a captain. He was as much surprised as he was delighted when, on this more august occasion, the Sangamon company again elected him to the post. His own comparative ignorance, and the scorn for any sort of military discipline entertained by those rough, rollicking young fellows out on a picnic, caused him considerable trouble and some temporary official disgrace in the course of the northward march. But these were more than recompensed by his intense enjoyment of the whole expedition, and his real security in the goodwill and respect of his companions.

The only incident of the campaign in which he need now figure is wholly to his credit. An unarmed Indian, carrying a safe-conduct from General Cass, took refuge in the camp. But the mere sight of a red man was too much for the young whites. The feud between the two races seemed to run subconsciously in their very blood and woke beyond control at the least incentive. It was about as much as Lincoln's life was worth to interpose his body between the muskets of the volunteers and their cowering guest; but he had come out to see what he conceived to be justice done, whether to white men or to Indians, and he was as ready to die for the cause under the one aspect as under the other. His courage and popularity, together with the moral strength of his position, carried him through the ugly moment, and the old Indian was saved. It is only one of many examples of the stern stuff that lay behind the man's amiability. He might be ambitious, but there was no unpopularity, no sacrifice he would not, and did not, dare for the thing he cherished most of all, his own inexorable sense of justice.

The war itself was not without more serious incidents and ended in July in a slaughter of Indians. Old Black Hawk was captured and carried for exhibition through the Eastern cities. Lincoln never came into the actual fighting, though once, on a mid-summer morning, his company entered a camp of scouts at sunrise, only to find it had been surprised during the night and its five occupants slain and scalped. "It was frightful," he said, in recalling the sight, "but it was grotesque; and the red sunlight seemed to paint everything all over." "I remember that one man had buckskin breeches on," he added, with his grotesque touch of realism.

The volunteers had been mustered out of service about the end of May, but Captain Lincoln enlisted as a private in a favoured company of Independent Rangers; and again, a month later, was mustered into another, under Major Robert Anderson, afterwards to be famous as the defender of Fort Sumter. Among the many distinguished officers with whom the young private became, in some degree, acquainted during this summer campaign, were Zachary Taylor, afterwards President, and Winfield Scott, destined to be Lincoln's military adviser during the first months of his administration; while, at the end of the expedition, Jefferson Davis appears to have escorted the old Indian down the river into captivity. Among his companions there were other figures interesting from their historic association; such were the sons of Boone, the Kentucky pioneer, and of Hamilton, youngest and most brilliant of the statesmen whose labours had issued in the American Constitution.

The Black Hawk War took Lincoln far away from

New Salem, and when his company was finally disbanded in the present State of Wisconsin, his horse being stolen, he had two hundred miles to cover on foot and by canoe, before taking up his canvass at the beginning of August. There can be no question of the energy, both physical and mental, displayed by Lincoln and his supporters during the few days remaining to them before the poll. But everywhere the country was being swept by the Jacksonian party, and on this occasion, as we have seen, Lincoln was not among the four successful candidates; indeed, he only ranked third among the eight who were defeated. His programme and his candidature were, however, popular at New Salem itself, and he had the satisfaction of receiving by far the largest poll in his own precinct; and, what was more valuable, he won the interest and subsequent esteem of some of his ablest fellow-citizens in the neighbouring settlements; among them, of one of his companions in the Black Hawk War, Major John Stuart, a lawyer with whom he afterwards entered into partnership.

Lincoln was now not only a defeated candidate, he was also, for a few weeks, among the unemployed. Then, unfortunately, a speculative opportunity offered itself, and with a promissory note he bought a partnership in one of the New Salem general stores. Though the new firm of Berry & Lincoln proceeded to buy out its two competitors with the same currency, and is said to have subsequently acquired a tavern licence for the retailing of whisky, it was foredoomed to failure.1 Berry was, by all accounts, a reckless

1 The whole incident of this partnership is somewhat obscure. In a reply to insinuations by Douglas made in 1858, Lincoln said: “Lincoln

gambler and a drunkard, and Lincoln had an appetite as insatiable as his partner's, and almost as little likely to further his present business-the appetite for books, for books of general literature, history, and poetry, but especially-mirabile dictu-for books of law.

By chance he had for half a dollar bought a Blackstone in a barrel of rubbish, and through the long idle summer days of 1833 he lay out under a great oak tree devouring it. "Never in my whole life," he once said, "was my mind so thoroughly absorbed." Under the influence of a whimsical idler, one Jack Kelso, he began to study Shakespeare, to read the poetry of Burns, and to discuss Deism. It was about this time, too, that he read Gibbon, and the less reliable history of Rollin. For all this reading, his power of concentration stood him in good stead. He always carried his book with him, and turned to it in the intervals of other occupations. Mrs Stowe has presented us with a portrait of him lying on a trundle-bed, with one long leg extended to rock the cradle of his hostess's infant, while he himself was absorbed in grammar.

Furthermore, he had now become the village postmaster, and one of the perquisites of his office was the right to open and read the newspapers. The post only came in once a week, or sometimes once a fortnight, and as postal rates were high, the New Salem mail-bags were not heavy. But the distribution of their contents required long tramps, and offered, besides, endless opportunities for sociability, discussion, and gossip.

never kept a grocery anywhere in the world. It is true that Lincoln did work, the latter part of one winter, in a little still-house, up at the head of a hollow."

If it be true, as some declare, that Berry & Lincoln's grocery had been wholly converted into a liquor store by the winter of 1833-4, it is probable that the junior partner had ceased to feel any personal interest in its success, and it is certain that he was now seeking to support himself by any other form of labour which offered. It is therefore so much more to his honour, and-if that were needed a final proof of its exactitude, that when at last the enterprise actually failed and the partnership was dissolved by the death of Berry, Lincoln, instead of attempting to escape from their debt of over £200 by making a composition with his creditors, heroically agreed to hand over to them all his surplus earnings till the amount should be paid in full. How serious was this self-imposed handicap on his worldly progress may be gathered from the fact that he was still carrying his burden in his fortieth year. He did not even attempt, at the moment, to make a new start elsewhere, but bravely continued to live and work among those to whom he was in debt.

Before the final catastrophe, Lincoln had added a further profession to those of store and tavern-keeper and village postmaster. The three principal employments for young Illinoisians of talent were Landsurveying, the Law, and Politics. Lincoln had hopes of entering ultimately upon both the second and third, but found that for the present the first required less training and was more readily available. The District Surveyor, a certain John Calhoun (an able politician, but not to be confused with the great Southern leader of the same name), at this time heavily overburdened with the immense task of settling the limits of the