of success inspired him at Springfield and humiliated him at
Washington? The answer was in the difference between the two worlds.
Companionableness, story-telling, at Springfield, led to influence; at
Washington it led only to applause. At Springfield it was a means; at
Washington it was an end. The narrow circle gave the good fellow an
opportunity to reveal at his leisure everything else that was in him;
the larger circle ruthlessly put him in his place as a good fellow and
nothing more. The truth was that in the Washington of the 'forties,
neither the inner nor the outer Lincoln could by itself find lodgment.
Neither the lonely mystical thinker nor the captivating buffoon could do
more than ripple its surface. As superficial as Springfield, it lacked
Springfield's impulsive generosity. To the long record of its obtuseness
it had added another item. The gods had sent it a great man and it had
no eyes to see. It was destined to repeat the performance.

And so Lincoln came home, disappointed, disillusioned. He had not
succeeded in establishing the slightest claim, either upon the country
or his party. Without such claim he had no ground for attempting
reelection. The frivolity of the Whig machine in the Sangamon 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.