angamon region
was evinced by their rotation agreement. Out of such grossly personal
politics Lincoln had gone to Washington; into this essentially corrupt
system he relapsed. He faced, politically, a blank wall. And he had
within him as yet, no consciousness of any power that might cleave the
wall asunder. What was he to do next?

At this dangerous moment--so plainly the end of a chapter--he was
offered the governorship of the new Territory of Oregon. For the first
time he found himself at a definite parting of the ways, where a sheer
act of will was to decide things; where the pressure of circumstance was
of secondary importance.

In response to this crisis, an overlooked part of him appeared. The
inheritance from his mother, from the forest, had always been obvious.
But, after all, he was the son not only of Nancy and of the lonely
stars, but also of shifty, drifty Thomas the unstable. If it was not
his paternal inheritance that revived in him at this moment of confessed
failure, it was something of the same sort. Just as Thomas had always
by way of extricating himself from a failure taken to the road, now
Abraham, at a psychological crisis, felt the same wanderlust, and he
threatened to go adrift. Some of his friends urged him to accept. "You
will capture the new community," said they, "and when Oregon becomes a
State, you will go to Washington as its first Senator." What a
glorified application of the true Thomasian line of thought. Lincoln
hesitated--hesitated--

And then the forcible little lady who had married him put her foot down.
Go out to that far-away backwoods, just when they were beginning to get
on in the world; when real prosperity at Springfield was surely within
their grasp; when they were at last becoming people of importance, who
should be able to keep their own carriage? Not much!

Her husband declined the appointment and resumed the practice of law in
Springfield.(9)

VII. THE SECOND START

Stung by his failure at Washington, Lincoln for a time put his whole
soul into the study of the law. He explained his failure to himself as
a lack of mental training.(1) There followed a repetition of his early
years with Logan, but with very much more determination, and with more
abiding result.

In those days in Illinois, as once in England, the judges held court in
a succession of towns which formed a circuit. Judge and lawyers
moved from town to town, "rode the circuit" in company,--sometimes