resolution and stating his views on slavery. They were not
extreme views. Though declaring slavery to be an evil, he did not
insist that the black people ought to be set free. But so strong
was the popular feeling against anything approaching
"abolitionism" that only one man out of the five who voted
against the resolution had the courage to sign this protest with
him. Lincoln was young, poor, and in need of all the good-will at
his command. Nobody could have blamed him for leaving it
unwritten; yet he felt the wrong of slavery so keenly that he
could not keep silent merely because the views he held happened
to be unpopular; and this protest, signed by him and Dan Stone,
has come down to us, the first notable public act in the great
career that made his name immortal.

During the eight years that he was in the legislature he had been
working away at the law. Even before his first election his
friend John T. Stuart, who had been major of volunteers in the
Black Hawk War while Lincoln was captain, and who, like Lincoln,
had reenlisted in the Independent Spy Battalion, had given him
hearty encouragement. Stuart was now practising law in.
Springfield. After the campaign was over, Lincoln borrowed the
necessary books of Stuart, and entered upon the study in good
earnest. According to his own statement, "he studied with nobody.
. . . In the autumn of 1836 he obtained a law license, and on
April 15, 1837, removed to Springfield and commenced the
practice, his old friend Stuart taking him into partnership."

Lincoln had already endeared himself to the people of Springfield
by championing a project they had much at heart--the removal of
the State capital from Vandalia to their own town. This was