temporaries join in protesting against the reports that Lincoln delighted in vulgarity for its own sake. He never told a story or used a colloquialism but he gave it a point which applied immediately and directly to the subject under discussion. As he loved men, so he loved truth, for its own sake.

If he stripped falsehood and sham of their seductive coloring by the plain application of the recital of a condensed drama which observation and experience had taught him would prove most effective in establishing a fact in place of an erroneous theory, it was because Nature had equipped him for the race he was to run with every possible addition in mind and body that should make for ultimate triumph in the one great enterprise which he was born to guide, direct, and control to its final consummation.

Lincoln's first trial of his prowess against Douglas grew out of one of the debates in Speed's store. Douglas had been upholding the principles of the Democratic Party of which he was at that time, as ever afterwards, an ardent adherent. At a heated stage of the controversy Douglas sprang up and declaring that "this store is no place to talk politics" challenged the company to public debate of the question at issue. The affair was arranged, Douglas, Calhoun, Lamborn, and Thomas representing the Democrats; Logan, Baker, Browning, and Lincoln, the Whigs. None of the speeches of the contest attracted unusual notice with the exception of Lincoln's. So deep was the impression he created that he was asked to furnish his speech to the Sangamon Journal for publication and it afterwards appeared in the columns of that paper.

In this debate he discovered the flaws in Douglas' character which led him to dodge, cover, and misrepresent facts, but with such subtlety, so much fire and impetuosity as

easily to deceive even critical observers. Free from sham, Lincoln was merciless in exposing it in others. And his method, adopted at this time in refuting Douglas, he retained and perfected for the great debate more than ten years later, the results of which had an imperishable influence on the destinies of the Nation. At this earlier meeting Lincoln said: "Those who heard Mr. Douglas recollect that he indulged himself in a contemptuous expression of pity for me. 'Now he's got me,' thought I. But when he went on to say that five millions of the expenditure of 1838 were payments of the French indemnities, which I knew to be untrue; that five millions had been for the Post Office, which I knew to be untrue; that ten millions had been for the Maine Boundary War, which I not only knew to be untrue but supremely ridiculous also; and when I saw that he was stupid enough to hope that I would permit such groundless and audacious assertions to be unexposed; I readily consented that, on the score both of veracity and sagacity, the audience would judge whether he or I were the more deserving of the world's contempt."

Lincoln's methods of fitting himself for legislative duties were no less characteristic and original than those he had used to prepare himself for the law. His first term in the Legislature had been similar to his practice of law before the New Salem Justice. He had studied rather than practiced the arts of legislation. He was nominated to succeed himself in 1838, and elected. At this session he received thirty-eight votes for Speaker. His successful competitor, William L. D. Ewing, the Democratic candidate, received forty-three votes. Besides retaining a place on the Finance Committee where he had served during his first term, Lincoln was assigned to the Committee on Counties. During this term he did what

he could to correct the evils that followed the liberal legislation on internal improvements in the previous session. He admitted his "share of the responsibility in the present crisis" and finally concluded that he was "no financier" after all.

No sooner had the legislature adjourned than he announced himself again as a candidate. He had been pursued and villified. His enthusiasm for the internal improvement projects and the succeeding financial disasters, gave his Democratic opponents material which they were not slow to use. But the people believed in him. It was a Presidential year and Lincoln stumped the State for the Whigs and their candidate, Harrison-a campaign founded on the coon-skin cap, the log cabin, and the humble life of the nominee, which had many of the features and something of the defamatory characteristics which were to emphasize his own election to the Presidency, then little more than a decade He was away. selected as an elector on the Harrison ticket for President. In debate he frequently met Douglas, who was already the standard bearer and leading exponent of the Democratic principles. Neither was adverse to a conflict. After one of these meetings with the Little Giant he was greatly cast down, feeling that he had been worsted.

"He was very sensitive," John Gillespie, one of his colleagues on the stump, relates, "where he thought he had failed to meet the expectations of his friends. He was conscious of his failure, and I never saw any man so much distressed. He begged to be permitted to try again, and was reluctantly indulged: and in the next effort he transcended our highest expectations. I never heard and never expect to hear such a triumphant vindication as he then gave to Whig measures or policy. He never after, to my knowledge fell below himself."

Chapter IX

INFLUENCE OF MARY TODD

T

HE CAPITAL of Illinois in 1839 was a a very lively, if a somewhat "rough and ready" city. The buildings

made little pretensions to archictecture. Unpaved streets were cut deed with ruts and during muddy weather were almost impassable. The population was composed of immigrants from Eastern and Southern States; New England and Georgia "swapped" dialects to the enrichment of expression, but to the slaughter of the King's English. There were as many brands of politics as there were gradations of sentiment between the State of Maine and the Carolinas. The city and all the country round was continually stirred up with "ideas," promising the settlement of conflicting questions, State and National. Where two or three were gathered together there was sure to be controversial discussion, if not hot words and ready blows.

Thus the public life of the community, while lacking in social refinements, found an outlet for its speculations and emotions in a limited vocabulary more or less vulgar and profane: and its entertainment, in horse racing, cock fighting and feats of physical strength and skill. But the social side of Springfield had its degrees of caste, and there was as much show of aristocracy among the descendants of old families there, as at the National Capital. Statesman and

back-country ruffian might rub elbows over the same bar, while they discussed politics or recounted their adventures, with no thought of impropriety; but once the main street was left behind and the region of homes approached, the pride of ancestry and the daintier sense that culture brings, put up a strong, if invisible barrier against the leveling process which is a principal feature among the males of frontier life. Neither there nor anywhere else has womankind ever agreed to Kipling's dictum that,

The Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady

Are sisters under the skin.

Springfield had its "select circles," into which were admitted none but those upon whom the goddess of respectability had set her distinguishing seal. Fashion looked with as withering scorn upon those who were too poor or too ignorant to follow her decrees in the Capital of Illinois, as she did in New York or London.

Into this wild, rough prairie town came Miss Mary Todd, nineteen years of age, handsome, piquant, aristocratic, with ready wit, sustained by four years of study in the French school of Mme. Martelli. She came to make her home with her sister, Mrs. Ninan Edwards, whose husband was a rising politician, already in the Legislature and one of the "Long Nine" to which Lincoln belonged, and which had proved powerful enough to capture the Capital for Springfield against all odds. Miss Todd was a Kentuckian, a member of an old and distinguished family. Her family connections, her natural charms of person, her education and refinement, as well as her own delight in social intercourse, soon gave her first place in society circles. Her suitors were as many as she chose to encourage. Among them was Lincoln. Notwithstanding the pronounced differences in their natures, as well