Railsplitter as Logroller

LINCOLN'S VANDALIA (141 pp.]--William E. Baringer--Rutgers University ($2.50).

Still exploring minor veins in the Lincoln lode, historical pickmen sometimes hit upon a passable grade of ore. This book is an example of the work of a noted Lincoln scholar, digging up minutiae of value. It was at the old Illinois capital of Vandalia that 27-year-old Abraham Lincoln solved a tricky problem in practical politics, and it is useful to know not only that he did it, as the biographies attest, but precisely how.

When Lincoln got off the stagecoach in November 1834, for his first session in the state legislature, Vandalia was 15 years old, still mainly logs and mud. That winter, and the next as well, his principal achievement was to make himself known as a wit in the candlelit House chamber where the legislators drank and argued in the evenings.

By 1836, however, Lincoln had become the leader of the Sangamon County delegation of nine Whigs--"the Long Nine" whose aggregate height was exactly 54 feet. Everybody knew that Vandalia's days were numbered as the state capital; it was too far south. In 1837 a new capital would be chosen, and the Long Nine were out to put across Springfield, in Sangamon County, as the new site. An "internal improvements" bill, calling for the expenditure of $10 million or $12 million on railroads and waterways, gave them their chance to logroll. Lincoln became "an amiable, entertaining apostle of adequate transportation for every county in the state"--every county, that is, that would support Springfield as the next capital.

Meanwhile, a bill came up calling for the creation of a new county carved from Sangamon and Morgan Counties. This posed a dilemma for Lincoln: because of pressure from home, he would have to vote for the new county, but the new county would mean the end of Sangamon's staunch Long Nine--possibly the end of Springfield as a capital. His solution: a referendum that tossed the county-division bill back to the voters while the Long Nine logrolled the Springfield bill to a quick decision.

It turned out to be quite a good solution. Springfield was chosen (though on one ballot a disgusted vote was cast for Purgatory), the voters got their new county, and Representative Lincoln got reelected. He moved to Springfield himself and set up shop as a lawyer, with something of a reputation.

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