ber. Thus Lincoln was thrown into contact with many of the brightest minds of the West, and was much benefited by his association with them.

The principal business, considered during the session, related to a most extravagant system of internal improvements, and many gigantic and reckless schemes were discussed. The people were deeply impressed with the great resources of the State, and believed that, if they developed its natural features, and established easy communication between the different sections, the State would immediately fill up with inhabitants and its prosperity be assured. The population was comparatively small, and the people were too few and poor to bear the heavy financial burdens thus entailed, so they determined to bond the State for a million dollars, which would have been but a small part of the cost of the contemplated improvements. The Legislature represented the extreme of public sentiment and commenced immediately to plan a system of internal improvements, which two generations and a great commonwealth have hardly yet completed.

Many of the small streams, as well as larger rivers, were to be dredged, widened and made navigable. Upon them were to be placed lines of splendid steamers, which were to connect the settlements and develop them into large and bustling cities. There was not a little cross-roads village or scattering hamlet that did not have its visions of metropolitan splendors. Parks and boulevards, churches, city-halls and great business blocks were to spring up, as if by magic.

The State was to be crossed by a net-work of rail

roads connecting the North with the South, the East with the West. These sanguine legislators expected to transform in a moment a wilderness with a half a million inhabitants into an old-world country with its crowded population and improvements, a process which hitherto centuries alone had been able to perfect.

It was one of those periods of speculation and excitement through which every country must pass, and the inevitable reaction was quick to follow, retarding the general prosperity just in proportion to the extravagance of the speculation.

It is perhaps well for the State that it passed through this trying ordeal before its interests had been developed to any extent, or the crash would have been far greater and its results more lasting.

Lincoln was the recognized leader of his delegation, and hence was influential in the proceedings of the House. Into all of the extravagant measures, which were brought forward, he entered heart and soul, and exerted all his power to secure their incorporation into the statutes of the State.

The question of the permanent location of the State Capital came up at this time. Vandalia was not a desirable location for several reasons, and a number of cities were desirous of the honor and emoluments accruing from this distinction. Powerful lobbies were present from Alton, Decatur, Peoria, Jacksonville, Illiopolis and Springfield. The "long nine" were, of course, pledged to do their utmost to secure for Springfield the coveted honor, and, under the shrewd leadership of Lincoln, they gained their end, after a prolonged and bitter struggle and the

beautiful city of the Sangamon was designated as the Capital of Illinois.

Near the close of the session occurred a circumstance which attracted but little attention at the time, but which, in the light of subsequent events, is worthy of more than a passing notice. As has been said, Illinois occupied a somewhat anomalous position in regard to slavery. While the institution was rigorously excluded from the State the majority of the people looked with greater abhorrence upon the Abolitionist than upon the slaveholder. But few Aboli

tionists ventured to settle within its borders and they were sedulously avoided by the most of the people of the community, and sometimes neglect gave place to actual ill treatment.

This sentiment was put in the form of a resolution and passed by the Legislature, near the end of the session in the following form:

Resolved, by the General Assembly of the State of Illinois : That we highly disapprove of the formation of Abolition societies and of the doctrines promulgated by them; that the right of property in slaves is sacred to the slaveholding States by the Federal constitution, and that they cannot be deprived of that right without their own consent; that the General Government cannot abolish slavery in the District of Columbia against the consent of the citizens of said District without a manifest breach of good faith . . ."

The Legislature thus recognized the absolute right of the slaveholding States to their peculiar institutions and sought to establish the doctrine of noninterference. The movement seemed at the time to be possessed of little significance, yet it was the cogent statement of a political doctrine which was des

tined, in after years, to exert a baleful influence over the whole country and to prove a great obstacle in the path of advancing freedom.

Lincoln was not an Abolitionist. His early associations had so familiarized him with slavery as an established institution that he looked with suspicion and alarm upon the radical doctrines of the new party which as yet had no political status, but of which he was in the future destined to become the leader. Yet slavery as a fact was wholly distasteful to him; hence, while he would not commit himself to the Abolition movement, he would not, on the other hand, subscribe to nor even give a silent consent to resolutions which were essentially pro-slavery.

Accordingly, on the last day but one of the session, he prepared a protest against the resolutions and tried to secure the signature of his colleagues to it. Only one, Dan Stone, could be induced to sign it, and with but two names appended it was spread upon the records of the House.

It reads as follows:

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Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed both branches of the General Assembly, at its present session, the undersigned hereby protest against the passage of the same. They believe that the institution of slavery is founded upon both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate its evils. They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power under the Constitution to interfere with the institution of slavery in the different States. They believe that the Congress of the United States has power under the Constitution to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of the District. The difference between these opinions

and those contained in the above resolutions is their reason for entering this protest.

DAN STONE,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Mr. Lincoln never materially departed from the political doctrine herein enunciated and never ceased to hold that the Constitution conferred no right upon any one to interfere with slavery in the slave States.

At the close of the session he walked home from Vandalia, a distance of one hundred miles. The rest of the delegation rode upon horseback, but Lincoln was able to keep up with them and beguiled the tedium of the journey with many a story and pointed joke.

The weather was cold and his clothes were thin and worn. Complaining of the cold, one of his companions told the future President that "it was no wonder he was cold, there was so much of him on the ground." No one enjoyed the joke more than its victim.

Upon their return to Springfield they were greeted with the most extravagant manifestations of gratitude and joy. They had secured the greatly coveted honor for the city and the citizens could not do enough to show their appreciation of the service. In the midst of the feasting and rejoicing, Lincoln was observed to be sad and preoccupied. When questioned as to the cause of it he ascribed it to the unsettled condition of his life, and the uncertainty of his future. In view of his lonely situation his friends determined to secure his removal to the Capital and to assist him, as far as he would permit, to secure lucrative employment.