VIEW OF THE SANGAMON RIVER NEAR NEW SALEM.
Reproduced, by permission, from “Menard-Salem-Lincoln Souvenir Album,” Petersburg, Illinois, 1893.
With one exception, the biographers of Lincoln have given him the first place on the ticket in 1834. He really stood second in order. Herndon gives the correct vote, although he is in error in saying that the chief authority he quotes, a document owned by Dr. A. W. French of Springfield, Illinois, is an “official return.” It is a statement, made out in Lincoln’s writing, and certified to by the county clerk, of the total number of votes cast in the whole county for each of the several candidates for the legislature. The official returns are on file in the Springfield court-house.
CHAPTER XVII.
LINCOLN FINALLY DECIDES ON A LEGAL CAREER.—HIS FIRST SESSION IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF ILLINOIS.
STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS.
Born at Brandon, Vermont, April 23, 1813; died in Chicago, June 3, 1861. Douglas learned a trade when a boy, but abandoned it to study law. Obliged to support himself, he went to Illinois in 1833, where he taught school until admitted to the bar. In 1835 he was elected State Attorney-General, but resigned at the end of the year, having been elected to the General Assembly. In 1837 he was appointed register of the land-office at Springfield; in 1838 was defeated in a contest for Congress; in 1840 was appointed Secretary of State; in 1841 was elected judge of the Supreme Court of Illinois. From 1843 to 1846 he was in Congress, and for fourteen years after was a United States Senator. The Lincoln and Douglas debates took place in his last senatorial canvass. In 1860 Mr. Douglas was the Democratic candidate for President, and was defeated by Lincoln. He died in 1861.
The best thing which Lincoln did in the canvass of 1834 was not winning votes; it was coming to a determination to read law, not for pleasure, but as a business. In his autobiographical notes he says: “During the canvass, in a private conversation, Major John T. Stuart (one of his fellow-candidates) encouraged Abraham to study law. After the election he borrowed books of Stuart, took them home with him, and went at it in good earnest. He never studied with anybody.” He seems to have thrown himself into the work with an almost impatient ardor. As he tramped back and forth from Springfield, twenty miles away, to get his law-books, he read sometimes forty pages or more on the way. Often he was seen wandering at random across the fields, repeating aloud the points in his last reading. The subject seemed never to be out of his mind. It was the great absorbing interest of his life. The rule he gave twenty years later to a young man who wanted to know how to become a lawyer, was the one he practised:
REPORT OF A ROAD SURVEY BY LINCOLN.—HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.
Photographed for this biography from the original, now on file in the County Clerk’s office, Springfield, Illinois. The survey here reported was made in pursuance of an order of the County Commissioners’ Court, September 1, 1834, in which Lincoln was designated as the surveyor.
