only be freed from driftwood, and its channel straightened a
little, they felt sure it might be used for small steamboats
during a large part of the year.

The candidates for the legislature that summer staked their
chances of success on the zeal they showed for "internal
improvements." Lincoln was only twenty-three. He had been in the
county barely nine months. Sangamon County was then considerably
larger than the whole State of Rhode Island, and he was of course
familiar with only a small part of it or its people; but he felt
that he did know the river. He had sailed on it and been
shipwrecked by it; he had, moreover, been one of a party of men
and boys, armed with long-handled axes, who went out to chop away
obstructions and meet a small steamer that, a few weeks earlier,
had actually forced its way up from the Illinois River.

Following the usual custom, he announced his candidacy in the
local newspaper in a letter dated March 9, addressed "To the
People of Sangamon County." It was a straightforward, manly
statement of his views on questions of the day, written in as
good English as that used by the average college-bred man of his
years. The larger part of it was devoted to arguments for the
improvement of the Sangamon River. Its main interest for us lies
in the frank avowal of his personal ambition that is contained in
the closing paragraph.

"Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition," he wrote.
"Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no
other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellowmen by
rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed