A History of the American People

indeed he saved an Indian from being butchered. He was the first man to refer to Indians as
Native Americans,' though in the then current usage the term referred to Americans of old Anglo-Saxon stock. He said to those who protested about German immigrants, and claimed the title for themselves:Who are the [real] Native Americans? Do they not wear the breechclout
and carry the tomahawk? We pushed them from their homes and now turn on others not
fortunate enough to come over so early as we or our forefathers."
He did not win his first political election. And he had bad luck. He bought a store and set up as
postmaster too. His partner, Berry, fled with the cash and Lincoln had to shoulder a $1,100
burden of debt. Like Washington, he went into land-surveying to help pay it off. Then he was
elected to the state assembly, serving eight years from the age of twenty-five to thirty-two. It met
in Vandalia, its eighty-three members being divided into two chambers. Lincoln was paid $3 for
each sitting, plus pen, ink, and paper. His first manifesto read: I go for all sharing the privileges of government who assist in sharing its burdens. Consequently I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).' He belonged to a group of Whig legislators who were all six feet or over, known as the Long Nine. He got the state capital shifted to Springfield and there set up a law practice, making his name by winning a case for an oppressed widow. A colleague said:Lincoln was the most uncouth-looking man I
ever saw. He seemed to have but little to say, seemed to feel timid, with a tinge of sadness visible
in his countenance. But when he did talk all this disappeared for the time, and he demonstrated
he was both strong and acute. He surprised us more and more at every visit.'
Lincoln's first love, Ann Rutledge, died of typhoid fever. That Lincoln was devastated is
obvious enough; that his love for her persisted and prevented him from loving any other woman
is more debatable. At all events, it is clear he never loved the woman he married, Mary Todd.
She came from a grand family in Kentucky, famous since Revolutionary days for generals and
governors. She was driven from it by a horrible stepmother, but never abandoned her quest for a
man she could marry in order to make him president. Oddly enough, she turned down Stephen
Douglas, then a youngish fellow-member of the Illinois Assembly, in favour of Lincoln, whom
she picked out as White House timber. She said to friends: Mr Lincoln is to be president of the United States some day. If I had not thought so, I would not have married him, for you can see he is not pretty.' Lincoln consented, but missed the wedding owing to an illness which was clearly psychosomatic. This led to a sabre duel with Sheilds, the state auditor, which was called off when Lincoln scared his opponent by cutting a twig high up a tree. And this in turn led to reconciliation with Mary, and marriage, he being thirty-three, she twenty-four. His law partner, William H. Herndon, said:He knew he did not love her, but he had promised to marry her.'
It was an uncomfortable marriage of opposites, particularly since she had no sense of humor,
his strongest suit. He liked to say: Come in, my wife will be down as soon as she gets her trotting-harness on.' He was a messy man, disorderly in appearance, she was a duster and polisher and tidier. She wrangled acrimoniously with her uppity white servants and sighed noisily for herdelightful niggers.' One thing is certain,' she said,if Mr Lincoln should happen
to die, his spirit will never find me living outside the boundaries of a slave state.' She hated his
partner, his family, and his so-called office. Herndon said: `He had no system, no order; he did
not keep a clerk; he had neither library, nor index, nor cash-book. When he made notes, he
would throw them into a drawer, put them in his vest-pocket, or into his hat ... But in the inner
man, symmetry and method prevailed. He did not need an orderly office, did not need pen and
ink, because his workshop was in his head.'