| E.D. Taylor | 1127 |
| John T. Stuart | 991 |
| Achilles Morris | 945 |
| Peter Cartwright | 815 |
Under the plurality rule, these four had been elected. The unsuccessful candidates were:
| A.G. Herndon | 806 |
| W. Carpenter | 774 |
| J. Dawson | 717 |
| A. Lincoln | 657 |
| T.M. Neale | 571 |
| R. Quinton | 485 |
| Z. Peter | 214 |
| E. Robinson | 169 |
| —— Kirkpatrick | 44 |
The returns show that the total vote of the county was about twenty-one hundred and sixty-eight. Comparing this with the vote cast for Lincoln, we see that he received nearly one third of the total county vote, notwithstanding his absence from the canvass, notwithstanding the fact that his acquaintanceship was limited to the neighborhood of New Salem, notwithstanding the sharp competition. Indeed, his talent and fitness for active practical politics were demonstrated beyond question by the result in his home precinct of New Salem, which, though he ran as a Whig, gave two hundred and seventy-seven votes for him and only three against him. Three months later it gave one hundred and eighty-five for the Jackson and only seventy for the Clay electors, proving Lincoln's personal popularity. He remembered for the remainder of his life with great pride that this was the only time he was ever beaten on a direct vote of the people.
The result of the election brought him to one of the serious crises of his life, which he forcibly stated in after years in the following written words:
"He was now without means and out of business, but was anxious to remain with his friends, who had treated him with so much generosity, especially as he had nothing elsewhere to go to. He studied what he should do; thought of learning the blacksmith trade, thought of trying to study law, rather thought he could not succeed at that without a better education."
The perplexing problem between inclination and means to follow it, the struggle between conscious talent and the restraining fetters of poverty, has come to millions of young Americans before and since, but perhaps to none with a sharper trial of spirit or more resolute patience. Before he had definitely resolved upon either career, chance served not to solve, but to postpone his difficulty, and in the end to greatly increase it.
New Salem, which apparently never had any good reason for becoming a town, seems already at that time to have entered on the road to rapid decay. Offutt's speculations had failed, and he had disappeared. The brothers Herndon, who had opened a new store, found business dull and unpromising. Becoming tired of their undertaking, they offered to sell out to Lincoln and Berry on credit, and took their promissory notes in payment. The new partners, in that excess of hope which usually attends all new ventures, also bought two other similar establishments that were in extremity, and for these likewise gave their notes. It is evident that the confidence which Lincoln had inspired while he was a clerk in Offutt's store, and the enthusiastic support he had received as a candidate, were the basis of credit that sustained these several commercial transactions.
It turned out in the long run that Lincoln's credit and the popular confidence that supported it were as valuable both to his creditors and himself as if the sums which stood over his signature had been gold coin in a solvent bank. But this transmutation was not attained until he had passed through a very furnace of financial embarrassment. Berry proved a worthless partner, and the business a sorry failure. Seeing this, Lincoln and Berry sold out again on credit—to the Trent brothers, who soon broke up and ran away. Berry also departed and died, and finally all the notes came back upon Lincoln for payment. He was unable to meet these obligations, but he did the next best thing. He remained, promised to pay when he could, and most of his creditors, maintaining their confidence in his integrity, patiently bided their time, till, in the course of long years, he fully justified it by paying, with interest every cent of what he learned to call, in humorous satire upon his own folly, the "national debt."
With one of them he was not so fortunate. Van Bergen, who bought one of the Lincoln-Berry notes, obtained judgment, and, by peremptory sale, swept away the horse, saddle, and surveying instruments with the daily use of which Lincoln "procured bread and kept body and soul together," to use his own words. But here again Lincoln's recognized honesty was his safety. Out of personal friendship, James Short bought the property and restored it to the young surveyor, giving him time to repay. It was not until his return from Congress, seventeen years after the purchase of the store, that he finally relieved himself of the last instalments of his "national debt." But by these seventeen years of sober industry, rigid economy, and unflinching faith to his obligations he earned the title of "Honest old Abe," which proved of greater service to himself and his country than if he had gained the wealth of Croesus.