The second period of Lincoln's religious life extends from his removal into Illinois in March of 1830 until the establishment of his residence in Springfield, April 15, 1837.
Thomas Lincoln was a thriftless farmer who blamed external conditions for his misfortunes. Following a second appearance of the "milk sick," which came to southern Indiana in the winter of 1829, he and his family removed in March of 1830 to Illinois. Abraham was twenty-one years of age. He assisted his father to get established in the new home, to which a wearying journey of fourteen days had brought the household, and then set out in life for himself. For several months he worked near home, but in the spring of 1831 he made his second flatboat trip to New Orleans. The boat stuck on a dam at Rutledge's mill at New Salem, and his ingenuity in getting it over the dam won him local fame and had something to do with his subsequent establishment of a home there. The flatboat stuck on April 19, 1831. In June he returned to New Salem and entered into business with Denton Offutt in a small and non-remunerative general store. While waiting for the opening of this store he became acquainted with Mentor Graham, a school teacher of local celebrity, whom Lincoln assisted as clerk of a local election, and through him learned the contents of Kirkham's Grammar, and also acquired the essential elements of surveying. New Salem was a sporadic town which had no good reason to exist. It was established in 1829 and lasted barely seven years. It was located on the Sangamon River, some fifteen miles from Springfield.
In February, 1832, this flatboat hand, then working as clerk, began his canvass for the Legislature, his formal announcement of candidacy appearing March 9. He was defeated, but received an encouraging local vote. In 1832 he had a brief experience as a soldier, serving in the Black Hawk War, starting in pursuit of the Indians on April 27 and returning in July. Excepting for his absences at the Black Hawk War and in attendance upon the meetings of the Legislature in Vandalia, he was in New Salem practically during the whole of the history of that little town. He established a partnership in the firm of Lincoln & Berry, keepers of a general store, a business for which he had no qualification, and he accumulated debts, which he was unable to pay in full until after his first term in Congress seventeen years later. On May 7, 1833, he became postmaster of the microscopic village of New Salem, and held that position until May 30, 1836, about which date the town disappeared. In August, 1834, he was elected to the Legislature, then sitting at Vandalia, and had an important share in the removal of the state capital from there to Springfield.
In New Salem occurred two of Lincoln's three recorded love affairs.[16] In 1834 he fell in love with Ann Rutledge, to whom he became engaged, and who died, August 25, 1835. In the autumn of 1836 he made love to Miss Mary Owens, who refused him. These two love affairs are related in detail by Lamon and by Herndon; the second of them gave rise to Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Browning, one of the least creditable things that ever came from his pen (Herndon, I, 192).
Heart-broken over the death of Ann Rutledge and ashamed of himself for his lack of gallantry in his love affair with Miss Owens, he saw New Salem doomed in all its hopes of being a city.
While sitting about the store waiting for business which did not come, he read law after a desultory fashion, becoming what he called not inappropriately "a mast-fed lawyer." For the benefit of any reader to whom this term conveys no meaning, it may be stated that "mast" consists of acorns, nuts, and other edible commodities, which hogs running at large in the wilderness are able to feed upon. Between a hog corn-fed in a stye and a backwoods mast-fed razor-back, there is a marked difference, and Lincoln's phrase was a very apt one. In the autumn of 1836 he obtained a law license. On March, 1837, he was admitted to the bar. On April 15, 1837, he moved to Springfield.
With his Springfield experience we shall deal later; that is an epoch by itself. We now consider the conditions of life in New Salem and their influence in shaking the religious character of Abraham Lincoln. New Salem, while an insignificant hamlet, was located on the Sangamon River and received its share of the travel to and from Springfield. Its central institutions were its tavern, where Lincoln boarded, and the store, where he read grammar and law, discussed politics, and occasionally sold goods.
The influence of life in New Salem upon the mind of Abraham Lincoln was very marked. We must not make the mistake of considering it solely in the character of a poor little frontier town destined to short life and in its day of no consequence to the world. To Lincoln it was a city, and it had its own ambitions to become a greater city. Although it had scarcely twenty houses, not one of them costing much over a hundred dollars, and not more than a hundred inhabitants, it was to him no mean city. Here Lincoln developed rapidly. He read, discussed, thought, wrote, and spoke on a wide variety of subjects. His style was that of florid declamation, a stump oratory with some affectation of erudition. He made the most of his few books, and every one of them left its deep impression upon him. He continued to read the Bible, and grew somewhat familiar with Shakespeare, Burns, and even Byron. While there was no church building in New Salem, and church services were irregular, such services as were held were generally in the tavern where he boarded, a tavern kept at first by James Rutledge and afterward by Henry Onstott. It is interesting to cull out of T. G. Onstott's reminiscences a number that are based on his own recollections, supplemented perhaps by traditions received from his father:
"After James Rutledge moved out of the log tavern, my father, Henry Onstott, moved in and occupied it from 1833 till 1835, and still had for a boarder Abraham Lincoln. It was at this time that my early impressions of him were formed. We did not know at that time that we were entertaining an angel unawares. My first knowledge of him was as a great marble player. He kept us small boys running in all directions gathering up the marbles he would scatter. During this time he followed surveying, having learned in six weeks from books furnished him by John Calhoun, of Springfield. About this time he commenced to read some law-books which he borrowed of Bowling Green, who lived one-half mile north of Salem. I think my father and Esquire Green did more than any other two men in determining Lincoln's future destiny."— T. G. Onstott: Lincoln and Salem—Pioneers of Menard and Mason Counties, p. 25.
Of Lincoln's habits he says: