[v-23] See letter of Lincoln to Stuart, February 14, 1839, in Works, xi, 98.
[v-24] Works, i, 6-7.
[v-25] This is exclusive of what was appropriated for the Illinois and Michigan Canal, then already in process of construction. That enterprise, the other improvement projects, and a few smaller public outlays carried the State debt, by the close of 1842, above $15,000,000.
[v-26] Works, i, 146.
[v-27] An Act to establish and maintain a General System of Internal Improvements. Approved February 27, 1837. Section 22, Illinois Session Laws, 1836-37.
[v-28] Works, i, 154-55; Lamon, 213-15.
[v-29] Gillespie, 24-25; Lamon, 216-17; Nicolay and Hay, i, 161-62; Davidson, 422-27; Herndon, i, 217; Morse, i, 60; Hapgood, 72-73. It may be of interest to note that Lincoln and his two colleagues were not the only acrobatic legislators revealed by our early local histories. General Lew Wallace, in his Autobiography (i, 251), tells, with contrition, how he bolted from the Indiana Senate to prevent an election of United States Senator; and Thaddeus Stevens, during his turbulent days in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, jumped from a window after a scene of violence, in which, by a singular coincidence, he too had acted as the Whig leader.
[v-30] Lamon, 324; Browne, 237.
[v-31] Works, i, 27.