At a later date they enjoyed a succession of titles, such as “barefoot boys,” “the flat-footed boys," and "the big-pawed boys."

In those times, Gov. Ford avers that he has seen all the rum-shops and groceries of the principal places of a county chartered by candidates, and kept open for the gratuitous accommodation of the free and independent electors for several weeks before the vote. Every Saturday afternoon the people flocked to the county-seat, to see the candidates, to hear speeches, to discuss prospects, to get drunk and fight. "Toward evening they would mount their ponies, go reeling from side to side, galloping through town, and throwing up their caps and hats, screeching like so many infernal spirits broke loose from their nether prison; and thus they separated for their homes." These observations occur in Ford's account of the campaign of 1830, which resulted in the choice of Gov. Reynolds, two years before Mr. Lincoln first became a candidate, and lead us to suppose that the body of electors before whom that gentleman presented himself were none too cultivated or refined.

Mr. Lincoln's first appearance on the stump, in the course of the canvass, was at Pappsville, about eleven miles west > of Springfield, upon the occasion of a public sale by the firm of Poog & Knap. The sale over, speech-making was about to begin, when Mr. Lincoln observed strong symptoms of inattention in his audience, who had taken that particular moment to engage in what Mr. James A. Herndon pronounces “a general fight." Lincoln saw that one of his friends was suffering more than he liked in the mêlée; and, stepping into the crowd, he shouldered them sternly away from his man, until he met a fellow who refused to fall back: him he seized by the nape of the neck and the seat of his breeches, and tossed him "ten or twelve feet easily." After this episode,

as characteristic of him as of the times, he mounted the platform, and delivered, with awkward modesty, the following speech:

"Gentlemen and Fellow-Citizens, I presume you all know

who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by many friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal-improvement system and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected, I shall be thankful; if not, it will be all the same."

In these few sentences Mr. Lincoln adopted the leading principles of the Whig party,— Clay's "American System " in full. In his view, as we shall see by another paper from him when again a candidate in 1834, the internal-improvement system required the distribution of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands amongst the States. He says nothing of South Carolina, of nullification, of disunion; and on these subjects it is quite probable his views were like Mr. Webster's, and his sympathies with Jackson. The opinions announced in this speech, on all the subjects touched by the speaker, were as emphatically Whig as they could be made in words; yet as far as they related to internal improvements, and indirectly favored the increase of bank issues, they were such as most of the "nominal Jackson men" in Illinois professed to hold, and such as they united with the Whigs to enforce, then and afterwards, in the State Legislature. The "whole-hog men would have none of them, and therein lay the distinction. Although the Democratic party continued to have a numerical majority for many years in the Legislature, the nominal men and the Whigs coalesced to control legislation in accordance with Whig doctrines. Even with such a record made and making by them, the "nominal men " persisted in calling themselves Democrats, while Jackson was vetoing the Maysville Road Bill, grappling with the National Bank, and exposing the oppressive character of the Tariff Act then in force, which imposed the highest scale of duties since the first enactment for "protection " in 1816. It was their practice to run men like themselves for the State offices where the chances of a plain-spoken Whig were hopeless; and, by means of the "nominal" character of the candidate, secure enough Demo

cratic votes, united with the Whigs, to elect him. In the very next canvass Mr. Lincoln himself was taken up by such a combination and triumphantly elected. Such things were made feasible by the prevalent mode of making nominations without the salutary intervention of regular party conventions and committees. We repeat that Mr. Lincoln's position was midway between the extremes in local politics.

His friend, Mr. A. Y. Ellis, who was with him during a part of this campaign, says, "He wore a mixed jeans coat, claw-hammer style, short in the sleeves, and bobtail, —in fact, it was so short in the tail he could not sit on it, flax and tow linen pantaloons, and a straw hat. I think he wore a vest, but do not remember how it looked. He then wore pot-metal boots.

"I accompanied him on one of his electioneering trips to Island Grove; and he made a speech which pleased his party friends very well indeed, though some of the Jackson men tried to make sport of it. He told several anecdotes in his speech, and applied them, as I thought, very well. He also told the boys several stories which drew them after him. I remember them; but modesty and my veneration for his memory forbid me to relate them.”

Mr. J. R. Herndon, his friend and landlord, heard him make several speeches about this time, and gives us the following extract from one, which seems to have made a special impression upon the minds of his auditors: "Fellow-citizens, I have been told that some of my opponents have said that it was a disgrace to the county of Sangamon to have such a looking man as I am stuck up for the Legislature. Now, I thought this was a free country: that is the reason I address you today. Had I have known to the contrary, I should not have consented to run; but I will say one thing, let the shoe pinch where it may when I have been a candidate before you some five or six times, and have been beaten every time, I will consider it a disgrace, and will be sure never to try it again; but I am bound to beat that man if I am beat myself. Mark that!"

These were not the only speeches he made in furtherance of his present claims, but they are all of which we have any intelligible account. There was one subject upon which he felt himself peculiarly competent to speak, — the practical application of the "internal-improvement system" to the river which flowed by the doors of the constituency he addressed. He firmly believed in the right of the Legislature of the State or the Congress of the United States to appropriate the public money to local improvements for the sole advantage of limited districts; and that he believed it good policy to exercise the right, his subsequent conduct in the Legislature, and an elaborate speech in Congress, are sufficient proof. In this doctrine he had the almost unanimous support. of the people of Illinois. Almost every man in the State was a speculator in town lots or lands. Even the farmers had taken up or held the very lands they tilled with a view to a speculation in the near future. Long after the Democratic party in the South and East, leaving Mr. Calhoun in a state of isolation, had begun to inculcate different views of constitutional power and duty, it was a dangerous thing for a politician in Illinois to intimate his agreement with them. Mr. Lincoln knew well that the policy of local improvement at the general expense was at that moment decidedly the most popular platform he could mount; but he felt that this was not enough for his individual purposes, since it was no invention of his, and belonged to nearly everybody else as much as to him. He therefore prudently ingrafted upon it a hobby of his own: "The Improvement of the Sangamon River," - a plan to straighten it by means of cuts, to clear out its obstructions, and make it a commercial highway at the cost of the State. That the idea was nearly, if not quite impracticable, the trip of "The Talisman" under Mr. Lincoln's piloting, and the fact that the river remained unimproved during all the years of the "internal-improvement" mania, would seem to be pretty clear evidence. But the theme was agreeable to the popular ear, and had been dear to Lincoln from the moment he laid his eyes on the Sangamon. It was the great

topic of his speech against Posey and Ewing in Macon County, when, under the auspices of John Hanks, he "beat" those professional politicians so completely that they applauded him themselves. His experience in navigating the river was not calculated to make him forget it, and it had occupied his thoughts more or less from that day forward. Now that it might be turned to good use, where he was personally interested, he set about preparing a written address on it, and on some other questions of local interest, upon which he bestowed infinite pains. The "grammatical errors" in the first draft were corrected by Mr. McNamar, the pioneer of New Salem as a business point, and the gentleman who was destined to be Mr. Lincoln's rival in the most important love-affair of his life. He may have consulted the schoolmaster also; but, if he had done so, it is hardly to be surmised that the schoolmaster would have left so important a fact out of his written reminiscences. It is more probable that Mr. Lincoln confined his applications for assistance on this most important matter to the quarter where he could get light on politics as well as grammar. However that may have been, the following is the finished paper:—

TO THE PEOPLE OF SANGAMON COUNTY.

Fellow-Citizens, Having become a candidate for the honorable office of one of your Representatives in the next General Assembly of this State, in accordance with an established custom and the principles of true republicanism, it becomes my duty to make known to you, the people, whom I propose to represent, my sentiments with regard to local

affairs.

Time and experience have verified to a demonstration the public utility of internal improvements. That the poorest and most thinly-populated countries would be greatly benefited by the opening of good roads, and in the clearing of navigable streams within their limits, is what no person will deny. Yet it is folly to undertake works of this or any other kind, without first knowing that we are able to finish them, -as half