II.

ELIHU B. WASHBURNE.

R. LINCOLN was nearly eight years my

MR.

senior, and settled in Illinois ten years before I did. We first find him in the State splitting rails with Thomas Hanks, in Macon County, in 1830. Not long afterward he made his way to New Salem, an unimportant and insignificant village on the Sangamon River, in the northern part of Sangamon County, fourteen miles from Springfield. In 1839 a new county was laid off, named "Ménard," in honor of the first lieutenant-governor of the State, a French Canadian, an early settler of the State and a man whose memory is held in reverence by the people of Illinois, for his enterprise, benevolence and the admirable personal traits which adorned his character. A distinguished and wealthy citizen of St. Louis, allied to him by marriage, Mr. Charles Pierre Chouteau, is now erecting a monument to him, to be placed in the State-house grounds at Springfield. The settlement of New Salem, now immortalized as the early home of Lincoln, fell within the new county of "Ménard." Remaining there "as a sort

of clerk in a store," to use his own language, he then went into the Black Hawk war and was elected captain of a company of mounted volunteers. In one of the great debates between Lincoln and Douglas, at Ottawa, in 1858, he, in a somewhat patronizing manner and in a spirit of badinage, spoke of having known Lincoln for "twenty-four years" and when a "flourishing grocery-keeper" at New Salem. The occasion was too good a one not to furnish a repartee, and the people insisted that while Lincoln denied that he had been a flourishing "grocerykeeper" as stated, yet added that, if he had been, it was "certain that his friend, Judge Douglas, would have been his best customer." The Black Hawk war over, Mr. Lincoln returned to New Salem to eke out a scanty existence by doing small jobs of surveying and by drawing up deeds and legal instruments for his neighbors. In 1834, still living in New Salem, he was one of nine members elected from Sangamon County to the lower house of the Legislature.

I landed at Galena by a Mississippi River steamboat, on the first day of April, 1840, ten years after Hanks and Lincoln were splitting rails in Macon County.

The country was then fairly entered on that marvelous Presidential campaign between Van Buren and Harrison, by far the most exciting election the country has ever seen, and which, in my judgment,

will never have a parallel, should the country have an existence for a thousand years. Illinois was one of the seven States that voted for Van Buren, but the Whigs contested the election with great zeal and most desperate energy. Galena, theretofore better known as the Fevre River Lead Mines, still held its importance as the center of the lead mining region, and was regarded as one of the principal towns in the State in point of population, wealth and enterprise. But the bulk of population of the State at that time, as well as the weight of political influence, was south of Springfield.

Mr. Lincoln was first elected to the lower branch of the Legislature (then sitting at Vandalia), from Sangamon County, in 1834; and that was his first appearance in public life. He was re-elected in 1836, 1838 and 1840, having served in all four terms-eight years. He then peremptorily declined a further election.

Before his election to the Legislature, Mr. Lincoln had read law in a fugitive way at New Salem, but arriving at Vandalia, as a member of the Legislature, a new field was open to him in the State law library, as well as in the miscellaneous library at the capital. He then devoted himself most diligently not only to the study of law, but to miscellaneous reading. He always read understandingly, and there was no principle of law but what he mastered, and such was the way in which he always impressed his miscellaneous

readings on his mind, that people in his later life were amazed at his wonderful familiarity with books, even those so little known by the great mass of readers. The seat of government of Illinois having been removed from Vandalia to Springfield, in 1839, the latter place then became the center of political influence in the State.

Mr. Lincoln was not particularly distinguished in his legislative service. He participated in the discussion of the ordinary subjects of legislation, and was regarded as a man of good sense, and a wise and practical legislator. His uniform fairness was proverbial. But he never gave any special evidence of that masterly ability for which he was afterward distinguished, and which stamped him, as by common consent, the foremost man of all the century. He was a prominent Whig in politics, and took a leading part in all political discussions. There were many men of both political parties in the lower house of Legislature during the service of Mr. Lincoln, who became afterward distinguished in the political history of the State, and among them might be mentioned Orlando B. Ficklin, John T. Stuart, William A. Richardson, John A. McClernand, Edward D. Baker, Lewis W. Ross, Samuel D. Marshall, Robert Smith, William H. Bissell, and John J. Hardin, all subsequently members of Congress, and James Semple, James Shields, and Lyman