[v-14] For a comprehensive note in which the local election returns of 1834 are collated, the reader is referred to Master, § 22, pp. 445-46.
[v-15] In a referendum of the question submitted to the people at the election of 1834, 7514 voters expressed a preference for Alton, 7148 for Vandalia, 7044 for Springfield, 744 for Illiopolis the geographical center, 486 for Peoria, and 272 for Jacksonville. When the final balloting took place in the General Assembly, twenty-nine places were voted upon. (See Parrish’s Illinois, 313.)
[v-16] Whitney, i, 139; Nicolay and Hay, i, 139.
[v-17] Details of these encounters are related in Master, 60-62.
[v-18] Lamon, 195; Herndon, i, 166.
[v-19] General T. H. Henderson, in Tarbell, i, 139.
[v-20] Whitney’s Life, i, 146.
[v-21] Statement of Coleman Smoot, in Lamon, 157. As Lincoln was thus supplied with sufficient means to defray his traveling expenses, the oft-repeated story, which depicts him as trudging, pack on back, over the road to Vandalia, may perhaps, with propriety, be assigned to a place among those pleasing traditions of history that are found, upon close scrutiny, to be more picturesque than plausible.
[v-22] Nicolay and Hay, i, 158; Pratt, 52-53; Coffin, 125-27; Nicolay’s Boy’s Life, 59. Lincoln’s experience, it should be noted, in canvassing his district with a nominal outlay of money, was not uncommon. Gustav Koerner, running for the Illinois Legislature on the Democratic ticket, a few years later, did so under similar circumstances. “There were hardly,” he tells us, “any election expenses. We always stayed with friends when traveling through the county. We had our horses anyway. My entire electioneering expenses amounted to four dollars, and that for the printing of tickets. One Democratic Frenchman from the Bottom afterwards sent me a bill of $6.65 for which he said he had gratuitously treated for me. As he was a good fellow, I paid him, although I had not given him the slightest authority to do so.” (Koerner, i, 468-69.)