LINCOLN ENTERS THE ILLINOIS ASSEMBLY.

The session of the ninth Assembly began December 1, 1834, and Lincoln
went to the capital, then Vandalia, seventy-five miles southeast of
New Salem, on the Kaskaskia River, in time for the opening. Vandalia
was a town which had been called into existence in 1820 especially
to give the State government an abiding-place. Its very name had been
chosen, it is said, because it "sounded well" for a State capital. As
the tradition goes, while the commissioners were debating what they
should call the town they were making, a wag suggested that it be
named Vandalia, in honor of the Vandals, a tribe of Indians which,
said he, had once lived on the borders of the Kaskaskia; this, he
argued, would conserve a local tradition while giving a euphonous
title. The commissioners, pleased with so good a suggestion, adopted
the name. When Lincoln first went to Vandalia it was a town of about
eight hundred inhabitants; its noteworthy features, according to
Peck's "Gazetteer" of Illinois for 1834, being a brick court-house, a
two-story brick edifice "used by State officers," "a neat framed house
of worship for the Presbyterian Society, with a cupola and bell,"
"a framed meeting-house for the Methodist Society," three taverns,
several stores, five lawyers, four physicians, a land office, and two
newspapers. It was a much larger town than Lincoln had ever lived in
before, though he was familiar with Springfield, then twice as large
as Vandalia, and he had seen the cities of the Mississippi.

The Assembly which he entered was composed of eighty-one
members,--twenty-six senators, fifty-five representatives. As a rule,
these men were of Kentucky, Tennessee, or Virginia origin, with here
and there a Frenchman. There were but few Eastern men, for there