According to the custom of the day he announced in the spring his candidacy. After this was done the Black Hawk war called him off the ground and he did not get back until about ten days before the election, so that he had almost no time to attend to the canvass. One incident of this campaign is preserved which is interesting, partly because it concerns the first known speech Lincoln ever made in his own behalf, and chiefly because it was an exhibition of his character.
He was speaking at a place called Cappsville when two men in the audience got into a scuffle.
Lincoln proceeded in his speech until it became evident that his friend was getting the worst of the scuffle, when he descended from the platform, seized the antagonist and threw him ten or twelve feet away on the ground, and then remounted the platform and took up his speech where he had left off without a break in the logic.
The methods of electioneering are given by Miss Tarbell in the following words:
"Wherever he saw a crowd of men he joined them, and he never failed to adapt himself to their point of view in asking for votes. If the degree of physical strength was the test for a candidate, he was ready to lift a weight, or wrestle with the countryside champion; if the amount of grain a man could cut would recommend him, he seized the cradle and showed the swath he could cut" (I. 109).
The ten days devoted to the canvass were not enough, and he was defeated. The vote against him was chiefly in the outlying region where he was little known. It must have been gratifying to him that in his own precinct, where he was so well known, he received the almost unanimous vote of all parties. Biographers differ as to the precise number of votes in the New Salem precinct, but by Nicolay and Hay it is given as 277 for, and three against. Of this election Lincoln himself (speaking in the third person) said: "This was the only time Abraham was ever defeated on the direct vote of the people."
His next political experience was a candidacy for the legislature 1834. At this time, as before, he announced his own candidacy. But not as before, he at this time made a diligent canvass of the district. When the election came off he was not only successful but he ran ahead of his ticket. He usually did run ahead of his ticket excepting when running for the presidency, and then it was from the nature of the case impossible. Though Lincoln probably did not realize it, this, his first election, put an end forever to his drifting, desultory, frontier life. Up to this point he was always looking for a job. From this time on he was not passing from one thing to another. In this country politics and law are closely allied. This two-fold pursuit, politics, for the sake of law, and law for the sake of politics, constituted Lincoln's vocation for the rest of his life.
The capital of Illinois was Vandalia, a village said to be named after the Vandals by innocent citizens who were pleased with the euphony of the word hut did not know who the Vandals were. Outwardly the village was crude and forbidding, and many of the Solons were attired in coon- skin caps and other startling apparel. The fashionable clothing, the one which came to be generally adopted as men grew to be "genteel," was blue jeans. Even "store clothes," as they came to be called, were as yet comparatively unknown.
But one must not be misled by appearances in a frontier town. The frontier life has a marvelous influence in developing brains. It is as hard for some people in the centers of culture to believe in the possible intelligence of the frontier, as it was in 1776 for the cultured Englishmen to believe in the intelligence of the colonial patriots. In that collection of men at Vandalia were more than a few who afterwards came to have national influence and reputation.
Apart from Lincoln himself, the most prominent member of the legislature was his lifelong antagonist, Stephen A. Douglas. Whatever may be said of this man's political principles, there can be no question as to the shrewdness of his political methods. It is the opinion of the present writer that in the entire history of our political system no man has ever surpassed him in astuteness. Even to- day all parties are using the methods which he either devised or introduced. The trouble with him was that he was on the wrong side. He did not count sufficiently on the conscience of the nation.