h
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 cana