obstacles, and brought this unique campaign to a triumphant finish. The “Long Nine” won. Springfield carried the day, and by a joint vote of both houses, in the closing days of the session, that town became their choice for the permanent capital of Illinois.

Great was the rejoicing throughout the Sangamon region over this achievement. And no less elated—need we add?—were the citizens of the little prairie burg so suddenly raised to prominence. They welcomed the returning delegation as they might have welcomed a band of conquering heroes. Nothing was too good in Springfield for the men who had brought it this coveted civic honor. Members of the “Long Nine” were fêted and lauded on every hand, while their leader particularly came in for grateful attentions. At one complimentary dinner sixty guests are said to have joined in the toast: “Abraham Lincoln: He has fulfilled the expectations of his friends and disappointed the hopes of his enemies.”[v-16]

But “his enemies,” or, more correctly speaking, the enemies of Springfield, were still, in a way, to be reckoned with. Some of them took their defeat hard. They affected to believe, if they did not indeed actually believe, that the Sangamon interest had won unfairly. In fact, above the notes of triumph with which the victors celebrated their joyful homecoming might be heard the discordant voices of these chagrined opponents, charging trickery and corruption.

The brunt of such assaults naturally fell upon Lincoln. He it was who had guided the activities of the “Long Nine,” and against him were now directed the severest blows of their assailants. Yet the Sangamon chief, by all accounts, proved equal to the occasion. Whenever his conduct or that of his colleagues in the contest for the Capital was publicly attacked, he is said to have replied with telling effect—so much so, in truth, that before long all detractors were silenced, efforts to repeal the act failed, and the Springfield forces, rejoicing in Lincoln’s prowess, remained undisputed masters of the situation.[v-17] They applauded without stint, as might have been expected, the man to whom this was mainly due; but their enthusiastic approval of him is not by any means the last word.

His course throughout the affair can hardly be deemed creditable in every particular. The trading of votes between lawmakers may be defensible, perhaps, under certain rare, not to say peculiar, circumstances. Still, as such transactions are usually conducted, the practice calls for condemnation. And when a group of Representatives, like the “Long Nine,” go so far as to traffic through an entire session in one concerted effort to secure the passage of a bill for the special benefit of their constituents, the proceeding becomes grossly reprehensible. In this bargain and sale of legislation, the extravagant expenditure of public money is not by any means the most pernicious feature. Among men so engaged, votes speak louder than conscience,—yes, louder, on occasion, than all the Ten Commandments taken together. For your true “log-rollers” are prone—if we may paraphrase the words of a famous statesman—to consider themselves in politics, not in ethics. Their first few lapses from correct parliamentary principles open the way too often for further and still further deviations, until the standards of nearly a whole legislature seem warped out of their accustomed grooves; an indefinable laxness creeps into actions which have no concern whatever with these “log-rolling” measures, and the let-down in moral tone, brought about by repeated departures from the loftier plane of disinterested lawmaking, hardly stops short, at times, of general demoralization. To what extent this actually happened in the Tenth General Assembly of Illinois is not now definitely known. But prevailing conditions there were manifestly far from ideal; and as some of the fault, at least, was chargeable to the “Long Nine,” he who stood at their head must take his share of the blame.

In fairness to Lincoln, however, it should be said—for what such a plea is worth—that any idea of wrongdoing probably never entered the young man’s mind. He and his colleagues had merely pursued tactics tolerated, if indeed they were not sanctioned, by the customs of the period. During those raw pioneer days, not a few politicians looked upon votes as legitimate objects of barter; and to so flagrant an extreme, it will be remembered, were their views carried in the Illinois Legislature of 1836-37, that the Assembly became a veritable market-place. Amidst this whirl of chaffering the member from New Salem was seen to move with steady tread. True, he had shown himself to be a poor business man at home; yet here his faculty for one peculiar kind of commerce apparently fell little short of genius. So it turned out that when the last trade was made, when the deals had all been closed, and Speaker Semple’s gavel sounded for final settlements, the big winning was disclosed—as we have seen—in Lincoln’s grasp. Then it was that his defeated antagonists set up those cries of outraged virtue. Then only did they discover the depths of moral turpitude into which he had fallen. But their censure came with painfully diminished effect from men who had themselves employed, though unsuccessfully, the very methods for which they now condemned him; and one is curious to know by what system of ethical adjustments they thought to reconcile their own acts with these tardy expressions of principle. In any event, the accusers may be said to have come into court, as the phrase goes, with unclean hands—at least, with hands no cleaner than those of the associate whom they denounced. Indeed, when all is said, the head and front of his offending, as far as these angry politicians were concerned, will be found to lie in the fact that he had beaten the gentlemen at their own game.

Here again let the chronicle do justice to Lincoln. He had indeed played this game—if game it may be called—for all that was in him, but he certainly had not evinced the reckless disregard of public interests that the fault-finding losers tried to lay at his door. On the contrary, he believed himself to have been serving the whole State, no less than Springfield, with every trade whereby the “Long Nine,” in exchange for what they wanted, lent their votes and their influence, as has just been narrated, to establish a comprehensive, if lavish, system of “internal improvements.” Such undertakings had, in fact, engaged Lincoln’s imagination from the very beginning of his public life. Pledged to them, in a sense, and convinced of their value, he aimed at associating himself in the West, as other politicians had done elsewhere through the country, with some splendid scheme for public development. It was during this period that Lincoln, emulating the example of the man to whom the Empire State was chiefly indebted for its Erie Canal, confided to his friend Joshua F. Speed an ambition to make himself “the De Witt Clinton of Illinois.”[v-18] The aspiration looks futile enough now in the light of what ensued. Still, at that time all observers, with rare exceptions, confidently expected to see this single Legislature, by passing a series of Utopian enactments, swing the young prairie Commonwealth into a millennium of prosperity; while the politicians, regardless of party, outvied one another in doing the people’s bidding. Demands for these wonder-working measures were heard on every side. An influential lobby invaded the capital to urge their adoption. Petitions poured in upon the members. Their newspapers from home came full of buoyant—not to say flamboyant—articles advising liberal action. Mass meetings and conventions, voicing the general infatuation with sonorous resolutions, went so far as to issue parliamentary orders to their Representatives. In fact, the Sangamon delegation itself had been instructed by citizens of the county assembled at such a gathering to give the much-discussed “system” unqualified support. Obviously, therefore, when Lincoln exchanged improvement votes for Springfield votes, he put a price upon aid which would finally have been given, in any event. Circumstances merely enabled him, as he doubtless thought, to serve his constituents, indeed the whole State, by what he gave no less than by what he received. And if his tactics deftly took toll of legislation going, so to say, as well as coming, the process was, in its political aspect, at least, consistent enough. From all of which, those who cannot bear to contemplate a good man overstepping the narrow path ever so little will derive such comfort as they may; while others who seem inclined to insist upon a hero, immaculate no less than great, must bring themselves to realize that the best of men are sometimes—particularly during their formative years—seen to walk in the shadows.

This one cloud, moreover, on Lincoln’s early political record was not without the proverbial silver lining. “Honest Abe’s” better self still held sway. Indeed, ideals of public service as he then conceived them were never quite lost sight of, even amidst the temptations incident to a fiercely waged parliamentary campaign. His fault began and ended with the trading of votes. Beyond that, neither the low-leveled practices which prevailed on every hand, nor the pressure of colleagues, eager to triumph at any cost, could carry him. The Machiavellian doctrine that victory brings glory, whatever the method of achieving it, evidently formed no part of the creed which directed his “log-rolling” ambitions. And, ardently as he longed to win the day for Springfield, no questionable proposals, however alluring, were allowed to blunt in any further degree his fine sense of moral values.

A notable instance, aptly illustrating this, occurred when the struggle over the seat of government was at its height. An effort had been made to combine the friends of removal with those who were laboring for a certain measure of dubious character. What that measure entailed is not now definitely known, but Lincoln regarded it with strong disapproval. He had so expressed himself and the negotiations languished. At last, a number of Representatives, who were severally interested on both sides of the projected deal, met to discuss it in a private caucus. Their deliberations lasted, we are told, nearly all night; yet as the Sangamon leader refused to forego his objections, they finally adjourned without having reached the desired agreement. It takes more than one such repulse, however, to discourage politicians. Another conference was presently arranged, and, as if to make sure that sufficient pressure would be exerted upon the recalcitrant member, a number of prominent citizens, not in the Legislature but anxious for Springfield’s success, were craftily invited to attend. An earnest discussion ensued. Those who favored the compact employed every argument that they could frame in its behalf. Some of the speakers, deploring Lincoln’s inconvenient scruples, begged him to lay them aside, join his friends, and make sure of the capital for Sangamon County, but without avail. Finally, after midnight, when the candles were burning low and the talk had well-nigh run its course, he arose to close the debate. What Lincoln said has not been preserved entire, but an admirer, who described the speech as “one of the most eloquent and powerful” to which he had ever listened, has handed down these concluding words: “You may burn my body to ashes and scatter them to the winds of heaven; you may drag my soul down to the regions of darkness and despair to be tormented forever; but you will never get me to support a measure which I believe to be wrong, although by doing so I may accomplish that which I believe to be right.”[v-19]

How much provocation the speaker had for this burst of perfervid oratory cannot now be determined, yet whatever one may say about his rhetoric, there can be no doubt concerning his good faith. That meeting adjourned, as its predecessor had done, without taking the questionable step so warmly advocated by most of the persons present; and one of the participants, at least, must be credited with having made clear that even a “log-roller” may set conscientious bounds to the scope of his operations.

Nor was this the only occasion on which Lincoln vetoed the unseemly devices to which some of his too eager partisans would have resorted. They had accepted willingly enough, while the contest for the capital lasted, such conditions as were imposed by the general act upon whatever place might become the seat of government. But after the victory went to Sangamon, these conditions did not appear quite so attractive. One of them, in fact, gave the Springfield people some uneasiness. This was a clause which required the successful community to raise fifty thousand dollars, by private subscriptions, in order that a corresponding amount, appropriated under the act for the erection of needful public buildings, might be refunded to the State. What looks like a small sum now, must have loomed large in those days on the financial horizon of a struggling little frontier town. And its task of collecting the required donations, difficult under normal conditions, became doubly so during the hard times which were ushered in this same year by the historic panic of 1837.

The situation seemed to call for relief of some kind. So a way out suggested itself to an ambitious young politician who had recently taken up his residence in Springfield. This was Stephen A. Douglas, the newly elected Register of the Land Office. His scheme, prefiguring many adroit political shifts to come, had the characteristic merit of being at once simple and efficacious. It proposed, in a word, repudiation. By means of an innocent little legislative amendment, deftly applied, Springfield was to step out from under this burden and let the cost slip back to its original place, on the shoulders of the State. But Lincoln again barred the way.

“We have the benefit,” said he. “Let us stand to our obligation like men.”[v-20]

And so they did. Yet money for the first two payments—there were to be three in all—was scraped together with some difficulty; and worse still, when the third installment came due, no funds whatever seemed collectible. Many of the subscribers had become impoverished, while none of them were flush. So the required sum, $16,666.67, was borrowed from the State Bank of Illinois on a note that bore the signatures of one hundred and one citizens. They took eight years to discharge the debt. How hard it came for some of them to meet their share, what economies were practiced, what sacrifices made, can, in the nature of things, never be known. The episode itself, stripped of all these romantic details,—a simple tale of plain good faith,—must suffice for history. And it does suffice. For now, after more than two thirds of a century has elapsed, that painfully liquidated note is still extant. Framed and displayed in a banking-house at Springfield, where all who enter may see, it serves as a memorial to the rectitude of the community during those trying times.

They were trying times, indeed, and to none of these one hundred and one signers more so, perhaps, than to him who had written the name, “A. Lincoln.” When he came to the recently chosen capital, as we have seen, shortly after adjournment of the General Assembly, to seek his fortunes at the bar, this young politician’s financial condition was, in a sense, worse than penniless. The burden of “the national debt” lay upon him, and the few dollars in his pocket did not suffice—the reader will recall—to supply his most pressing wants. How those wants were met, first by a seat at Butler’s table, then by a place in Speed’s bed, may also be recalled. And possibly it is as well to add—for all these circumstances are of peculiar significance now—even the horse which carried him, a few weeks later, on his first trip around the circuit was borrowed from a colleague, Robert L. Wilson, of the “Long Nine.” That a man who had been one of the leading actors in an orgy of extravagant legislation should emerge from the session so impoverished as to be dependent momentarily upon the hospitality of one friend for food, of another for shelter, and of still another for the means of gaining a livelihood, is its own commentary on his probity. Nor does this appear less noteworthy, in the light of a commonly accepted belief that the “internal improvement” measures were tainted with personal corruption. The whirl of enticing opportunities during those rapid days is said to have swept more than one legislator off his feet. Yet the Sangamon chief stood steadfast. He could see nothing attractive in the illicit, or at least dubious, gains which were garnered by perverting official duties to selfish ends. In fact, then and thereafter—during that sinister period, as well as throughout his entire four consecutive terms in the Illinois House—Lincoln’s record, so far as such matters went, was spotless. Like certain other political leaders to whom private fortunes have been lacking, he followed the rule laid down in one of Daniel Webster’s aphorisms: “The man who enters public life takes upon himself a vow of poverty, to the religious observance of which he is bound so long as he remains in it.”

There was, however, nothing ascetic, we hasten to add, about “the godlike” Daniel’s life—public or private. Improvident and debt-ridden, he indulged himself, to the point of reckless extravagance, in a mode of living beside which the Illinoisan’s simple habits formed a striking contrast. They were both poor, it is true, but from very different causes. What some of these were, in Lincoln’s case, the stories recounting his hapless business ventures and his unprofitable methods at the bar have already disclosed. For the rest, an engrossing interest in politics with its resultant sacrifices, as the years went on, of time, attention, even money, hardly served to improve the situation. One is prepared, therefore, to learn that when funds ran low he too made shift to eke out his resources by applying the familiar mathematical formula,—three from two we cannot take so I borrow.

Lincoln’s very entrance into public life had been made, it must be confessed, through the drab doors of debt. After his first election to the Legislature, while still at New Salem, he was confronted by a perplexing question. How could a countryman, wholly without means, acquire presentable clothes, travel all the way down to the seat of government at Vandalia, and maintain himself there until pay-day in a manner befitting the dignity of a lawmaker? This particular countryman was not long contriving the answer. Calling on Coleman Smoot, a prosperous farmer in the district, he asked: “Smoot, did you vote for me?”

The answer was a prompt affirmative.

“Well,” said Lincoln, “you must loan me money to buy suitable clothing, for I want to make a decent appearance in the Legislature.”

Here was a whimsical reversal of the course that funds too often take in passing between candidate and voter. But Smoot, who had a warm admiration for the new member, entered cordially into the humor of the affair. He handed out two hundred dollars—enough it would seem to meet all of Lincoln’s prospective expenses; and these two hundred dollars—we have the lender’s own statement for the fact—were some time thereafter repaid, “according to promise.”[v-21]

The same amount of money, taking the same unaccustomed direction, figured in another peculiar election episode. On the latter occasion, however, a contribution was made to further the office-seeker’s election, rather than to help him out afterwards. And this is how it happened. During a vigorously contested canvass, the Whigs raised a purse of two hundred dollars which Joshua F. Speed handed Lincoln to defray his expenses. When the election was over, the victorious candidate brought back one hundred and ninety-nine dollars and twenty-five cents. Giving this to his friend, with a request that it be distributed again among the subscribers, he said: “I did not need the money. I made the canvass on my own horse. My entertainment, being at the houses of friends, cost me nothing; and my only outlay was seventy-five cents for a barrel of cider, which some farmhands insisted I should treat them to.”[v-22]

Lincoln’s failure to find a use for these funds was in keeping with the simple honesty which prompted their return. Yet throughout this very period he must have been harried, not only by his old business debts, but also by the several successors to the Smoot loan that his necessities, from time to time, brought into being. Nor were such accommodations always from friends. We catch a glimpse, early in 1839, of a maturing note at the bank that had to be renewed, and the interest charges on which had to be paid.[v-23] Indeed, many years were destined to elapse before Lincoln could wholly free himself from the meshes of these carking obligations. They held him meanwhile fast-bound among the debtor class, and what he endured, intensifying a natural tenderness for all unfortunates, stirred his sympathies to their very depths in behalf of other men who might be similarly circumstanced.

The situation, however, called for more than mere sympathy. Victims of exorbitant interest charges were to be met with, during the first third of the nineteenth century, on every hand, in Illinois. There, as elsewhere, capital when staked against the hazards of pioneer ventures exacted heavy tolls. Banks and “moneyed institutions,” so-called, were restricted, it is true, by an act passed in 1819, to returns not exceeding six per cent; but under that same law other investors expressly had leave to make contracts without any limitations upon the extent of their charges, and for the most part—needless to say—they took advantage of the privilege. Rates running all the way from one hundred and fifty to three hundred per cent were not uncommon in the placing of loans, while the customary figures hovered about fifty per cent. The oppression and suffering which these burdens entailed gave rise to clamorous demands for relief. Yet the way out seemed far from plain. How borrowers could be protected against ruin due to extortion, without being plunged as hopelessly into disaster through ill-advised legislation which, by discouraging lenders, might cut off all supplies, was the form which the problem took.

It appears to have been presented from many angles during the canvass of 1832; and Lincoln, as a raw candidate for the Legislature, had taken a hand, even then, in the solution. What he proposed was thus set forth among the postulates of that first formal political document, his “Address to the People of Sangamon County”:—

“It seems as though we are never to have an end to this baneful and corroding system, acting almost as prejudicially to the general interests of the community as a direct tax of several thousand dollars annually laid on each county for the benefit of a few individuals only, unless there be a law made fixing the limits of usury. A law for this purpose, I am of opinion, may be made without materially injuring any class of people. In cases of extreme necessity, there could always be means found to cheat the law; while in all other cases it would have its intended effect. I would favor the passage of a law on this subject which might not be very easily evaded. Let it be such that the labor and difficulty of evading it could only be justified in cases of greatest necessity.”[v-24]

A singular programme, truly, yet what could one expect, in those times of loose financiering, from an embryo prairie politician just pipping his shell? Older heads—in fact, seasoned lawmakers and economists without number, from the very beginning of commercial history down to the present day—hardly make a better showing when it comes to devising how this “tooth of usury,” as an eminent Lord Chancellor once said, may “be grinded that it bite not too much.” Lincoln’s naïve plea that means could be found, when necessary, “to cheat the law, while in all other cases it would have its intended effect,” reveals a certain uneasy sense of the fatal weakness running through all such legislation. And one is at a loss what to marvel over most,—the candor with which he admits this defect, or the childlike disregard of public ethics involved in his awkward attempt to meet the difficulty by suggesting occasional violations of the statute.

That subterfuge reminds us of a story, as Abe himself used to say,—one of his own, in fact. He told it, not long afterwards, on the stump, at the expense of an opponent who gave equivocal answers to some searching questions. This man, Lincoln said, was like a hunter he had once known. Boasting of his marksmanship on a certain occasion, and telling how he brought down an animal during the season when a calf might easily be mistaken for a deer, the fellow concluded his recital with the fine flourish: “I shot at it so as to hit it if it was a deer, and miss it if a calf.”

What might pass for a hit-or-miss bill, limiting the rate of interest to not more than twelve per cent, became a law during the following winter. But as Lincoln had failed of election to the Legislature which enacted this statute, none of its shortcomings can fairly be laid, except in a remote sense, at his door. Such was not the case, however, with several important financial measures adopted by the succeeding sessions that he did attend. We have seen how he plunged into the excesses which grew out of the “internal improvement” craze, and though many fellow-members of both parties are also chargeable with what took place, few if any of them were more active than he in shaping the course of this hapless legislation. It was under his leadership that the “Long Nine” exerted their very considerable influence, as has been told, to put the so-called “system” through. And a merry dance they had, without too much thought concerning who should pay the fiddler. Soberer men, trying here or there in small numbers to block the way, were swept aside. An infatuated Assembly, hardly stopping to count the cost, voted appropriations for public works aggregating over ten millions of dollars;[v-25] and interest-bearing securities were authorized to an amount not exceeding eleven millions. Of this sum, eight millions were to be borrowed for the works, two millions for the State Bank of Illinois, and one million for the Bank of Illinois at Shawneetown. These two institutions became the fiscal agents of the State, with a proviso that their net earnings should be applied to the payment of interest, as it accrued, on “improvement” bonds. Nothing could have been simpler and—less dependable. The debt so created—at least such part of it as found a market—was out of all proportion to the young State’s proper credit or resources. Consequently, when financial ruin swept over the continent in the spring of 1837, not many Commonwealths were, relatively speaking, more deeply involved than Illinois.

To meet what looked like an impending crisis, Governor Duncan called a special session of the General Assembly in the following July, and urged either modification or repeal of the “internal improvement” acts. But his efforts were fruitless. The Legislature refused to destroy or mar its handiwork. Most of those jocund castle-builders could not bring themselves to believe that the ambitious structure which they had begun to rear with so much pride was, after all, a mere house of cards, shaking in the first gust of bad weather and ready to fall about their ears. Prophecies of such a disaster met, as might have been expected, with stubborn optimism, especially from the ranks of the Whig minority. They stood pledged as a political unit to the policy of munificent public works; and enough Democrats felt similarly committed to join them in bringing about a rejection of the Governor’s plea.

More than that, during the following sessions, under Lincoln’s guidance—for he had meanwhile become the recognized leader of his party in the House—these “improvement” men, still bat-eyed, reached the climax of their folly, and actually enlarged the scope of the enterprise by nearly one million dollars. The rest is soon told. Hardly had this last reckless step been taken when a wave of that utter demoralization which marked the panic struck Illinois with crushing force. Improvement bonds could no longer be sold except at ruinous discounts. Some of the securities had been entrusted to bankers who failed, while other parcels were moved under circumstances which smelt strongly of fraud.

Collections, moreover, seemed impossible. The treasury of the State was nearly empty. Its credit, if not quite gone, was badly shaken, and so were all its fond illusions. The dazzling game had, in fact, come to an end. Without funds or prospects for raising any, the famous “system” collapsed. Obviously what the situation now required left but slender choice of action. The mischief already done had to be undone, as fully as circumstances would allow, and the “internal improvement” laws must be repealed. Yet the Whigs did not take kindly to this programme. They gave ground sullenly, Lincoln voting against repeal with the rest of his party through several sessions, until at last the logic of events forced them to help their Democratic colleagues put the whole deplorable business “down in a lump,” as he himself expressed it, “without benefit of clergy.”[v-26]