IN THE LEGISLATURE

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Elected a Representative in 1834. — Borrowing money with which to clothe himself and going to Vandalia, then the capital of Illinois. First meeting with Stephen A. Douglas. - Lincoln a member of Henry Clay's Whig party. Favoring woman's suffrage. An early joint debate. Reëlected to the Legislature in 1836, 1838, and in 1840.-Whig candidate for Speaker. Leader of his party in the House. Fighting for removal of the capital to Springfield. Wild legislation. Lincoln taking his stand against slavery in the session of 1837, only one member in sympathy with him.

LINCOLN was no longer a stranger, when, for the second time, he announced himself a candidate for the Legislature. He now made a general canvass, visiting as many of the voters as he could in their homes and in their fields, eating with them and laughing with them.

Newspapers then were few and little read. Candidates, therefore, could not make themselves and their opinions known to the voters except by going among them in person. Lincoln showed himself a good campaigner, always ready for any situation. At one farm where he stopped, it was harvest time and the farmer was in no mood to talk politics. He bluntly told the young politician he judged a man by the

work he could do. Lincoln accepted the challenge good-naturedly, and, going down the field, he cut the grain with such ease that he led all the other workers. There were several voters among the harvesters, and when Lincoln shook their hands in parting, he was assured of their enthusiastic support. He was elected by a handsome vote.

He

Borrowing the money with which to buy suitable clothing, he went to the capital at the opening of the session, and there entered upon the career for which he had long been fitting himself in the hard school of experience. He was now approaching his twenty-sixth birthday. He never had lived in a town, but always in log-houses in the woods. never had lived where there was a church. never had been inside a college, and had attended school hardly more than six months in all. He welcomed the four dollars a day, which was allowed members of the Legislature, as by far the highest pay he ever had received. In fact, he had not averaged four dollars a week.

He

His fellow-members were frontier solons, pioneer farmers and village lawyers, for there were no large towns in Illinois. Chicago was yet a mere trading post in a swamp. There were a few Frenchmen, representing the surviving communities of

the period when Illinois was under the lilies of the

This man was accused of having recently received a first-class federal office as a reward for changing his politics. He was also noted for having erected on his house the only lightning-rod in the town, and the first Lincoln had seen. Grouping these things together, Lincoln concluded a rousing rejoinder to the gentleman, by declaring he would rather die on the spot, than, like his opponent, "change my politics for an office worth three thousand dollars a year, and then feel compelled to erect a lightning-rod to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God."

In the election that followed, nine members were chosen from Sangamon County, and Lincoln led them all with the highest vote. He took a prominent part in the work of the session and was on the most important committee. The young state dreamed of the greatness awaiting it and was eager to hasten its coming by all manner of legislation for building roads and canals.

Plans were adopted with a hurrah, which, if carried out, would have bankrupted the state for a generation. Lincoln plunged in with the rest, all of whom, with the recklessness of youth, threw caution to the winds. He made it his more special mission, however, to have the capital of the state

transferred to Springfield, in his own county, and he won the battle.

Nevertheless, in all the transactions of that ambitious session, only one incident survives in human interest. The nation had been disturbed by the rumblings of a moral protest against slavery. The agitation had begun in New England, where Faneuil Hall echoed with the appeal for freedom, and thence had spread abroad.

Those who had taken it up were pitifully few in number and without political standing, but their feeble voice startled the country like a cry in the night. The South demanded that these assaults upon the peace of the Union should be suppressed, and the great body of the northern people were equally opposed to the movement.

The meetings of the Abolitionists were broken up in various parts of the North by violence under the leadership of conservative men of property. A "broadcloth mob" dragged William Lloyd Garrison through the streets of Boston with a halter round his body, and the Mayor of that city, apologizing to the Mayor of Baltimore, explained that when the police had ferreted out Garrison and his paper, The Liberator, they found his office to be "an obscure hole; his only visible auxiliary a negro boy; his supporters a few insignificant persons of all colors."

Bourbons and the tricolored flag of revolutionary France; the rest of the members generally were men of southern origin like Lincoln.

The state was founded and ruled by Southerners. There was only a small population of Northerners in the upper half, which was sparsely settled, and the Yankee was an object of popular prejudice, since he was regarded as a thrifty and meddlesome person, prone to insist upon order and his own strict standards of life.

Lincoln remained in modest silence through his first term in the Legislature. He no doubt regarded himself merely as a pupil and was content to watch and listen. He cultivated his associates quietly and laid the foundation for the future. It was then and there that Stephen A. Douglas entered the story of Lincoln's life.

Douglas was a Yankee from Vermont, but he was acting with the Democratic party, which had long dominated Illinois. Although he had come to the state only a year before with thirty-seven cents in his pocket, he had picked up a living by teaching school and practising law, and was now at the capital to gain the appointment of prosecuting attorney in his district.

While Douglas went with the majority, Lincoln made the harder choice and joined the minority.