He was again a member of the Finance Committee; but
financiering by those wise lawgivers was no longer
so lightsome and exuberant a task as it had been.
The hour of reckoning had come; and the business proved
to be chiefly a series of humiliating and futile efforts
to undo the follies of the preceding two and a half
years. Lincoln shared in this disagreeable labor,
as he had shared in the mania which had made it necessary.
He admitted that he was “no financier,”
and gave evidence of the fact by submitting a bill
which did not deserve to be passed, and was not.
It can, however, be said for him that he never favored
repudiation, as some of his comrades did.
In 1840[45] Lincoln was again elected, again was the
nominee of the Whig party for the speakership, and
again was beaten by Ewing, the Democratic candidate,
who mustered 46 votes against 36 for Lincoln.
This legislature held only one session, and apparently
Holland’s statement, that “no important
business of general interest was transacted,”
is a fair summary. Lincoln did only one memorable
thing, and that unfortunately was discreditable.
In a close and exciting contest, he, with two other
Whigs, jumped out of the window in order to break a
quorum. It is gratifying to hear from the chronicler
of the event, who was one of the parties concerned,
that “Mr. Lincoln always regretted that he entered
into that arrangement, as he deprecated everything
that savored of the revolutionary."[46]
The year 1840 was made lively throughout the country
by the spirited and rollicking campaign which the
Whigs made on behalf of General Harrison. In
that famous struggle for “Tippecanoe and Tyler
too,” the log cabin, hard cider, and the ’coon
skin were the popular emblems which seemed to lend
picturesqueness and enthusiasm and a kind of Western
spirit to the electioneering everywhere in the land.
In Illinois Lincoln was a candidate on the Whig electoral
ticket, and threw himself with great zeal into the
congenial task of “stumping” the State.
Douglas was doing the same duty on the other side,
and the two had many encounters. Of Lincoln’s
speeches only one has been preserved,[47] and it leads
to the conclusion that nothing of value was lost when
the others perished. The effusion was in the
worst style of the effervescent and exuberant school
of that region and generation. Nevertheless, it
may have had the greatest merit which oratory can
possess, in being perfectly adapted to the audience
to which it was addressed. But rhetoric could
not carry Illinois for the Whigs; the Democrats cast
the vote of the State.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] The Good Old Times in McLean County, passim.
[35] It was first advocated in 1835-36, and was adopted
by slow degrees thereafter. Ford, Hist. of
Illinois, 204.
[36] Ibid. 201.
[37] Lamon, 129, where is given the text of the manifesto;
Herndon, 101; N. and H. i. 101, 105; Holland, 53,
says that after his return from the Black Hawk
campaign, Lincoln “was applied to” to become
a candidate, and that the “application was a
great surprise to him.” This seems an obvious
error, in view of the manifesto; yet see Lamon, 122.
