McClures Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 4, March, 1896 | Page 2

KITE-DRAWN BUOY. DIRIGIBLE KITE-DRAWN BUOY. THE
KITE-BUOY IN SERVICE. "MY GOD!--YOU WERE
RIGHT--AFTER ALL."

[Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1860.--HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.
From an ambrotype taken in Springfield, Illinois, on August 13, 1860,
and now owned by Mr. William H. Lambert of Philadelphia, through
whose courtesy we are allowed to reproduce it here. This ambrotype
was bought by Mr. Lambert from Mr. W.P. Brown of Philadelphia. Mr.

Brown writes of the portrait: "This picture, along with another one of
the same kind, was presented by President Lincoln to my father, J.
Henry Brown, deceased (miniature artist), after he had finished painting
Lincoln's picture on ivory, at Springfield, Illinois. The commission was
given my father by Judge Read (John M. Read of the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania), immediately after Lincoln's nomination for the
Presidency. One of the ambrotypes I sold to the Historical Society of
Boston, Massachusetts, and it is now in their possession." The
miniature referred to is now owned by Mr. Robert T. Lincoln. It was
engraved by Samuel Sartain, and circulated widely before the
inauguration. After Mr. Lincoln grew a beard, Sartain put a beard on
his plate, and the engraving continued to sell extensively. While Mr.
Brown was in Springfield painting the miniature he kept a journal,
which Mr. Lambert also owns and which he has generously put at our
disposal. It will be found on page 400.]

McCLURE'S MAGAZINE.
VOL. VI. MARCH, 1896. No. 4.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
BY IDA M. TARBELL.
LINCOLN'S ELECTION TO THE TENTH
ASSEMBLY.--ADMISSION TO THE BAR.--REMOVAL TO
SPRINGFIELD.
The first twenty-six years of Abraham Lincoln's life have been traced
in the preceding chapters. We have seen him struggling to escape from
the lot of a common farm laborer, to which he seemed to be born;
becoming a flatboatman, a grocery clerk, a store-keeper, a postmaster,
and finally a surveyor. We have traced his efforts to rise above the
intellectual apathy and the indifference to culture which characterized
the people among whom he was reared, by studying with eagerness

every subject on which he could find books,--biography, state history,
mathematics, grammar, surveying, and finally law. We have followed
his growth in ambition and in popularity from the day when, on a keg
in an Indiana grocery, he debated the contents of the Louisville
"Journal" with a company of admiring elders, to the time when, purely
because he was liked, he was elected to the State Assembly of Illinois
by the people of Sangamon County. His joys and sorrows have been
reviewed from his childhood in Kentucky to the day of the death of the
woman he loved and had hoped to make his wife. These twenty-six
years form the first period of Lincoln's life. It was a period of
makeshifts and experiments, ending in a tragic sorrow; but at its close
he had definite aims, and preparation and experience enough to
convince him that he dared follow them. Law and politics were the
fields he had chosen, and in the first year of the second period of his
life, 1836, he entered them definitely.
The Ninth General Assembly of Illinois, in which Lincoln had done his
preparatory work as a legislator, was dissolved, and in June, 1836, he
announced himself as a candidate for the Tenth Assembly. A few days
later the "Sangamon Journal" published his simple platform:
NEW SALEM, June 13, 1836. TO THE EDITOR OF THE
'JOURNAL':
"In your paper of last Saturday I see a communication over the
signature of 'Many Voters,' in which the candidates who are announced
in the 'Journal' are called upon to 'show their hands.' Agreed. Here's
mine:
I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in
bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the
right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding
females).
If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my
constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me.
While acting as their representative, I shall be governed by their will on

all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing what their will is;
and upon all others, I shall do what my own judgment teaches me will
best advance their interests. Whether elected or not, I go for distributing
the proceeds of the sales of public lands to the several States, to enable
our State, in common with others, to dig canals and construct railroads
without borrowing money and paying the interest on it.
"If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for Hugh L.
White for President.
"Very respectfully, "A. LINCOLN."
The campaign which Lincoln began with this letter was in every way
more exciting for him than those of 1832 and 1834. Since the last
election a census had been taken