He had already begun to read elementary books of law, borrowed from Major Stuart and other kindly acquaintances. Indeed, it is quite possible that Berry and Lincoln might have succeeded better in business if the junior member of the firm had not spent so much of his time reading Blackstone and Chitty in the shade of a great oak just outside the door, while the senior quietly fuddled himself within. Eye-witnesses still speak of the grotesque youth, habited in homespun tow, lying on his back with his feet on the trunk of the tree, and poring over his book by the hour, "grinding around with the shade," as it shifted from north to east. After his store, to use his own expression, had "winked out," he applied himself with more continuous energy to his reading, doing merely what odd jobs came to his hand to pay his current expenses, which were of course very slight. He sometimes helped his friend Ellis in his store; sometimes went into the field and renewed his exploits as a farm-hand, which had gained him a traditional fame in Indiana; sometimes employed his clerkly hand in straightening up a neglected ledger. It is probable that he worked for his board oftener than for any other compensation, and his hearty friendliness and vivacity, as well as his industry in the field, made him a welcome guest in any farmhouse in the county. His strong arm was always at the disposal of the poor and needy; it is said of him, with a graphic variation of a well-known text, "that he visited the fatherless and the widow and chopped their wood."
In the spring of this year, 1833, he was appointed Postmaster of New Salem, and held the office for three years. Its emoluments were slender and its duties light, but there was in all probability no citizen of the village who could have made so much of it as he. The mails were so scanty that he was said to carry them in his hat, and he is also reported to have read every newspaper that arrived; it is altogether likely that this formed the leading inducement to his taking the office. His incumbency lasted until New Salem ceased to be populous enough for a post-station and the mail went by to Petersburg. Dr. J. G. Holland relates a sequel to this official experience which illustrates the quaint honesty of the man. Several years later, when he was a practicing lawyer, an agent of the Post-office Department called upon him, and asked for a balance due from the New Salem office, some seventeen dollars. Lincoln rose, and opening a little trunk which lay in a corner of the room, took from it a cotton rag in which was tied up the exact sum required. "I never use any man's money but my own," he quietly remarked. When we consider the pinching poverty in which these years had been passed, we may appreciate the self-denial denial which had kept him from making even a temporary use of this little sum of government money.
[Illustration: A. LINCOLN'S SURVEYING INSTRUMENTS AND SADDLE-BAG. IN
THE POSSESSION OF THE LINCOLN MONUMENT COLLECTION.]
John Calhoun, the Surveyor of Sangamon County, was at this time overburdened with work. The principal local industry was speculation in land. Every settler of course wanted his farm surveyed and marked out for him, and every community had its syndicate of leading citizens who cherished a scheme of laying out a city somewhere. In many cases the city was plotted, the sites of the principal buildings, including a courthouse and a university, were determined, and a sonorous name was selected out of Plutarch, before its location was even considered. For this latter office the intervention of an official surveyor was necessary, and therefore Mr. Calhoun had more business than he could attend to without assistance. Looking about for a young man of good character, intelligent enough to learn surveying at short notice, his attention was soon attracted to Lincoln. He offered young Abraham a book containing the elements of the art, and told him when he had mastered it he should have employment. The offer was a flattering one, and Lincoln, with that steady self-reliance of his, accepted it, and armed with his book went out to the schoolmaster's (Menton Graham's), and in six weeks' close application made himself a surveyor. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote (2) relocated to chapter end.]
[Illustration: AUTOGRAPH PLAN OF ROAD SURVEYED BY A. LINCOLN AND OTHERS. The lower half is the right-hand side of the plan which, in the original, is in one piece.]
[Illustration: Fac-simile of Lincoln's Report of the road survey.]
It will be remembered that Washington in his youth adopted the same profession, but there were few points of similarity in the lives of the two great Presidents, in youth or later manhood. The Virginian had every social advantage in his favor, and was by nature a man of more thrift and greater sagacity in money matters. He used the knowledge gained in the practice of his profession so wisely that he became rather early in life a large land-holder, and continually increased his possessions until his death. Lincoln, with almost unbounded opportunities for the selection and purchase of valuable tracts, made no use whatever of them. He employed his skill and knowledge merely as a bread-winner, and made so little provision for the future that when Mr. Van Bergen, who had purchased the Radford note, sued and got judgment on it, his horse and his surveying instruments were taken to pay the debt, and only by the generous intervention of a friend was he able to redeem these invaluable means of living. He was, nevertheless, an excellent surveyor. His portion of the public work executed under the directions of Mr. Calhoun and his successor, T. M. Neale, was well performed, and he soon found his time pretty well employed with private business which came to him from Sangamon and the adjoining counties. Early in the year 1834 we find him appointed one of three "viewers" to locate a road from Salt Creek to the county line in the direction of Jacksonville. The board seems to have consisted mainly of its chairman, as Lincoln made the deposit of money required by law, surveyed the route, plotted the road, and wrote the report. [Transcriber's Note: (3) Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.]
Though it is evident that the post-office and the surveyor's compass were not making a rich man of him, they were sufficient to enable him to live decently, and during the year he greatly increased his acquaintance and his influence in the county. The one followed the other naturally; every acquaintance he made became his friend, and even before the end of his unsuccessful canvass in 1832 it had become evident to the observant politicians of the district that he was a man whom it would not do to leave out of their calculations. There seemed to be no limit to his popularity nor to his aptitudes, in the opinion of his admirers. He was continually called on to serve in the most incongruous capacities. Old residents say he was the best judge at a horse-race the county afforded; he was occasionally second in a duel of fisticuffs, though he usually contrived to reconcile the adversaries on the turf before any damage was done; he was the arbiter on all controverted points of literature, science, or woodcraft among the disputatious denizens of Clary's Grove, and his decisions were never appealed from. His native tact and humor were invaluable in his work as a peacemaker, and his enormous physical strength, which he always used with a magnanimity rare among giants, placed his off-hand decrees beyond the reach of contemptuous question. He composed differences among friends and equals with good-natured raillery, but he was as rough as need be when his wrath was roused by meanness and cruelty. We hardly know whether to credit some of the stories, apparently well-attested by living witnesses, of his prodigious muscular powers. He is said to have lifted, at Rutledge's mill, a box of stones weighing over half a ton! It is also related that he could raise a barrel of whisky from the ground and drink from the bung—but the narrator adds that he never swallowed the whisky. Whether these traditions are strictly true or not, they are evidently founded on the current reputation he enjoyed among his fellows for extraordinary strength, and this was an important element in his influence. He was known to be capable of handling almost any man he met, yet he never sought a quarrel. He was everybody's friend and yet used no liquor or tobacco. He was poor and had scarcely ever been at school, yet he was the best-informed young man in the village. He had grown up on the frontier, the utmost fringe of civilization, yet he was gentle and clean of speech, innocent of blasphemy or scandal. His good qualities might have excited resentment if displayed by a well-dressed stranger from an Eastern State, but the most uncouth ruffians of New Salem took a sort of proprietary interest and pride in the decency and the cleverness and the learning of their friend and comrade, Abe Lincoln.
It was regarded, therefore, almost as a matter of course that Lincoln should be a candidate for the Legislature at the next election, which took place in August, 1834. He was sure of the united support of the Whigs, and so many of the Democrats also wanted to vote for him that some of the leading members of that party came to him and proposed they should give him an organized support. He was too loyal a partisan to accept their overtures without taking counsel from the Whig candidates. He laid the matter before Major Stuart, who at once advised him to make the canvass. It was a generous and chivalrous action, for by thus encouraging the candidacy of Lincoln he was endangering his own election. But his success two years before, in the face of a vindictive opposition led by the strongest Jackson men in the district, had made him somewhat confident, and he perhaps thought he was risking little by giving a helping hand to his comrade in the Spy Battalion. Before the election Lincoln's popularity developed itself in rather a portentous manner, and it required some exertion to save the seat of his generous friend. At the close of the poll, the four successful candidates held the following relative positions: Lincoln, 1376; Dawson, 1370; Carpenter, 1170; and Stuart, at that time probably the most prominent young man in the district, and the one marked out by the public voice for an early election to Congress, 1164.
[Relocated Footnote (1): The following is an extract from the court record: "March 6, 1833. Ordered that William F. Berry, in the name of Berry and Lincoln, have license to keep a tavern in New Salem, to continue twelve months from this date, and that they pay one dollar in addition to six dollars heretofore prepaid as per Treasurer's receipt, and that they be allowed the following rates, viz.: French brandy, per pint, 25; Peach, 183/4; Apple, 12; Holland Gin, 183/4; Domestic, 121/2; Wine, 25; Rum, 183/4; Whisky, 121/2; Breakfast, dinner, or supper, 25; Lodging for night, 121/2; Horse for night, 25; Single feed, 121/2; Breakfast, dinner, or supper, for stage passengers, 371/2. Who gave bond as required by law.">[