CHAPTER XIII.
ELECTIONEERING IN 1832 IN ILLINOIS.—LINCOLN DEFEATED OF ELECTION TO THE ASSEMBLY.—BUYS A STORE.
On returning to New Salem, Lincoln at once plunged into electioneering. He ran as “an avowed Clay man,” and the county was stiffly Democratic. However, in those days political contests were almost purely personal. If the candidate was liked he was voted for irrespective of principles. “The Democrats of New Salem worked for Lincoln out of their personal regard for him,” said Stephen T. Logan, a young lawyer of Springfield, who made Lincoln’s acquaintance in the campaign. “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.”
It was the custom for the candidates to appear at every gathering which brought the people out, and, if they had a chance, to make speeches. Then, as now, the farmers gathered at the county-seat, or at the largest town within their reach, on Saturday afternoons, to dispose of produce, buy supplies, see their neighbors, and get the news. During election times candidates were always present, and a regular feature of the day was listening to their speeches. Public sales, also, were gatherings which they never missed, it being expected that after the “vandoo” the candidates would take the auctioneer’s place.
Lincoln let none of these chances to be heard slip. Accompanied by his friends, generally including a few Clary’s Grove Boys, he always was present. The first speech he made was after a sale at Pappsville. What he said there is not remembered; but an illustration of the kind of man he was, interpolated into his discourse, made a lasting impression. A fight broke out in his audience while he was on the stand, and observing that one of his friends was being worsted, he bounded into the group of contestants, seized the fellow who had his supporter down, threw him “ten or twelve feet,” remounted the platform, and finished the speech. Sangamon County could appreciate such a performance, and the crowd that day at Pappsville never forgot Lincoln.
His appearance at Springfield at this time was of great importance to him. Springfield was not then a very attractive place. Bryant, visiting it in June, 1832, said that the houses were not as good as at Jacksonville, “a considerable proportion of them being log cabins, and the whole town having an appearance of dirt and discomfort.” Nevertheless it was the largest town in the county, and among its inhabitants were many young men of education, birth, and energy. One of these men Lincoln had become well acquainted with in the Black Hawk War, Major John Stuart,[17] at that time a lawyer, and, like Lincoln, a candidate for the General Assembly. He met others at this time who were to be associated with him more or less closely in the future in both law and politics, such as Judge Logan and William Butler. With these men the manners which had won him the day at Pappsville were of no value; what impressed them was his “very sensible speech,” and his decided individuality and originality.
Footnote 17:
There were many prominent Americans in the Black Hawk War, with some of whom Lincoln became acquainted. Among the best known were General Robert Anderson; Colonel Zachary Taylor; General Scott, afterwards candidate for President, and Lieutenant-General; Henry Dodge, Governor of the Territory of Wisconsin, and United States Senator; Hon. William L. D. Ewing and Hon. Sidney Breese, both United States Senators from Illinois; William S. Hamilton, a son of Alexander Hamilton; Colonel Nathan Boone, son of Daniel Boone; Lieutenant Albert Sydney Johnston, afterwards a Confederate general. Jefferson Davis was not in the war, according to the muster-rolls of his company, which report him absent on furlough from March 26 to August 18, 1832.
The election came off on August 6th. Lincoln was defeated. “This was the only time Abraham was ever defeated on a direct vote of the people,” say his autobiographical notes. He had a consolation in his defeat, however, for in spite of the pronounced Democratic sentiments of his precinct, he received two hundred and seventy-seven votes out of three hundred cast. The facts upon this point are here stated for the first time. The biographers, as a rule, have agreed that Lincoln received all of the votes cast in the New Salem precinct, except three. Mr. Herndon places the total vote at 208; Nicolay and Hay, at 277; and Mr. Lincoln himself, in his autobiography, has said that he received all but seven of a total of 277 votes, basing his statement, no doubt, upon memory. An examination of the official poll-book in the county clerk’s office at Springfield shows that all of these figures are erroneous; exactly three hundred votes were cast. Of these Lincoln received 277. The fact remains, however—and it is a fact which has been commented upon by several of the biographers as showing his phenomenal popularity—that the vote for Lincoln was far in excess of that given any other candidate. The twelve candidates, with the number of votes of each, were: Abraham Lincoln, 277; John T. Stewart, 182; William Carpenter, 136; John Dawson, 105; E. D. Taylor, 88; Archer G. Herndon, 84; Peter Cartwright, 62; Achilles Morris, 27; Thomas M. Neal, 21; Edward Robeson, 15; Zachariah Peters, 4; Richard Dunston, 4.
Of the twenty-three who did not vote for Lincoln, ten refrained from voting for representative at all, thus leaving only thirteen votes actually cast against Lincoln. Lincoln is not recorded as voting. This defeat did not take him out of politics. The first civil office Lincoln ever held was that of clerk of the next election, in September. The report in his hand still exists; as far as we know, it is his first official document.
LOOKING FOR WORK.
It was in August, 1832, that Lincoln made his unsuccessful canvass for the Illinois Assembly. The election over, he began to look for work. One of his friends, an admirer of his physical strength, advised him to become a blacksmith, but it was a trade which afforded little leisure for study, and for meeting and talking with men; and he had already resolved, it is evident, that books and men were essential to him. The only employment in New Salem which offered both support and the opportunities he sought, was clerking in a store. But the stores of New Salem were in more need of customers than of clerks. The business had been greatly overdone. In the fall of 1832 there were at least four stores in New Salem. The most pretentious was that of Hill and McNeill, which carried a large line of dry goods. The three others, owned respectively by the Herndon brothers, Reuben Radford, and James Rutledge, were groceries.
DECIDES TO BUY A STORE.
Failing to secure employment at any of these establishments, Lincoln resolved to _buy_ a store. He was not long in finding an opportunity to purchase. James Herndon had already sold out his half interest in Herndon Brothers’ store to William F. Berry; and Rowan Herndon, not getting along well with Berry, was only too glad to find a purchaser of his half in the person of “Abe” Lincoln. Berry was as poor as Lincoln; but that was not a serious obstacle, for their notes were accepted for the Herndon stock of goods. They had barely hung out their sign when something happened which threw another store into their hands. Reuben Radford had made himself obnoxious to the Clary’s Grove Boys, and one night they broke in his doors and windows, and overturned his counters and sugar barrels. It was too much for Radford, and he sold out next day to William G. Green for a four-hundred-dollar note signed by Green. At the latter’s request, Lincoln made an inventory of the stock, and then offered him six hundred and fifty dollars for it—a proposition which was cheerfully accepted. Berry and Lincoln, being unable to pay cash, assumed the four-hundred-dollar note payable to Radford, and gave Green their joint note for two hundred and fifty dollars. The little grocery owned by James Rutledge was the next to succumb. Berry and Lincoln bought it at a bargain, their joint note taking the place of cash. The three stocks were consolidated. Their aggregate cost must have been not less than fifteen hundred dollars. Berry and Lincoln had secured a monopoly of the grocery business in New Salem. Within a few weeks two penniless men had become the proprietors of three stores, and had stopped buying only because there were no more to purchase.
William F. Berry, the partner of Lincoln, was the son of a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. John Berry, who lived on Rock Creek, five miles from New Salem. The son had strayed from the footsteps of the father, for he was a hard drinker, a gambler, a fighter, and “a very wicked young man.” Lincoln cannot in truth be said to have chosen such a partner, but rather to have accepted him from the force of circumstances. It required only a little time to make plain that the partnership was wholly uncongenial. Lincoln displayed little business capacity. He trusted largely to Berry, and Berry rapidly squandered the profits of the business in riotous living. Lincoln loved books as Berry loved liquor, and hour after hour he was stretched out on the counter of the store, or under a shade tree, reading Shakespeare or Burns.
His acquaintance with the works of these two writers dates from this period. In New Salem there was one of those curious individuals sometimes found in frontier settlements, half poet, half loafer, incapable of earning a living in any steady employment, yet familiar with good literature and capable of enjoying it—Jack Kelso. He repeated passages from Shakespeare and Burns incessantly over the odd jobs he undertook, or as he idled by the streams—for he was a famous fisherman—and Lincoln soon became one of his constant companions. The taste he formed in company with Kelso he retained through life.
William D. Kelley records an incident which shows that Lincoln had a really intimate knowledge of Shakespeare. Mr. Kelley had taken McDonough, an actor, to call at the White House, and Lincoln began the conversation by saying:
“‘I am very glad to meet you, Mr. McDonough, and am grateful to Kelley for bringing you in so early, for I want you to tell me something about Shakespeare’s plays as they are constructed for the stage. You can imagine that I do not get much time to study such matters, but I recently had a couple of talks with Hackett—Baron Hackett, as they call him—who is famous as Jack Falstaff, from whom I elicited few satisfactory replies, though I probed him with a good many questions.’
“Mr. McDonough,” continues Mr. Kelley, “avowed his willingness to give the President any information in his possession, but protested that he feared he would not succeed where his friend Hackett had failed. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said the President, ‘for Hackett’s lack of information impressed me with a doubt as to whether he had ever studied Shakespeare’s text, or had not been content with the acting edition of his plays.’ He arose, went to a shelf not far from his table, and having taken down a well-thumbed volume of the ‘Plays’ of Shakespeare, resumed his seat, arranged his glasses, and having turned to ‘Henry VI.’ and read with fine discrimination an extended passage, said: ‘Mr. McDonough, can you tell me why those lines are omitted from the acting play? There is nothing I have read in Shakespeare, certainly nothing in “Henry VI.” or the “Merry Wives of Windsor,” that surpasses its wit and humor.’ The actor suggested the breadth of its humor as the only reason he could assign for its omission, but thoughtfully added that it was possible that if the lines were spoken they would require the rendition of another or other passages which might be objectionable.
“‘Your last suggestion,’ said Mr. Lincoln, ‘carries with it greater weight than anything Mr. Hackett suggested, but the first is no reason at all;’ and after reading another passage, he said, ‘This is not withheld, and where it passes current there can be no reason for withholding the other.’... And, as if feeling the impropriety of preferring the player to the parson [there was a clergyman in the room], he turned to the chaplain and said: ‘From your calling it is probable that you do not know that the acting plays which people crowd to hear are not always those planned by their reputed authors. Thus, take the stage edition of “Richard III.” It opens with a passage from “Henry VI.,” after which come portions of “Richard III.,” then another scene from “Henry VI.;” and the finest soliloquy in the play, if we may judge from the many quotations it furnishes, and the frequency with which it is heard in amateur exhibitions, was never seen by Shakespeare, but was written—was it not, Mr. McDonough?—after his death, by Colley Cibber.’
“Having disposed, for the present, of questions relating to the stage editions of the plays, he recurred to his standard copy, and ... read, or repeated from memory, extracts from several of the plays, some of which embraced a number of lines.... He interspersed his remarks with extracts striking from their similarity to, or contrast with, something of Shakespeare’s, from Byron, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and other English poets.”[18]
Footnote 18:
“Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln.” Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, 1886.