“To the County Commissioners’ Court for
the county of Sangamon, at its June term, 1834.
We, the undersigned, being appointed to view and locate
a “Whole length of road, 26 road, beginning at
Musick’s ferry on Salt Creek, via New Salem,
to the county line in the direction to Jacksonville,
respectfully report that we have performed the duties
of said view and location, as required by law, and
that we have made the location on good ground, and
believe the establishment of the same to be necessary
and proper.
“The inclosed map gives the courses and distances
as required by law. Michael Killion, Hugh Armstrong,
A. Lincoln.”
(Indorsement in pencil, also in Lincoln’s handwriting:)
“A. Lincoln, 5 days at $3.00, $15.00.
John A. Kelsoe, chain-bearer, for 5 days at 75 cents,
$3.75. Robert Lloyd, at 75 cents, $3.75.
Hugh Armstrong, for services as axeman, 5 days at
75 cents, $3.75. A. Lincoln, for making plot
and report, $2.50.”
(On Map.) “Whole length of road, 26 miles and
70 chains. Scale, 2 inches to the mile.”]
LEGISLATIVE EXPERIENCE
The election of Mr. Lincoln to the Legislature may
be said to have closed the pioneer portion of his
life. He was done with the wild carelessness
of the woods, with the jolly ruffianism of Clary’s
Grove, with the petty chaffering of grocery stores,
with odd jobs for daily bread, with all the uncouth
squalor of the frontier poverty. It was not that
his pecuniary circumstances were materially improved.
He was still, and for years continued to be, a very
poor man, harassed by debts which he was always working
to pay, and sometimes in distress for the means of
decent subsistence. But from this time forward
his associations were with a better class of men than
he had ever known before, and a new feeling of self-respect
must naturally have grown up in his mind from his
constant intercourse with them—a feeling
which extended to the minor morals of civilized life.
A sophisticated reader may smile at the mention of
anything like social ethics in Vandalia in 1834; but,
compared with Gentryville and New Salem, the society
which assembled in the winter at that little capital
was polished and elegant. The State then contained
nearly 250,000 inhabitants, and the members of the
Legislature, elected purely on personal grounds, nominated
by themselves or their neighbors without the intervention
of party machinery, were necessarily the leading men,
in one way or another, in their several districts.
Among the colleagues of Lincoln at Vandalia were young
men with destinies only less brilliant than his own.
They were to become governors, senators, and judges;
they were to organize the Whig party of Illinois,
and afterwards the Republican; they were to lead brigades
and divisions in two great wars. Among the first
persons he met there—not in the Legislature
proper, but in the lobby, where he was trying to appropriate
