With this session, Lincoln concluded his duties as the representative of the people. In 1832, he entered Vandalia, a son of poverty, timid of his ability, ungifted in appearance. In eight years, he plowed his way to the very front as the champion of his associates, a skillful leader of his party. Still it is amazing how faint a trace Lincoln left on the history of Illinois, hewing out no legislative enactment endearing his memory to the people of the State. Ford only notes him as a Congressman who in the State Legislature followed the glitter of a false finance, and a destructive plan of public improvement. Had his career ended here, no one would have ventured to rescue his name from oblivion. One act only, overtops the events submerged by time, an event that sober history passed by, little knowing that it was the one fact, richer than all others, in the annals, under its scrutiny. For in the light of later events, the protest of 1837 showed an enkindled soul that in the goodness of time thrilled the land with a second edition of the Declaration of Independence.
CHAPTER VII
RESTLESS POLITICAL AMBITION
The termination of Lincoln's legislative career, his marriage and his increasing legal practice did not stay his hunger for political distinction. Music, society or nature did not allure him. His range of interest was limited. His pleasure was not in his fame as a counselor. He was impatient of the tiresome devotion to detail demanded of the lawyer. Longing to be a leader in the world of events, he sought a wider field of activity for the full expression of his personality, splendidly realizing that his greatest service to himself and his fellows was in guiding and interpreting a righteous public opinion.
Lamon has portrayed Lincoln's political ambition with merciless vividness, claiming that he was never agitated by any passion more intense than his thirst for distinction; that it governed all his conduct, from the hour when he astonished himself by his oratorical success in the back settlements of Macon County, to the day when the assassin marked him as the first hero of the restored Union; that he was ever ready to be honored, and struggled incessantly for place.[176] Politics was his world,—a world filled with enchantment. "In his office," says Mr. Herndon, "he sat down, or spilt himself on his lounge, read aloud, told stories, talked politics,—never science, art, literature, railroad gatherings, colleges, asylums, hospitals, commerce, education, progress, nothing that interested the world generally except politics."[177]
Yet Lamon and Herndon missed the deeper unity in his life. Neither politics nor distinction was the end with him. They were the paths leading to his palace, not the palace itself. It is not too much to say that love of his kind transcended his love of distinction. At the time when he seemed lost in the maelstrom of partisanship, as Burns in the storm thought of the "ourie" cattle, so Lincoln thought of those hapless sons of misfortune who were biding the "bitter brattle" of slavery. Thus in a letter to his friend Speed, he said, "In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip on a steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were on board ten or a dozen slaves shackled together with irons. That sight was a continued torment to me, and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio or any other slave border."[178]
The extent to which he mingled in political affairs is shown by his activity at a mass meeting in March, 1843, at Springfield. He was the master of ceremonies. In a careful statement, he uttered the cardinal principles of his party. He was materially steeped in the party spirit of his day. For the fifth resolution recommends that a Whig candidate for Congress be run in every district, regardless of the chances of success. "We are aware," it continued, "that it is sometimes a temporary gratification, when a friend cannot succeed, to be able to choose between opponents; but we believe that that gratification is the seed time which never fails to be followed by a most abundant harvest of bitterness. By this policy we entangle ourselves."[179]
Though Lincoln, at first, fought the convention system for the nomination of candidates, as undemocratic, his conversion to its championship further exposes his training in the school of practical politics. The statement declared that the Whigs should not stop to inquire whether the system was just, but that while their opponents used the plan it was madness in them not to defend themselves with it.[180]