is not wanting to the same effect. Both Major Stuart and Judge Logan
[Footnote: The Democrats of New Salem worked for Lincoln out of their
personal regard for him. That was the general understanding of the
matter here at the time. In this he made no concession of principle
whatever. He was as stiff as a man could be in his Whig doctrines.
They did this for him simply because he was popular--because he was
Lincoln. STEPHEN T. LOGAN. July 6, 1875.] say that Lincoln ran in 1832
as a Whig, and that his speeches were unevasively in defense of the
principles of that party. Without discussing the merits of the party
or its purposes, we may insist that his adopting them thus openly at
the outset of his career was an extremely characteristic act, and
marks thus early the scrupulous conscientiousness which shaped every
action of his life. The State of Illinois was by a large majority
Democratic, hopelessly attached to the person and policy of Jackson.
Nowhere had that despotic leader more violent and unscrupulous
partisans than there. They were proud of their very servility, and
preferred the name of "whole-hog Jackson men" to that of Democrats.
The Whigs embraced in their scanty ranks the leading men of the State,
those who have since been most distinguished in its history, such as
S. T. Logan, Stuart, Browning, Dubois, Hardin, Breese, and many
others. But they were utterly unable to do anything except by dividing
the Jackson men, whose very numbers made their party unwieldy, and by
throwing their votes with the more decent and conservative portion of
them. In this way, in the late election, they had secured the success
of Governor Reynolds--the Old Ranger--against Governor Kinney, who
represented the vehement and proscriptive spirit which Jackson had
just breathed into the party. He had visited the General in
Washington, and had come back giving out threatenings and slaughter
against the Whigs in the true Tennessee style, declaring that "all
Whigs should be whipped out of office like dogs out of a meat-house";