dful of government troops stationed at Rock Island
wanted help. Hence the State call.

Mr. Lincoln was twenty-three years old at that time, nine years older
than his adopted State. The country was thinly settled, and a company
of ninety men who could be spared from home for military service had
to be gathered from a wide district. When full, the company met at the
neighboring village of Richland to choose its officers. In those days
the militia men were allowed to select their leaders in their own way;
and they had a very peculiar mode of expressing their preference for
captains. For then, as now, there were almost always two candidates
for one office.

They would meet on the green somewhere, and at the appointed hour, the
competitors would step out from the crowds on the opposite sides of
the ground, and each would call on all the "boys" who wanted him for
captain to fall in behind him. As the line formed, the man next the
candidate would put his hands on the candidate's shoulder; the third
man also in the same manner to the second man; and so on to the end.
And then they would march and cheer for their leader like so many wild
men, in order to win over the fellows who didn't seem to have a
choice, or whose minds were sure to run after the greater noise. When
all had taken sides, the man who led the longer line, would be
declared captain.

Mr. Lincoln never outgrew the familiar nickname, "Abe," but at that
time he could hardly be said to have any other name than "Abe"; in
fact he had emerged from clerking in that little corner grocery as
"Honest Abe." He was not only liked, but loved, in the rough fashion
of the frontier by all who knew him. He was a good hand at gunning,
fishing, racing, wrestling and other games; he had a tall and strong
figure; and he seemed to have been as often "reminded of a little
story" in '32 as in '62. And the few men not won by these qualities,
were won and held by his great common sense, which restrained him from
excesses even in sports, and made him a safe friend.

It is not singular therefore that though a stranger to many of the
enlisted men, he should have had his warm friends who at once
determined to make him captain.

But Mr. Lincoln hung back with the feeling, he said, that if there was
any older and better established citizen whom the "boys" had
confidence in, it would be better to make such a one captain. His
poverty was even more marked than his modesty; and for his stock o