CHAPTER V

LINCOLN SECURES A POSITION-HE STUDIES GRAMMARFIRST APPEARANCE IN POLITICS

THE month in New Orleans passed swiftly, and in June, 1831, Lincoln and his companions took passage up the river. He did not return, however, in the usual condition of the river boatman "out of a job." According to his own way of putting it, "during this boat-enterprise acquaintance with Offutt, who was previously an entire stranger, he conceived a liking for Abraham, and believing he could turn him to account he contracted with him to act as a clerk for him on his return from New Orleans, in charge of a store and mill at New Salem." The store and mill were, however, so far only in Offutt's imagination, and Lincoln had to drift about until his employer was ready for him. He made a short visit to his father and mother, now in Coles County, near Charleston (fever and ague had driven the Lincolns from their first home in Macon County), and then, in July, 1831, he went to New Salem, where, as he says, he "stopped indefinitely, and for the first time, as it were, by himself."

The village of New Salem, the scene of Lincoln's mercantile career, was one of the many little towns which, in the pioneer days, sprang up along the Sangamon river, a stream then looked upon as navigable and as destined to be counted among the highways of commerce. Twenty miles northwest of Springfield, strung along the left bank of the Sangamon, parted by hollows and ravines, is a row of high hills. On one of these-a long, narrow ridge, beginning with a sharp and sloping point near the river, running south, and parallel

with the stream a little way, and then, reaching its highest point, making a sudden turn to the west, and gradually widening until lost in the prairie-stood this frontier village. The crooked river for a short distance comes from the east, and, seemingly surprised at meeting the bluff, abruptly changes its course, and flows to the north. Across the river the bottom stretches out half a mile back to the highlands. New Salem, founded in 1829 by James Rutledge and John Cameron, and a dozen years later a deserted village, is rescued only from oblivion by the fact that Lincoln was once one of its inhabitants. The town never contained more than fifteen houses, all of them built of logs, but it had an energetic population of perhaps one hundred persons, among whom were a blacksmith, a tinner, a hatter, a schoolmaster and a preacher. New Salem boasted a grist-mill, a saw-mill, two stores and a tavern, but its day of hope was short. In 1837 it began to decline and by 1840, Petersburg, two miles down the river, had absorbed its business and population. Salem Hill is now only a green cow pasture.

Lincoln's first sight of the town had been in April, 1831, when he and his crew had been detained in getting their flatboat over the Rutledge and Cameron mill-dam. When he walked into New Salem, three months later, he was not altogether a stranger, for the people remembered him as the ingenious flat-boatman who had freed his boat from water by resorting to the miraculous expedient of boring a hole in the bottom.

Offutt's goods had not arrived when Mr. Lincoln reached New Salem; and he "loafed" about, so those who remember his arrival say, good-naturedly taking a hand in whatever he could find to do, and in his droll way making friends of everybody. By chance, a bit of work fell to him almost at once, which introduced him generally and gave him an opportunity

to make a name in the neighborhood. It was election day. In those days elections in Illinois were conducted by the viva voce method. The people did try voting by ballot, but the experiment was unpopular. It required too much form and in 1829 the former method of voting was restored. The judges and clerks sat at a table with the poll-book before them. The voter walked up, and announced the candidate of his choice, and it was recorded in his presence. There was no ticket peddling, and ballot-box stuffing was impossible. The village school-master, Mentor Graham by name, was clerk at this particular election, but his assistant was ill. Looking about for some one to help him, Mr. Graham saw a tall stranger loitering around the polling-place, and called to him: "Can you write?" "Yes," said the stranger, "I can make a few rabbit tracks." Mr. Graham evidently was satisfied with the answer, for he promptly initiated him; and he filled his place not only to the satisfaction of his employer, but also to the delectation of the loiterers about the polls, for whenever things dragged he immediately began " to spin out a stock of Indian yarns." So droll were they that men who listened to Lincoln that day repeated them long after to their friends. He had made a hit in New Salem, to start with, and here, as in Sangamon town, it was by means of his story-telling.

A few days later he accepted an offer to pilot down the Sangamon and Illinois rivers, as far as Beardstown, a flatboat bearing the family and goods of a pioneer bound for Texas. At Beardstown he found Offutt's goods, waiting to be taken to New Salem. As he footed his way home he found two men with a wagon and ox-team going for the goods. Offutt had expected Lincoln to wait at Beardstown until the ox-team arrived, and the teamsters, not having any credentials, asked Lincoln to give them an order for the goods.

This, sitting down by the roadside, he wrote out; one of the men used to relate that it contained a misspelled word, which he corrected.

When the oxen and their drivers returned with the goods, the store was opened in a little log house on the brink of the hill, almost over the river. The precise date of the opening of Denton Offutt's store is not known. We only know that on July 8, 1831, the County Commissioners' Court of Sangamon County granted Offutt a license to retail merchandise at New Salern, for which he paid five dollars, a fee which supposed him to have one thousand dollars' worth of goods in stock.

66

The frontier store filled a unique place. Usually it was a 'general store," and on its shelves were found most of the articles needed in a community of pioneers. But supplying goods and groceries was not its only function; it was the pioneer's intellectual and social center. It was the common meeting-place of the farmers, the happy refuge of the village loungers. No subject was unknown there. The habitués of the place were equally at home in discussing politics, religion, or sports. Stories were told, jokes were cracked, and the news contained in the latest newspaper finding its way into the wilderness was repeated again and again. Lincoln could hardly have chosen surroundings more favorable to the highest development of the art of story-telling, and he had not been there long before his reputation for drollery was established.

But he gained popularity and respect in other ways. There was near the village a settlement called Clary's Grove, the most conspicuous part of whose population was an organization known as the " Clary's Grove Boys." They exercised a veritable terror over the neighborhood, and yet they were not a bad set of fellows. Mr. Herndon, who knew personally many of the "boys," says:

"They were friendly and good-natured; they could trench a pond, dig a bog, build a house; they could pray and fight, make a village or create a state. They would do almost anything for sport or fun, love or necessity. Though rude and rough, though life's forces ran over the edge of the bowl, foaming and sparkling in pure deviltry for deviltry's sake, yet place before them a poor man who needed their aid, a lame or sick man, a defenceless woman, a widow, or an orphaned child, they melted into sympathy and charity at once. They gave all they had, and willingly toiled or played cards for more. Though there never was under the sun a more generous parcel of rowdies, a stranger's introduction was likely to be the most unpleasant part of his acquaintance with them."

Denton Offutt, Lincoln's employer, was just the man to love to boast before such a crowd. He seemed to feel that Lincoln's physical prowess shed glory on himself, and he declared the country over that his clerk could lift more, throw farther, run faster, jump higher, and wrestle better than any man in Sangamon county. The Clary's Grove Boys, of course, felt in honor bound to prove this false, and they appointed their best man, one Jack Armstrong, to "throw Abe." Jack Armstrong was, according to the testimony of all who remember him, a "powerful twister," "square built and strong as an ox," "the best-made man that ever lived;" and everybody knew that a contest between him and Lincoln would be close. Lincoln did not like to "tussle and scuffle," he objected to "woolling and pulling;" but Offutt had gone so far that it became necessary to yield. The match was held on the ground near the grocery. Clary's Grove and New Salem turned out generally to witness the bout, and betting on the result ran high, the community as a whole staking their jack-knives, tobacco plugs, and "treats" on Armstrong. The two men had scarcely taken hold of each other before it was evident that the Clary's Grove champion had met a match.