A. Lincoln A Biography

Chapter 4
Rendering Myself Worthy of Their Esteem 1831–34

EVERY MAN IS SAID TO HAVE HIS PECULIAR AMBITION. WHETHER IT BE TRUE OR NOT, I CAN SAY FOR ONE THAT I HAVE NO OTHER SO GREAT AS THAT OF BEING TRULY ESTEEMED OF MY FELLOW MEN, BY RENDERING MYSELF WORTHY OF THEIR ESTEEM.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Springfield’s Sangamo Journal, March 15, 1832

ON A BLUSTERY SPRING DAY IN APRIL 1831, THE RESIDENTS OF THE recently established village of New Salem, Illinois, clustered on a bluff to watch three young men struggle furiously with a long flatboat that had become stranded on the mill dam on the Sangamon River just below. The crew was attempting to steer the boat, loaded with barrels of pork, corn, and snorting live hogs, over the dam. With its square end, the boat had become jammed, with the stern in the water and the bow in the air. More and more of the cargo was slowly but surely shifting toward that stern.
The boat’s pilot, a gangling fellow in blue-jean trousers, with black hair tucked under a buckeye-chip hat, was eye catching because of his tall, angular stature. As he directed his crew’s efforts, they borrowed a smaller boat in order to transfer some of the goods to lighten the load. Shortly the stranger strode ashore and walked to the cooper shop, owned by Henry Onstot, to borrow an auger. Returning to the water, the boatman bored a hole in the end of the flatboat in order to let some of the water run out. He quickly plugged the hole, and with the boat thus lightened, they were able to pass over the mill dam.
Before departing, the crew poled the flatboat over to the bank and came ashore amid the appreciative comments of the admiring crowd. Thus Abraham Lincoln and the community of New Salem first met each other.
LINCOLN DEPARTED NEW SALEM to pilot the flatboat to New Orleans. He had been engaged by Denton Offutt, an enterprising if sometimes impractical businessman, to head up the voyage down the Mississippi River. Lincoln recruited John D. Johnston, his stepbrother, and John Hanks, his cousin, to join him on the trip.
Lincoln’s journey to New Orleans in 1831, unlike his voyage from Indiana three years before, took place without major incident. Once in New Orleans, Lincoln sold the cargo as well as the boat. He then sailed up the Mississippi by steamboat to St. Louis. From St. Louis, he walked to Coles County in southern Illinois to visit his father and stepmother, who had moved there from their first home near Decatur. From there Lincoln walked nearly 180 miles to New Salem, arriving in July, about to break with the past and enter a decisive new chapter in his life. Offutt, taken with the resourceful spirit of the young Lincoln, had offered him a job in a grocery store he intended to start up.
“A STOPPED INDEFINITELY, and, for the first time, as it were, by himself at New Salem.” Lincoln would spend only six of his fifty-six years in New Salem, from 1831 to 1837, but he decided to devote nearly one-fourth of his campaign autobiographical statement of 1860 to this time period. He understood he was entering into critical years of development and change.
Lincoln, at age twenty-two, hoped he might find in New Salem a place to begin a new life. Even as he piloted his boat on the Sangamon, in coming to New Salem he intended to cast off some cargo of his former life and separate himself from his father. As he walked to New Salem, he also walked away from his forebears’ vocation of farming.
THE TWO WORDS—“New Salem”—rang with impressive promise. Two Southerners, James Rutledge and John Cameron, had founded the village in 1829 on a cliff on the bank of the Sangamon River twenty miles northwest of Springfield. Rutledge and Cameron wanted to build a mill and were looking for a river site with a powerful and steady flow of water.
Settlement in Illinois developed from south to north. When New Salem was founded, few villages of any size had been settled farther north. Peoria, Dixon’s Ferry on the Rock River, and Galena were tiny dots in the midst of the endless prairie. Villages in Illinois were established alongside rivers and lakes with easy access to water and timber. In 1831, the new settlement of Chicago, at the mouth of the Chicago River on Lake Michigan, had a population of sixty.
Like other settlers, Lincoln found the prairies a beautiful but beguiling experience. In the early years of the nineteenth century, no one dreamed one could cultivate them. Beneath what the first farmers called the “sea of grass” lay rich, naturally fertile soil, but the prairie grasses were tethered together for several feet below the surface. More than one pioneer, when first using a simple hoe, felt as if he had hit solid rock in trying to break through the surface.
The residents of New Salem hoped their settlement would become a flourishing river town. By the middle of the decade, New Salem would boast some twenty-five families and perhaps one hundred people.
Road travel in central Illinois was undependable. Travelers had to make their way through mud and mire, and routes were often changed. River travel was much more reliable. In the 1830s, the Sangamon River boasted a larger quantity of water than it does today. The Sangamon flowed into the Illinois at Beardstown, which joined the Mississippi River at Grafton. Rutledge and Cameron, soon to be joined by Lincoln, exuded optimism that light-draft steamboats could navigate the Sangamon.
New Salem had no church, but that did not mean there was an absence of religion. Baptists met in the schoolhouse. Presbyterians and Methodists met in homes. Charles James Fox Clarke, a young man from New England writing home to his mother, took note of the comings of camp meetings in the summers. “Camp meetings are all the rage here now, there is one every week for two months.” Methodist evangelist Peter Cartwright conducted several revival meetings in New Salem. While the emotional intensity of the revivals warmed the hearts of many, Lincoln was not among them. The anti-intellectualism and emotionalism of the revivals turned some residents away, while inspiring a search in others for a more rational faith.
ON AUGUST 1, 1831, LINCOLN participated in his first election. He voted at the polling station at John Cameron’s house by announcing out loud—no secret ballot here—his choices for Congress, magistrate, and constable to the clerks who sat behind a table. They recorded Lincoln’s votes on tally sheets.
At the end of August, Offutt’s goods and merchandise arrived from Beardstown. Lincoln helped Offutt unbox them, and the store opened around September 1 in a small log building near the edge of the bluff above the mill. Lincoln and Offutt stocked the shelves with dry goods, seeds, tools, saddles, and guns, as well as sugar, salt, coffee, eggs, and vegetables. Barrels of liquor lined one wall.
Lincoln worked as a clerk in Offutt’s store for a salary of fifteen dollars a month. Offutt hired Bill Greene to assist Lincoln, and the two men slept among the crates and barrels in the back storeroom. Greene recalled that the two “slept on the same cott & when one turned over the other had to do likewise.”


Bill Greene worked with Lincoln in Denton Offutt’s store in New Salem and served in the volunteer militia that elected Lincoln captain during the Black Hawk War

OFFUTT GAINED A reputation as a braggart, usually about himself and what he could do, but soon he began to brag about his new clerk, Lincoln. He boasted that Lincoln could run faster and jump farther than anyone in the county, and could beat anyone at wrestling. Young frontiersmen liked to participate in a variety of folk games. Offutt’s bragging got the twenty-two-year-old Lincoln into a contest he didn’t choose.
Jack Armstrong, a strong, muscular man, led a local gang called the Clary’s Grove Boys, who took their name from a small village of that name less than three miles from New Salem. In a time when men settled their arguments with their fists, the Clary’s Grove Boys were the bullies of the neighborhood. They gained their supremacy by fighting, especially wrestling.
Armstrong was known as the champion wrestler in the area. Not many men were willing to challenge him. Offutt offered up Lincoln as a newcomer who would be more than up to the task. Armstrong and his friends had nothing against Lincoln, but they kept hearing the claims about this new fellow in town.
Wrestling ran in the Lincoln family. His uncle Mord reputedly had a talent for it, and Lincoln had done a fair amount of wrestling growing up in Indiana. His long legs and arms had always given him a great advantage over his opponents.
In the fall of 1831, Armstrong and Lincoln met for a match. Five years older than Lincoln, but ten inches shorter, Armstrong had a reputation for using trickery to win his matches. The accounts of the match vary, offered long after it took place. The two men did not, as the legend has suggested, circle each other with arms free, looking for an opening to dart in and throw the opponent. Rather, they began with prescribed holds, agreed upon in advance, in which strength, leverage, and agility were the primary assets. This custom, passed down from Northern England, favored Lincoln, with his greater height and therefore leverage. Lincoln and Armstrong pushed and pulled until—and here many witnesses are in agreement—Armstrong, in frustration, broke his hold or lost his contact with Lincoln. Under the loose rules of wrestling on the frontier, Lincoln at this point might have been declared the winner, but instead he and Armstrong shook hands and agreed to call the wrestling match a draw.
Lincoln won something more important than a wrestling match that day. He proved his strength and his courage to himself and his new community by fighting the acknowledged champion of the area. After this, the newcomer became accepted in the young male culture of the region.
EARLY ON LINCOLN slept where he worked—in Denton Offutt’s store. Later, he followed the practice of nearly all single men of his day: He boarded with various families, staying weeks or even months at a time, earning his keep by doing chores around the house. Farmer James Short recalled, “Frequently when Mr. L was at my house he would help me gather corn.” When Lincoln lived with the Bennett and Elizabeth Abell family, she did his washing and he did odd jobs in exchange for a bed.
Lincoln wore characteristic clothing of the day. Jack’s wife, Hannah Armstrong, remembered, “I foxed his pants,” or made them with a leather lining, and “made his shirts.” Lincoln wore a “blue round about coat,” a snug jacket preferred by young men, and blue cassinette pantaloons as trousers, which were a combination of cotton and wool. He wore Conestoga shoes, a rough boot. What singled the tall Lincoln out, commented on by many in New Salem, was the persistent gap between the bottom of his pantaloons and the top of his shoes.
IN THE WINTER OF 1832, navigability of the Sangamon River was tested. Excitement grew when Lincoln and the other citizens of New Salem learned that the Talisman, a small steamer, had left Cincinnati on a journey to demonstrate that the Sangamon could be used for commercial boat traffic.
Vincent A. Bogue, a businessman, wanted to build a sawmill on the Sangamon River at a place called Portland’s Landing. His goal was to service the Sangamon River valley, connecting the people and their produce with the outside world. “I am well aware that the undertaking is dangerous, difficult, and expensive; still I am willing to risk my all upon it,” Bogue wrote. He stipulated that the boat should be “under the direction of some experienced man,” one who had “descended the river with flat-boats.” Lincoln met this qualification and volunteered for the task.
Bogue brought the Talisman safely to the confluence of the Illinois and Sangamon rivers at Beardstown on March 9, but the mouth of the Sangamon was jammed with winter ice. Lincoln joined the boat crew in working for four days to make a channel through the ice. The “experienced man,” Lincoln helped pilot the Talisman as it set off on its triumphant voyage. Men and boys, on foot or horseback, cheered as the boat made its way up the river. The boat passed New Salem and docked at Bogue ’s mill. Lincoln attended a grand ball in Springfield’s new court house to celebrate the great event. The Sangamo Journal exclaimed, “Springfield can no longer be considered an inland town.” Lincoln received forty dollars for his services.
IN 1832, LINCOLN, twenty-three, made his first move into politics. Lincoln’s friends, including Bowling Green, the jovial justice of the peace, and James Rutledge, the founder of a debating society, encouraged him to become a candidate for the state legislature. They admired Lincoln, but they also needed a representative in the legislature who could advance their interests, especially their desire to encourage commercial boat traffic on the Sangamon River. After less than one year in New Salem, Lincoln announced his first candidacy in the Sangamo Journal on March 15.
FELLOW-CITIZENS: Having become a candidate for the honorable office of one of your representatives in the next General Assembly of this state, in accordance with an established custom, and the principles of true republicanism, it becomes my duty to make known to you—the people whom I propose to represent—my sentiments with regard to local affairs.
Lincoln directed the bulk of his 1,800-word announcement to a discussion of internal improvements—measures to improve roads, rivers, and canals. He positioned himself as the person most trustworthy on the subject: “It is probable that for the last twelve months I have given as particular attention to the stage of the water in this river, as any other person in the country.” On many a day, people from the village had seen Lincoln out in the river measuring the depth of the water in different places and making notes about the river’s features. His recent association with the successful voyage of the Talisman boosted his reputation.
After briefly discussing the subject of education, Lincoln turned to his conclusion.
Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed. I am young and unknown to many of you. I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations to recommend. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of this county, and if elected they will have conferred a favor upon me, for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.
The final paragraph is remarkable for what it discloses about the young Lincoln. In appealing for the sympathy of the community, he underscores his own “ambition”—using the word twice—but modifies this aspiration by suggesting that every man has ambition. Lincoln did not see himself as alone in his desire; he evoked a motivation growing among the young men of his generation, who sought to shape their own lives as over against the well-worn paths of their fathers’ lives in the first decades of a new nation. Lincoln shifted the balance and tone of his final words by turning that ambition into a desire “of being truly esteemed of my fellow men.” Behind these words is Lincoln’s awareness that ambition can lead to selfish egotism in politics. His unvoiced question was: How can I be esteemed? His answer: “by rendering myself worthy.”
ON APRIL 19, 1832, a lone rider galloped into New Salem with startling news. Lincoln and other villagers gathered around to hear that Sauk and Fox Indians had left their settlements in Iowa, crossed the Mississippi River, and advanced up the east bank. They were now moving up the Rock River across the northwest corner of Illinois. No one knew their intentions, but some said they wanted to return to their former lands in northern Illinois. Lincoln’s initial foray into politics was about to be suspended by a military emergency.
The movements of the Indians caused a panic among the white residents in Illinois. Illinois governor John Reynolds heightened the alarm by calling their actions an “invasion,” even though the nearly four hundred warriors were accompanied by three times that many women and children.
Black Hawk, their leader, was an old man, born in 1767. He and his followers were bitter about giving up their homes in a disputed treaty negotiated in 1804. The recent surge of white settlers into Illinois precipitated sporadic hostilities between the settlers and Indians defending their lands.
Reynolds called for recruits to repulse the “invasion.” Lincoln promptly volunteered and was sworn into service on April 21. In the military, units elect their own officers. Some of the Clary’s Grove Boys put forward Lincoln’s name. Bill Kirkpatrick, who owned a sawmill, declared his candidacy. Each of the men was asked to step forward on the village green. The volunteers then formed a line behind the candidate they wanted for captain. Two-thirds of the men fell in behind Lincoln. The rest quickly abandoned Kirkpatrick, making Lincoln the unani mous choice. Lincoln later described his experience: “to his own surprise, was elected captain of it.”


The Black Hawk War, precipitated by the movement of Chief Black Hawk and his warriors across the Mississippi back into Illinois in 1832, was the first affirmation of Lincoln’s leadership.

On April 28, Captain Lincoln oversaw the enrollment of his company in the state militia. Jack Armstrong, Lincoln’s former wrestling opponent, served as his first sergeant. The next day Lincoln and his men began their march north from Beardstown along an old Indian track near the Mississippi River. Lincoln did not have an easy task instilling discipline in the group of volunteers.
On one occasion, an old Indian named Jack appeared in Lincoln’s camp. He showed a paper signed by General Lewis Cass stating he was “a good and true man,” but some of the men wanted to kill him. One said, “We have come out to fight the Indians and by God we intend to do so.” As tempers flared and rifles rose, Lincoln stepped between Jack and his men. Another man spoke sternly to Lincoln. “This is cowardly on your part, Lincoln.” Lincoln replied that if “any man thinks I am a coward let him test it.” His words silenced the men in his company and saved Jack’s life.
On May 15, just before sunset, Lincoln and his men encountered the deadly results of a battle from the previous day: eleven soldiers’ bodies scalped and mutilated. His company helped bury the dead soldiers.
When Lincoln’s enlistment expired, he signed up for another twenty days, this time as a private. On June 16, 1832, Lincoln’s company was discharged by Lieutenant Robert Anderson, but he enlisted once again. Finally, on July 10, he received his discharge.
Lincoln earned the title of “captain,” but he never used it, even though most of the men who served in the Black Hawk War hung on to their titles with pride for the remainder of their lives. Lincoln never participated in combat but expressed his feelings about his military experiences in his 1860 autobiographical statement. “He says he has not since had any success in life which gave him so much satisfaction.”
Lincoln had lived in New Salem only nine months when the Black Hawk War intruded into his life. His election as captain represented how quickly he had won the loyalty and affection of his neighbors. He received $125 for his military service. As he walked back to New Salem, he pondered what he should do with this substantial sum.
LINCOLN RETURNED TO New Salem in late July, just two weeks before the election. He began campaigning in earnest. As he began to speak on the campaign trail in Pappsville, a fight erupted in the crowd. Seeing that several men were attacking his friend Rowan Herndon, Lincoln left the platform, pushed through the crowd, picked up the main assailant by the seat of his pants, and threw him six feet. The fighting over, Lincoln resumed his place, and gave one of his shortest political speeches.
Fellow Citizens, I presume you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by my friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement system and a high protection tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected I shall be thankful; if not it will be all the same.
Lincoln won the day in deeds as much as words.
The election for state offices took place on August 6, 1832. Sangamon County was allotted four representatives in the lower house of the state legislature. Lincoln came in eighth in a field of thirteen candidates with 657 votes. He was not too disheartened, however, for in the precinct that included New Salem, he received 277 of the 300 votes.
He had discovered his appetite for politics. Lincoln knew his defeat was largely because he was unknown in the rest of the county, and he was determined to broaden the base of his political support.
LINCOLN LEFT FAMILY and farming behind when he migrated from Indiana, but he did not leave behind his love of learning. The distance that had developed between Abraham and his father was in part over Lincoln’s intellectual curiosity and love of reading and learning. Now, “by himself,” Lincoln became freer to read. Learning would take on fresh dimensions in the open space of New Salem.
Lincoln quickly became a regular at the debating society that met twice a month. Such societies were springing up across American frontier settlements. Before a tavern fireplace or in a church parlor, men met to debate whether society should care for the poor, whether women should be educated, whether to use public monies to build canals and roads, and whether slavery was right or wrong.
The New Salem debating society became a place for Lincoln to continue his education. In Indiana, he had mimicked preachers and offered impromptu speeches to his boyhood friends, but the debating society provided him his first sustained opportunity to learn the art of speaking.
Robert Rutledge, cousin of James Rutledge, the society’s founder, described Lincoln’s first attempt to address a meeting. “As he rose to speak his tall form towered over the little assembly.” At first nervous, Lincoln wedged his hands deep into the pockets of his pantaloons. “As he warmed to his subject, his hands would forsake his pockets, and would enforce his ideas by awkward gestures.” Lincoln’s enthusiasm and integrity won him the right to be heard at the debating society, even if his nervousness was all too evident as he struggled with the right words to express his ideas.
“After he was twenty-three and had separated from his father he studied English grammar—imperfectly of course, but so as to speak and write as well as he now does,” Lincoln later wrote. A schoolteacher, Mentor Graham, who lived about a mile from New Salem, told Lincoln that John C. Vance, a local farmer, owned a copy of Samuel Kirkham’s English Grammar. Lincoln walked six miles to ask to borrow the book.
Kirkham’s Grammar was one of dozens of grammars circulating in the first half of the nineteenth century. In his preface, Samuel Kirkham states that the Grammar “professes not to instruct the literary connoisseur” but rather “attempts to accelerate the march of the juvenile mind.” Lincoln was not a juvenile, but he was indeed on an intellectual march.
Kirkham divided his subject matter into four sections:
Orthography
Etymology
Syntax
Prosody
Lincoln devoured the Kirkham text. Sometimes he stretched out on the counter of Denton Offutt’s store as he committed whole sections of the book to memory. Rowan Herndon remembered that Lincoln liked to “read by fire light” at night at Henry Onstot’s cooper shop. Kirkham asked the student to learn by rote. “Adverbs qualify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.” Often Lincoln would wheedle Bill Greene or other friends to help him practice the review tasks at the end of each chapter. Kirkham’s orderly progression of teaching helped Lincoln improve his ability to write and to speak the English language.
“HIS MIND WAS FULL of terrible Enquiry—and was skeptical in a good sense,” was the way his friend Isaac Cogdal, a farmer and stonemason, described Lincoln’s intellectual curiosity. In New Salem, Lincoln felt the freedom to question. Having watched the sectarian rivalries among Baptists, and between Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, Lincoln’s inclusive spirit was turned away by denominational divisions.
In Lincoln’s early twenties, at the public debating society and in his private reading, he began to ask numerous questions and raise doubts about supposedly established truths. Several books contributed to his growing skepticism. Constantin Volney, French historian and philosopher, wrote The Ruins in 1791 at the height of the French Revolution. Volney advocated the overthrow of the twin medieval tyrannies of state and church. Translated into English by Thomas Jefferson, the book offered an Enlightenment critique of revealed religion, arguing that morality was the true measure of faith.
Storekeeper Abner Y. Ellis reported that Lincoln “read some of Tom Pains Works.” Paine, a revolutionary propagandist, helped light the fire of the American Revolution when he published Common Sense in 1776. Later, while in prison in France during the French Revolution, Paine wrote The Age of Reason, which attacked the church and revealed religion. Lincoln read Paine’s dismissal of the Bible: “It is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy for what can be more blasphemous than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty?”
James Matheny, whom Lincoln met in 1834 when serving as deputy postmaster in Springfield, believed Lincoln’s growing affinity for the poetry of Robert Burns also encouraged his skepticism. Burns, a refugee from Scottish Calvinism, cried out against the Presbyterian teachings on predestination. Matheny observed, “Burns helped Lincoln to be an infidel I think—at least he found in Burns a like thinker & feeler.”
Whatever Lincoln read often ended up in something he wrote. In the winter of 1834, Lincoln may have written a paper with his views on traditional Christian beliefs. Many New Salem residents remembered hearing of a paper read one evening in James Hill’s store that questioned, if not attacked, the divinity of the scriptures in the spirit of Volney and Paine. To voice such questions in a frontier culture steeped in Protestant orthodoxy was to court censure if not ostracism. Lincoln did not finish reading his paper before Samuel Hill snatched it from him and tossed it in the open fire. Hill was either outraged by Lincoln’s impiety, or saving his friend from embarrassment.
In New Salem, Lincoln was free to sever ties with his family’s Baptist tradition, even though that tradition was present in the village. In his widening circle of reading, he encountered eminent authors who challenged traditional Christian teachings. Lincoln could not go back to the Baptist tradition of his parents.
BY THE END OF the summer of 1832, Lincoln found himself defeated for political office and out of work, Offutt’s store having failed in the spring. He could try again for political office in the future, but he needed a job in the present. “He studied what he should do—thought of learning the black-smith trade—thought of studying law—rather thought he could not succeed at that without a better education.” He worked all kinds of jobs, including part-time work with storekeeper Ellis, while seeking something more permanent.
Rowan Herndon offered to sell Lincoln his half of a partnership in a New Salem store. Lincoln and William F. Berry, the other partner and one of the corporals in Lincoln’s militia company, now attempted to do what a number of other aspirants had failed to do—compete with Samuel Hill, a merchant who had cornered the market in New Salem. They put up their military pay, personal notes, animals, and land to pursue their dream, but the partners quickly found themselves in trouble.
From the start, they were hobbled by their own habits. Berry enjoyed whiskey, and plenty of it. Lincoln spent as much time talking politics with customers as he did managing the store’s ledger. In March, things only got worse when Berry signed his name and Lincoln’s to a tavern license enabling them to sell liquor. Barrels of whiskey and bottles of wine, rum, and brandy soon lined the walls and shelves.
“Of course they did nothing but get deeper in debt,” Lincoln remembered in 1860. Nine months after opening the store, Lincoln and Berry were in deep financial trouble. Many locals remembered that the decision to sell alcohol—Lincoln did not drink—put a severe strain on the partnership. Lincoln decided to sell his interest in the store to Berry. Years later, an older and wiser Lincoln summarized tersely the end of their joint venture: “The store winked out.”
ON MAY 7, 1833, Lincoln was appointed the postmaster of New Salem. President Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, was the first president to bring the post office into the spoils system, where jobs were given to the president’s supporters. How then could Lincoln, who had not supported Jackson, earn such an office? He chalked up his government appointment to the fact that the office was “too insignificant, to make his politics an objection.”
In 1833, the mail came to New Salem by post rider. Before envelopes and stamps, letters were folded and sealed by wax. Postage was calculated by the number of pages in the letter and the distance it was to travel. Lincoln marked the postage due in the upper right-hand corner of the sealed letter, and the person receiving the letter paid the postage.
As postmaster, Lincoln earned twenty-five to thirty dollars a year. His compensation depended upon receipts that he kept in an old blue sock in a wooden chest under the counter. But the job had other benefits. Lincoln was now a federal official, elevating his position in the community. Most important, the job was not full-time, allowing him to supplement his income. He went back to helping Ellis with his store and lending farmers a hand with harvesting.
His new position also afforded Lincoln the opportunity to get to know people beyond New Salem. Home delivery did not begin in the United States until 1825. When this service began, a surcharge of up to two cents was added to each letter. Lincoln, in delivering letters to far-flung customers, adopted the habit of placing the letters in his hat.
In a letter to his brother, George, Matthew S. Marsh provided a window into how Lincoln carried out his duties: “The Post Master is very careless about leaving his office open and unlocked during the day. Half the time I go in and get my papers, etc., without any one being there as was the case yesterday.” But things were not all bad. “The letter was only marked twenty-five [cents] and even if he had been there and known it was double, he would not have charged me any more—luckily he is a clever fellow and a particular friend of mine.”
Another benefit for this particular postmaster was the time it allowed to read the many newspapers coming into New Salem, in part because people were slow in calling for their mail. Often, when the newspapers arrived, people gathered around while Lincoln read stories from them. A merchant in New Salem reported that Lincoln “generally Read for the By standers when the male Come which was weekly.”
Lincoln began reading regularly the National Intelligencer from Washington, which carried fine coverage of Congress. Schoolmaster Graham, commenting on Lincoln’s continual learning, said, “His text book was the Louisville Journal.” The Journal offered excellent reporting on both national and regional events and supported Henry Clay, Lincoln’s favorite politician. As postmaster, Lincoln had access to other newspapers as well, including the Cincinnati Gazette and the Missouri Republican, a Democratic newspaper published in St. Louis. Through the newspapers, Lincoln taught himself about politics. He discovered, for the first time, the power of newspapers to influence public opinion, a lesson he would use again and again later on.
LATER IN 1833, while still postmaster, Lincoln found further employment as a surveyor. “[I] accepted, procured a compass and a chain, studied Flint, and Gibson a little, and went at it,” he remembered. Hired by Sangamon County surveyor John Calhoun as his deputy, Lincoln served in the northern part of the county. Calhoun was a staunch supporter of President Andrew Jackson. In accepting the job, Lincoln made it known that he would not compromise his political principles.
Lincoln knew nothing about surveying. He acquired a surveyor’s vernier compass made by Rittenhouse and Company of Philadelphia, a sixty-six-foot Gunter’s chain, some plumb bobs, a set of marking pins, and a set of range or flag poles—all on credit. He already had an ax. He also obtained a horse and set about laying out roads and town sites. In the next years, Lincoln would survey a number of farms as well as the towns of Albany, Bath, Huron, New Boston, and Petersburg. He also surveyed land set aside for public schools. The rapid arrival of settlers made surveying a popular trade.
In January 1834, Russell Godbey employed Lincoln to survey an eighty-acre tract of land six miles north of New Salem and one mile east of the Sangamon River. Godbey said that Lincoln “staid with me all night and Sold him two buckskins—well dressed to fox his Surveyors pants.” Surveying had become much more economically viable and politically opportunistic than his job as postmaster. “This procured bread, and kept soul and body together.”


In 1833, Lincoln found employment as a surveyor. His tools included a vernier compass, Gunters chain, plumb bobs, and a set of marking pins. Lincoln’s surveying of both farms and new towns widened his circle of friends.

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IN THE SPRING OF 1834, Lincoln decided to run for the Illinois legislature a second time. He announced his candidacy in the Sangamo Journal on April 19. Thirteen men were running for the four places allotted to Sangamon County for the Ninth General Assembly. What would make this second run any different from the first?
Because the voting was held during a non–presidential election year, the contest turned more on local personalities. Lincoln’s circle of friends and acquaintances had increased greatly. Since the last election, Lincoln had held jobs as storekeeper, postmaster, and surveyor. Each job gave him an opportunity to meet a wider sphere of people in Sangamon County. Robert L. Wilson, a Whig politician, recalled, “Every one knew him; and he knew everyone.” His reputation for both political skill and speaking ability had also grown. Even as the Whigs and Democrats were rushing to build national party machinery, local issues would continue to be decisive in the summer of 1834.
Over the next four months, Lincoln divided his time between campaigning and surveying, often using the latter to campaign across the countryside. Lincoln campaigned by mounting a stump or sometimes a box. Even as party lines were becoming more defined, and Lincoln was stamped by others as a Whig, he determined to run a bipartisan campaign. In his speeches, he made no mention of either his criticism of Democratic president Andrew Jackson or his support for Whig leader Henry Clay.
Rowan Herndon spoke of Lincoln’s campaign style. On a hot summer day in 1834, in the course of his duties as deputy surveyor, Lincoln came to Herndon’s new home in Island Grove. Men were working in the field. Herndon introduced Lincoln to them, but some of the men retorted that “they could not vote for a man unless he could make a hand.” Lincoln responded, “If that is all I am sure of your votes,” and with that he took hold of the cradle used for harvesting grain and led the men one full round of the field. “The boys was satisfied,” Herndon remembered, “and I don’t think he lost a vote in the crowd.”
Lincoln’s former client Russell Godbey, a Democrat and a farmer, was a typical Lincoln voter. “I voted for Lincoln in opposition to my own creed & faith in Politics.”
When the votes were counted on August 4, 1834, Lincoln was elected. He finished second among the thirteen candidates, trailing the front-runner John Dawson, a Whig eighteen years his senior, by only fourteen votes.
IN HIS CAMPAIGN announcement of 1832, Lincoln had told the people of Sangamon County that his chief desire was to be “esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.” In a brief two years, Lincoln’s abilities and experiences began to coalesce into his gifts of leadership. His intellectual curiosity had pushed beyond the romantic and religious classics he read in his Indiana years to Enlightenment authors who offered critiques of religion. Now feeling at home after living three years in New Salem, he was beginning to find his own voice, not just around the fireside at the country store, but in campaigning in the countryside beyond the little town, where he was known for his clearheaded thinking, whimsical storytelling, and self-deprecating humor. Lincoln’s ambitions for public service were about to be tested and shaped in the larger arena of the Illinois Ninth General Assembly.