第8章 A VILLAGE LEADER(1)

Though placid,this early Lincoln was not resigned.He differed from the boors of Pigeon Creek in wanting some other sort of life.What it was he wanted,he did not know.His reading had not as yet given him definite ambitions.It may well be that New Orleans was the clue to such stirring in him as there was of that discontent which fanciful people have called divine.Remembering New Orleans,could any imaginative youth be content with Pigeon Creek?

In the spring of 1830,shortly after he came of age,he agreed for once with his father whose chronic vagrancy had reasserted itself.The whole family set out again on their wanderings and made their way in an oxcart to a new halting place on the Sangamon River in Illinois.There Abraham helped his father clear another piece of land for another illusive "start"in life.The following spring he parted with his family and struck out for himself.[1]His next adventure was a second trip as a boatman to New Orleans.Can one help suspecting there was vague hope in his heart that he might be adventuring to the land of hearts'desire?If there was,the yokels who were his fellow boatmen never suspected it.One of them long afterward asserted that Lincoln returned from New Orleans fiercely rebellious against its central institution,slavery,and determined to "hit that thing"whenever he could.

The legend centers in his witnessing a slave auction and giving voice to his horror in a style quite unlike any of his authentic utterances.The authority for all this is doubtful.[2]

Furthermore,the Lincoln of 1831was not yet awakened.That inner life in which such a reaction might take place was still largely dormant.The outer life,the life of the harvest clown,was still a thick insulation.Apparently,the waking of the inner life,the termination of its dormant stage,was reserved for an incident far more personal that fell upon him in desolating force a few years later.

Following the New Orleans venture,came a period as storekeeper for a man named Denton Offut,in perhaps the least desirable town in Illinois--a dreary little huddle of houses gathered around Rutledge's Mill on the Sangamon River and called New Salem.[3]Though a few of its people were of a better sort than any Lincoln had yet known except,perhaps,the miller's family in the old days in Kentucky--and still a smaller few were of fine quality,the community for the most part was hopeless.Afatality for unpromising neighborhoods overhangs like a doom the early part of this strange life.All accounts of New Salem represent it as predominantly a congregation of the worthless,flung together by unaccountable accident at a spot where there was no genuine reason for a town's existence.A casual town,created by drifters,and void of settled purpose.Small wonder that ere long it vanished from the map;that after a few years its drifting congregation dispersed to every corner of the horizon,and was no more.But during its brief existence it staged an episode in the development of Lincoln's character.

However,this did not take place at once.And before it happened,came another turn of his soul's highway scarcely less important.He discovered,or thought he discovered,what he wanted.His vague ambition took shape.He decided to try to be a politician.At twenty-three,after living in New Salem less than a year,this audacious,not to say impertinent,young man offered himself to the voters of Sangamon County as a candidate for the Legislature.At this time that humility which was eventually his characteristic had not appeared.It may be dated as subsequent to New Salem--a further evidence that the deep spiritual experience which closed this chapter formed a crisis.Before then,at New Salem as at Pigeon Creek,he was but a variant,singularly decent,of the boisterous,frolicking,impertinent type that instinctively sought the laxer neighborhoods of the frontier.An echo of Pigeon Creek informed the young storekeeper's first state paper,the announcement of his candidacy,in the year 1832.His first political speech was in a curious vein,glib,intimate and fantastic:"Fellow citizens,I presume you all know who I am.

I am humble Abraham Lincoln.I have been solicited by many 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 protective tariff.These are my sentiments and political principles.If elected,I shall be thankful;if not it will be all the same."[4]

However,this bold throw of the dice of fortune was not quite so impertinent as it seems.During the months when he was in charge of Offut's grocery store he had made a conquest of New Salem.The village grocery in those days was the village club.

It had its constant gathering of loafers all of whom were endowed with votes.It was the one place through which passed the whole population,in and out,one time or another.To a clever storekeeper it gave a chance to establish a following.

Had he,as Lincoln had,the gift of story-telling,the gift of humor,he was a made man.Pigeon Creek over again!Lincoln's wealth of funny stories gave Offut's grocery somewhat the role of a vaudeville theater and made the storekeeper as popular a man as there was in New Salem.

In another way he repeated his conquest of Pigeon Creek.New Salem had its local Alsatia known as Clary's Grove whose insolent young toughs led by their chief,Jack Armstrong,were the terror of the neighborhood.The groceries paid them tribute in free drinks.Any luckless storekeeper who incurred their displeasure found his store some fine morning a total wreck.Lincoln challenged Jack Armstrong to a duel with fists.