for that part of his achievement; but he economically walked all the way home from Beardstown to New Salem.

Feat after feat of self-denial, skill, strength, ingenuity, and perseverance were telling fast upon the character and education of Mr. Offutt's brawny "clerk." It was especially well for him, indeed, that he should learn to be a good pilot in dangerous and "falling" waters.

CHAPTER XII.

THE BLACKHAWK WAR.

Lincoln a Volunteer-Army Discipline-Captain Lincoln under Punishment-Going to a New School-Regulars and Volunteers-1832, a.D.

ONE reason why Mr. Offutt could spare his foreman for a steamboat trip up and down the Sangamon was that his various mercantile and milling enterprises were coming to a disastrous. end. One after another he was compelled to give them up. Hardly was the "Talisman" safe in the lower river, before her pilot found his occupation as a clerk gone from him; his employer had departed, no man knew whither, and the store was. closed.

The mill returned to the management of its owners, and Abe Lincoln was once more utterly adrift.

Those, however, were stirring times in Illinois, for the great war-chief of the Sacs, the terrible Blackhawk, was over the northwestern border with the full strength of his tribe. He was said, also, to have formed a great confederacy, after the manner of King Philip, Pontiac, and Tecumseh, of the Winnebagoes, Foxes, Sioux, Kickapoos, and other tribes. This was true enough; but the whites did not as yet know how completely the savage league had fallen to pieces.

The Governor of Illinois was calling loudly for volunteers to act with the regular forces of the United States in checking the raid of the red men.

There had been a good deal of desultory border warfare during the previous year, and some Illinois troops had taken part in it. It had been of a somewhat bloody nature at several points, but the Indians had finally retreated, and had promised, at the

end of the campaign, to behave themselves more peaceably in future. Their promises were not made to be kept any longer than until presents could be received and spring should come again. They had broken them now, and it was necessary that they should have a sharp lesson administered to them.

The military experience of Abraham Lincoln had been begun for him in the fall of 1831, when, at a militia-muster at Clary's Grove, the "boys" had chosen him captain of the company. He was not present when elected, but accepted the honor thrust upon him, made a speech of thanks, and served during the muster. He afterwards said that if he had not been down the river in Offutt's flatboat in the spring of 1831, he should have surely then enlisted among the volunteers then called out, and gone to the frontier instead of into the store and mill.

Now there was something on hand more serious than a mere "muster," for nearly the same men were organizing a company for active service. The choice of a captain became a question of importance. There were but two candidates, Lincoln and a man named Kirkpatrick, owner of the sawmill at which the logs had been made into planks for Mr. Offutt's flatboat. There was an old grudge between them, beginning in that connection, and the rivalry ran high until the votes were counted, when it was found that Lincoln had beaten his competitor "out of sight." It was no wonder, for the men who had voted were mostly the same who had stood around the ring and seen him shake Jack Armstrong, and they had clear notions of the qualities required by a man whose duty it would be to keep order in their camp. He must have the necessary muscles and fighting pluck to whip any rough in his company, or he was no captain for them. No doubt it was a good escape for Mr. Kirkpatrick, the Clary's Grove boys themselves being judges.

Neither the young captain nor his mutinous, disorderly recruits had the slightest prophetic idea how needful it was that Abraham Lincoln should be taught by practical experience the

difficulties in the way of turning raw volunteers into soldiers. He had great lessons to learn in the few short weeks of the Blackhawk War.

The volunteers from that part of the State gathered at Beardstown and Rushville to be organized into regiments. Captain Lincoln's company was made part of a regiment commanded by Colonel Samuel Thompson. On the 27th of April the whole force marched for the Black River country, where Blackhawk and his warriors lay, going by way of Oquaka, on the Mississippi.

There had been no time for the drill or discipline of that array of free frontiersmen, and no company among them all stood in greater need of both than did the one which had mustered at Clary's Grove.

What could men know of the first duty of a soldier, when in all their lives they had never been taught to obey anything? Even their captain required immediate instruction. While encamped at Henderson River-over which the soldiers had built a bridge, so rude that many horses were lost in trying to get a foothold upon it, down the steep bank-an order was issued by Gen. Whiteside, in command of the forces, forbidding the discharge of firearms within fifty paces of the camp limits.

A military order was nothing but the word of one man, and the prohibition must mean "fifty paces, more or less," thought Captain Lincoln, and so he discharged his pistol recklessly, within a dozen steps of the given line. It was a bad mistake, since the forty paces he had failed to walk measured the entire question of army discipline and of military success or failure, and it was eminently needful that he, of all men, should be made to understand that vital matter.

His sword was taken from him, and he was put under arrest for an entire day; the very lightness of the punishment showing how much in need of further instruction were the officers and men of General Whiteside's volunteer army.

No more was said about the affair after that, and Captain Lincoln returned to duty. He had in this case suffered somewhat for a fault of his own; but he was shortly to incur a more severe disgrace for a sin of which he was innocent. So he was to learn how easily any commander may be ruined by unfaithful subordinates.

From Henderson River the army marched to Yellow Banks, on the Mississippi, where they were visited by a band of Cherokees from the Iowa shore, and were treated to a wardance. Thence a sharp push forward for a few days brought them to the mouth of Rock River and near the field of their expected campaign. From that place they were to advance up the river about fifty miles to Prophetstown, and await the arrival of the United States regular troops who were to act with them. But when the order to "fall in" reached the company commanded by Captain Lincoln, it could not be complied with.

Aided by a scapegrace from another company, and without the knowledge of their strictly temperate commander, the men had supplied themselves with liquor stolen from the officers' quarters, and most of them were still under the effects of it. It was all in vain for Captain Lincoln and his orderly sergeant to urge the wretched drunkards to form company. Even if they consented to try, they could not keep their ranks, and too many of them only mocked at all the orders given them.

The army moved that day without the disgraced, besotted squad, and it was ten o'clock before Captain Lincoln could march at all. Even then he was compelled to halt by the way, that his mutinous ruffians might sleep off the vile stupor they had brought upon themselves. He pushed them onward after that, and rejoined the main body in the night, only to find himself once more put under arrest and compelled to wear a wooden sword for two whole days. These were not precisely the military honors he had thirsted for, but he was not likely to forget either their causes or any of the lessons which came with them.