was in reality the shadow
of a Lincoln that had passed away, passed so slowly, so imperceptibly
that few people knew it had passed. During many years following 1835,
the distinction in the main applied. So thought the men who, like
Lincoln's latest law partner, William H. Herndon, were not derivatives
of Clary's Grove. The Lincoln of these days was the only one Herndon
knew. How deeply he understood Lincoln is justly a matter of debate;
but this, at least, he understood--that Clary's Grove, in attributing
to Lincoln its own idea of leadership, was definitely wrong. He saw in
Lincoln, in all the larger matters, a tendency to wait on events, to
take the lead indicated by events, to do what shallow people would have
called mere drifting. To explain this, he labeled him a fatalist.(2) The
label was only approximate, as most labels are. But Herndon's effort
to find one is significant. In these years, Lincoln took the
initiative--when he took it at all--in a way that most people did not
recognize. His spirit was ever aloof. It was only the every-day, the
external Lincoln that came into practical contact with his fellows.

This is especially true of the growing politician. He served four
consecutive terms in the Legislature without doing anything that had
the stamp of true leadership. He was not like either of the two types of
politicians that generally made up the legislatures of those days--the
men who dealt in ideas as political counters, and the men who were
grafters without in their naive way knowing that they were grafters.
As a member of the Legislature, Lincoln did not deal in ideas. He was
instinctively incapable of graft A curiously routine politician, one who
had none of the earmarks familiar in such a person. Aloof, and yet, more
than ever companionable, the power he had in the Legislature--for he had
acquired a measure of power--was wholly personal. Though called a Whig,
it was not as a party man but as a personal friend that he was able to
carry through his legislative triumphs. His most signal achievement was
wholly a matter of personal politics. There was a general demand for
the removal of the capital from its early seat at Vandalia, and rivalry
among other towns was keen. Sangamon County was bent on winning
the prize for its own Springfield. Lincoln was put in charge of the
Springfield strategy. How he played his cards may be judged from the
recollections of another member who seems to have anticipated that n