of 1838 he wrote upon the subject one of the most unfortunate epistles ever penned, in which he turned the whole affair into coarse and almost ribald ridicule. In fact he seems as much out of place in dealing with women and with love as he was in place in dealing with politicians and with politics, and it is pleasant to return from the former to the latter topics.[40]
The spring of 1836 found Lincoln again nominating himself before the citizens of Sangamon County, but for the last time. His party denounced the caucus system as a "Yankee contrivance, intended to abridge the liberties of the people;" but they soon found that it would be as sensible to do battle with pikes and bows, after the invention of muskets and cannon, as to continue to oppose free self-nomination to the Jacksonian method of nomination by convention. In enjoying this last opportunity, not only of presenting himself, but also of constructing his own "platform," Lincoln published the following card:—
NEW SALEM, June 13, 1836.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE JOURNAL:—
In your paper of last Saturday I see a communication over the signature of "Many Voters" in which the candidates who are announced in the "Journal" are called upon to "show their hands." Agreed. Here's mine.
I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).
If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me.
While acting as their representative, I shall be governed by their will on all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing what their will is; and upon all others I shall do what my own judgment teaches me will best advance their interests. Whether elected or not, I go for distributing the proceeds of the sales of public lands to the several States to enable our State, in common with others, to dig canals and construct railroads without borrowing money and paying the interest on it.
If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for Hugh L. White for President.
Very respectfully,
A. LINCOLN.
The canvass was conducted after the usual fashion, with stump-speaking, fighting, and drinking. Western voters especially fancied the joint debate between rivals, and on such exciting occasions were apt to come to the arbitrament of fists and knives. But it is pleasant to hear that Lincoln calmed rather than excited such affrays, and that once, when Ninian W. Edwards climbed upon a table and screamed at his opponent the lie direct, Lincoln replied by "so fair a speech" that it quelled the discord. Henceforward he practiced a calm, carefully-weighed, dispassionate style in presenting facts and arguments. Even if he cultivated it from appreciation of its efficiency, at least his skill in it was due to the fact that it was congenial to his nature, and that his mind worked instinctively along these lines. His mental constitution, his way of thinking, were so honest that he always seemed to be a man sincerely engaged in seeking the truth, and who, when he believed that he had found it, would tell it precisely as he saw it, and tell it all. This was the distinguishing trait or habit which differentiates Lincoln from too many other political speakers and writers in the country. Yet with it he combined the character of a practical politician and a stanch party man. No party has a monopoly of truth and is always in the right; but Lincoln, with the advantage of being naturally fair-minded to a rare degree, understood that the best ingenuity is fairness, and that the second best ingenuity is the appearance of fairness.
A pleasant touch of his humor illumined this campaign. George Forquer, once a Whig but now a Democrat and an office-holder, had lately built for himself the finest house in Springfield, and had decorated it with the first lightning-rod ever seen in the neighborhood. One day, after Forquer had been berating Lincoln as a young man who must "be taken down," Lincoln turned to the audience with a few words: "It is for you, not for me, to say whether I am up or down. The gentleman has alluded to my being a young man;[41] I am older in years than I am in the tricks and trades of politicians. I desire to live, and I desire place and distinction as a politician; but I would rather die now than, like the gentleman, live to see the day when I should have to erect a lightning-rod to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God."
There are other stories of this campaign, amusing and characteristic of the region and the times, but which there is not room to repeat. The result of it was that Sangamon County, hitherto Democratic, was now won by the Whigs, and that Lincoln had the personal satisfaction of leading the poll. The county had in the legislature nine representatives, tall fellows all, not one of them standing less than six feet, so that they were nicknamed "the Long Nine." Such was their authority that one of them afterward said: "All the bad or objectionable laws passed at that session of the legislature, and for many years afterward, were chargeable to the management and influence of 'the Long Nine.'" This was a damning confession, for the "bad and objectionable" laws of that session were numerous. A mania possessed the people. The whole State was being cut up into towns and cities and house-lots, so that town-lots were said to be the only article of export.[42] A system of internal improvements at the public expense was pushed forward with incredible recklessness. The State was to be "gridironed" with thirteen hundred miles of railroad; the courses of the rivers were to be straightened; and where nature had neglected to supply rivers, canals were to be dug. A loan of twelve millions of dollars was authorized, and the counties not benefited thereby received gifts of cash. The bonds were issued and sent to the bankers of New York and of Europe, and work was vigorously begun. The terrible financial panic of 1837 ought to have administered an early check to this madness. But it did not. Resolutions of popular conventions instructed legislators to institute "a general system of internal improvements," which should be "commensurate with the wants of the people;" and the lawgivers obeyed as implicitly as if each delegate was lighting his steps by an Aladdin's lamp.
With this mad current Lincoln swam as wildly and as ignorantly as did any of his comrades. He was absurdly misplaced as a member of the Committee on Finance. Never in his life did he show the slightest measure of "money sense." He had, however, declared his purpose to be governed by the will of his constituents in all matters in which he knew that will, and at this time he apparently held the American theory that the multitude probably possesses the highest wisdom, and that at any rate the majority is entitled to have its way. Therefore, in this ambitious enterprise of putting Illinois at the very forefront of the civilized world by an outburst of fine American energy, his ardor was as warm as that of the warmest, and his intelligence was as utterly misled as that of the most ignorant. He declared his ambition to be "the DeWitt Clinton of Illinois." After the inevitable crash had come, amid the perplexity of general ruin and distress, he honestly acknowledged that he had blundered very badly. Nevertheless, no vengeance was exacted of him by the people; which led Governor Ford to say that it is safer for a politician to be wrong with his constituents than to be right against them, and to illustrate this profound truth by naming Lincoln among the "spared monuments of popular wrath."
"The Long Nine" had in this legislature a task peculiarly their own: to divide Sangamon County, and to make Springfield instead of Vandalia the state capital. Amid all the whirl of the legislation concerning improvements Lincoln kept this especial purpose always in view. It is said that his skill was infinite, and that he never lost heart. He gained the reputation of being the best "log-roller" in the legislature, and no measure got the support of the "Long Nine" without a contract for votes to be given in return for the removal of the state capital. It is unfortunate that such methods should enjoy the prestige of having been conspicuously practiced by Abraham Lincoln, but the evidence seems to establish the fact. That there was anything objectionable in the skillful performance of such common transactions as the trading of votes probably never occurred to him, being a professional politician, any more than it did to his constituents, who triumphed noisily in this success, and welcomed their candidates home with great popular demonstrations of approval.[43]
A