So it happened that when Lincoln came to make his first political campaign, he enlisted on the weaker side. “An avowed Clay man,” to quote the candidate himself, he declared for a leader who, with all his attainments, had already been severely routed in a contest for the Presidency, and what is more, who was destined to encounter still further disasters of the same nature. Yet no heroics, no fine flourish of trumpets, so far as is known, accompanied this decision. A poor, obscure young man, in need of an office and eager for distinction, was merely following his convictions rather than his apparent interests by enrolling himself under colors doomed to repeated reverses, and in opposition to the most ruthlessly intolerant majority that the political processes of the country had thus far evolved. The result must have been a foregone conclusion. Lincoln’s canvass came to grief. Commenting on the episode, twenty-eight years later, in that brief autobiography written as the basis for a “campaign life,” he said: “This was the only time Abraham was ever beaten on a direct vote of the people.”[v-7]
And even that beating looks now, in certain respects, more like a victory than a defeat. Lincoln did not, it is conceded, prevail at the polls; but in one of those astonishing reversals whereby the X-ray of history sometimes reveals material failure to be spiritual success, this experience should rank among his greatest triumphs.
There was another reason, less obscure at the moment, for not regarding the campaign as wholly disastrous. It established Lincoln’s claim to political consideration by a remarkable circumstance. Although he failed to receive the requisite number of votes throughout the county,—standing eighth on the list of thirteen candidates who ran,—his own neighbors in the precinct which contained New Salem gave him 277 marks out of the entire 290 recorded for Representatives.[v-8] The full significance of these figures can be appreciated only after it is added that the same citizens, a few weeks later, cast 115 more votes for General Jackson’s Presidential electors than they gave to Mr. Clay’s;[v-9] and further, that this well-nigh unanimous support of their youthful townsman, without regard to his politics, was bestowed during a period noted in our annals for its intensely bitter partisanship. Explaining the phenomenon, many years thereafter, another promising young politician of those days, wrote: “The Democrats of New Salem worked for Lincoln out of their personal regard for him. That was the general understanding of the matter here at the time. In this he made no concession of principle whatever. He was as stiff as a man could be in his Whig doctrines. They did this for him simply because he was popular—because he was Lincoln.”[v-10]
Because—the writer might have continued—they had weighed and measured Offutt’s clerk, while he was weighing and measuring commodities behind the grocery-store counter; because—what is still more to the purpose—both sets of accounts, however dissimilar they must have seemed in the making, tallied peculiarly with each other in the final reckoning. And when, with almost one accord, the Democrats among these people who knew the candidate best threw party obligations aside to register their approval of him at the polls, they placed on record the first notable judgment passed by the voting public upon his character. Favorable verdicts without number have been passed upon politicians, great and small. Merely national reputations are as common among them as printer’s ink is purchasable. But one must search well through our whole list of eminent statesmen to find the few who achieved, at any time in their careers, what Lincoln started with—an almost perfect reputation at home.
Nor was this big local vote the only expression of confidence in the “avowed Clay man” manifested by Jacksonians during those militant days. Before another summer arrived, he had received an appointment from “Old Hickory” himself, as the reader will remember, to the postmastership at New Salem; and soon thereafter, John Calhoun, the surveyor for Sangamon County, an ardent local Administration leader, made him, it may also be recalled, one of his deputies. That these politicians—high and low—should so far forego the fruits of the spoils system, looks creditable not only to the object of their lenity, but to themselves as well. Still, in the case of the President, it may be doubted whether much attention was paid to the act which bestowed upon this obscure appointee an equally obscure office.
The place could hardly have been of less consequence. How insignificant it really was can be appreciated only when we bear in mind that a far from regular mail service, scheduled for twice a week, sufficed to meet the needs of this sparsely settled district; and that even then the high rate of postage, not to mention the low rate of scholarship, kept the business transacted there within meager bounds. Indeed, tradition goes so far as to picture Lincoln carrying the office, for the most part, “in his hat.” Under its ample crown letters or papers addressed to outlying settlers are said to have been snugly tucked away until opportunities came for making deliveries—rural free deliveries, we should call them to-day—at people’s doors.[v-11] This conscientious young postmaster may therefore be credited with having anticipated by more than sixty years a now highly esteemed branch of the postal service. Nor did his usefulness cease there. If the recipient of a letter was, as not infrequently happened, illiterate, Abe’s ability to read and write was promptly called into play. If, on the other hand, our postman brought a newspaper, he usually came prepared to discuss its contents. For the privilege of reading before delivering all printed matter that passed through his hands appears to have been a cherished perquisite of the office. Lincoln certainly made the most of it. Too poor to subscribe himself for the various “organs” which professed to reflect, inform, and guide public opinion, he read with avidity such of them as appeared in the New Salem mails. This practice laid the foundation, so to say, of his political education. Indeed, what he was taught by these sheets during the three years in which he held the post constituted perhaps Lincoln’s most valued returns from an otherwise poorly paid occupation.[v-12]
The office of deputy surveyor for Sangamon County, on the other hand, was more lucrative and of far greater importance: so much so, in fact, that Lincoln hesitated to accept it at the hands of an official whose politics were of the opposite stripe. True, he needed a job, just then, with a good day’s pay attached, if any man ever did; but “man”—that is to say this kind of man—“doth not live by bread alone,” nor is he content to live in pursuit of bread alone, when to do so brings his sincerity into question. Lincoln’s first impulse had been to decline Calhoun’s offer. It came through a common friend, Pollard Simmons, who, at the surveyor’s request, had hastened from Springfield to New Salem with a tender of the appointment. Elated over what he regarded as Lincoln’s good fortune, Simmons—so the story goes—sought him out in the woods, where he was splitting rails, and told the glad news. It did not meet with the reception that the messenger had anticipated. So, sitting down together upon a log, they discussed the proposition from their conflicting points of view. To Abe’s mind, after a momentary flush of pleased surprise, two drawbacks presented themselves. He had no knowledge of surveying, and he would not tamper with his political principles to secure a berth however soft. The one obstacle a little study might, of course, remove. But how about the other? So they talked it all over until Lincoln finally said: “If I can be perfectly free in my political action, I will take the office; but if my sentiments, or even expression of them, is to be abridged in any way, I would not have it or any other office.”[v-13]
When the speaker presented himself, a few days later, before the surveyor in Springfield, all of his objections were, as we have seen, brushed aside. Calhoun needed an able man of unquestioned integrity—needed him more, at that particular time, than the Democratic Party needed recruits. How he assisted Lincoln to master the rudiments of surveying, and how fully he guaranteed him his political independence, have already been told. To what a remarkable degree, moreover, this strangely chosen deputy justified the other’s confidence has also been pointed out. It only remains to be said that, though most of the incidents which flecked John Calhoun’s eventful career have been forgotten, he still abides in our memories as the politician who, when seeking a trustworthy assistant, could see through the mists of partisan prejudice clearly enough to appraise Abraham Lincoln, thus early, at his true worth.
The holding of these two places under the Jacksonian régime had no ill-effects—interesting to relate—upon the young “Clay man’s” standing. His political sincerity apparently remained unquestioned. What was more, the good account that he gave of himself as a public servant, and the enlarged opportunities offered by those offices,—each in its own way,—contributed not a little toward the growth of an ever-increasing popularity. It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find him at the next election, in the summer of 1834, making another, and that time successful, canvass for the State Legislature. The list of candidates was as long as it had been two years before. Yet of the four who were now elected, Lincoln, running but fourteen votes behind the leader, received the second highest number cast.[v-14]
For this splendid victory he was again largely indebted to Democratic favor. In fact, prominent members of the opposing party had gone so far as to offer him their formal endorsement,—an honor which, after some hesitation and several anxious consultations with his colleagues on the ticket, Lincoln had accepted. There is no reason to infer that in so doing he had taken any unfair advantage of them, as has been suggested, or that his political principles had undergone any trimming whatsoever in the acquisition of this alien support. How it came about is obvious enough. The same confidence and good will which New Salem, regardless of party, had manifested toward him to so notable an extent at the preceding election, should merely be credited with having spread, during the intervening two years, though in a lesser degree, perhaps, through Sangamon County. That section, moreover, so far as local politics went, was giving a gracious hearing at the time to new ideas and new leaders. Under the influence of certain able young tacticians with whom Lincoln had become associated, Jacksonism itself grew less rampant in the county. There, as elsewhere, the swift alchemy of popular enthusiasm was at work, fusing hitherto unrelated elements into a novel political unit, and by a coalition of Clay’s followers with other anti-Jackson factions, helping to form a great national fellowship—the American Whig Party. It was as an exponent of this vigorous though untried organization that the Representative-elect from New Salem took his seat in the Ninth General Assembly.