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Lincoln and His World: Prairie Politician, 1834-1842
Lincoln and His World: Prairie Politician, 1834-1842
Lincoln and His World: Prairie Politician, 1834-1842
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Lincoln and His World: Prairie Politician, 1834-1842

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Places Lincoln in historical context. Firsthand sources create an authentic portrait.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 28, 2008
ISBN9780811749565
Lincoln and His World: Prairie Politician, 1834-1842

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    Lincoln and His World - Richard Lawrence Miller

    LINCOLN

    AND HIS WORLD

    PRAIRIE

    POLITICIAN

    1834–1842

    RICHARD LAWRENCE MILLER

    STACKPOLE

    BOOKS

    Copyright © 2008 by Richard Lawrence Miller

    Published by

    STACKPOLE BOOKS

    5067 Ritter Road

    Mechanicsburg, PA 17055

    www.stackpolebooks.com

    All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Stackpole Books, 5067 Ritter Road, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania 17055.

    Printed in the United States

    First edition

    10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Miller, Richard Lawrence.

    Lincoln and his world : prairie politician, 1834–1842 / Richard Lawrence Miller.—1st ed.

        p. cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN-13: 978-0-8117-0392-5 (hardcover)

    ISBN-10: 0-8117-0392-4 (hardcover)

     1. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865—Political career before1861. 2. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865—Political and social views. 3. Legislators—Illinois—Biography. 4. Presidents—United States—Biography. 5. Illinois—Politics and government—To 1865. 6. Whig Party (U.S.) I. Title.

    E457.35.M46 2007

    973.7092—dc22

    [B]                                                                                                      2007042005

    eBook ISBN: 978-0-8117-4956-5

    Here begins a story of Lincoln’s years in the Illinois state legislature. I have personally experienced the intense and chaotic qualities of political warfare. Most politicians I’ve dealt with consider citizens to be annoyances—pests to be flattered, ignored, or crushed—whatever is necessary for the politico to gain or retain power and perquisites of office. Gov. Thomas Ford, who observed Lincoln and other state officials, wrote a memoir that has been described as dark and cynical. When reading that memoir, I simply recognize persons I’ve known.

    Describing a legislature’s activity is challenging. Many things happen simultaneously, making chronology problematic. Some proceedings are disguised with misleading titles of bills and telegraphic entries in official journals, involving so many parliamentary motions to expand and delete and substitute and table portions of bills that the legislature’s actions sink into a morass beyond viewing (probably the exact result intended). The confusion can mimic the floor of a stock exchange with hundreds of brokers swirling about and shouting. A visitor may see only chaos. Traders on the floor, however, know exactly what they are doing. With a guide, you too can follow the action. In the following pages, I will lead you through Lincoln’s legislative career.

    FIRST TERM IN STATE LEGISLATURE:

    WINTER OF 1834–1835

    Representative-elect Lincoln learned that demands on a legislator’s time weren’t limited to the few weeks of a legislature’s session. In November 1834, a Sangamon County meeting appointed him to a state convention promoting the common school system. Delegates would convene in the capital city of Vandalia as December’s legislative session opened. Common schools were to provide elementary education to children free of charge, in contrast with subscription schools charging tuition. Lincoln had attended both types.

    Universal education was a controversy, not a consensus. A New York periodical declared an aristocracy of wealth sought to prevent poor children from having access to education.¹ Former U.S. Sen. William Harper of South Carolina, definitely a wealthy aristocrat, frankly declared:

    If when a man is born in Europe, it were certainly foreseen that he was destined to a life of painful labor—to obscurity, contempt and privation—would it not be mercy that he should be reared in ignorance and apathy, and trained to the endurance of the evils he must encounter? . . . Would you do a benefit to the horse or the ox, by giving him a cultivated understanding or fine feelings? So far as the mere laborer has the pride, the knowledge, or the aspirations of a freeman, he is unfitted for his situation, and must doubly feel its infelicity. If there are sordid, servile, and laborious offices to be performed, is it not better that there should be sordid, servile, and laborious beings to perform them?

    Harper added, He who works during the day with his hands, does not read in intervals of leisure for his amusement, or the improvement of his mind.² A life like Lincoln’s was incomprehensible to the Southern aristocrat.

    Importantly, Harper made his argument against public education in the context of defending slavery, arguing a connection between ignorance and servitude. This connection was obvious to others. An observer in the Vandalia Illinois Advocate noted, A tyrant attacks the mind before he does the body. I mean that he seeks to make his slaves stupid before he makes them wretched, knowing that men who have a head, can by it guide their hands, and raise themselves up against the tyrant.³ A Galena commentator also put common schools in the context of liberty. Whatever else we deny ourselves or our children, we cannot deny them access to the sources of knowledge. . . . Our republican constitution is but a leaky vessel which is only kept afloat by some millions of intelligent minds; and depend upon it, sir, if ignorance be allowed to flow in . . . she will be borne rapidly down the straits of misrule and soon sink in the ocean of despotism.⁴ As the Illinois legislature prepared to meet, a Jo Daviess County newspaper noted: Considerable feeling on this important subject seems to prevail. . . . The difference [between] the learned and the unlearned is so conspicuously marked that no one can for a moment, hesitate to choose between them.

    During November 1834, advocates of an Illinois common school system met in various locales to choose state convention delegates.⁶ Those selected in Sangamon County included Rep. John Stuart and Rep.-Elect Abe Lincoln.⁷ The people of the state are waking up on the subject, the Sangamo Journal declared in November. The movement is emphatically one of the people.⁸ A substantial percentage of delegates were state legislators. The convention would be virtually a special session of the legislature, and its decisions could be expected to receive careful attention at the statehouse.

    Congress donated to each state 3 percent from federal public land sales in the state to support a statewide system of common schools. For Illinois in 1835 that 3 percent would have been $78,000.⁹ Funds expended for all purposes by the state government in the two years of 1833 and 1834 totaled about $150,000.¹⁰ Diverting the common school fund became a sweet way to finance the state’s ordinary expenditures without enacting taxes that would enrage voters. Means of paying back the fund, however, were unclear. Partly for that replenishment, in 1831 the legislature borrowed $100,000 from Samuel Wiggins, capitalist of Cincinnati and St. Louis.¹¹ The question then became how to repay Wiggins, but at least his money replenished the common school fund.¹² That simple plan went awry; as soon as the school fund could be refilled, the legislature tapped it again.¹³ Over the next few years, the legislature siphoned about a half million dollars from the school fund and never repaid it.¹⁴ Still, Gov. Joseph Duncan said the common school fund had $100,000.¹⁵ But only part of that amount was available because the state legislature had been borrowing from it.

    Money is the eternal cry—the beggars meet at all points, asking you in the name of God to save them from starvation. We got clear of the beggars by swearing we would not vote one cent to pay the debt of the city until they were disposed of, for a day or two the constables have kept out a good watch and we have seen no beggars.

    —U.S. Rep. John Calhoon of Kentucky,

    dateline Washington, DC, December 22, 1835,

    John J. Hardin Papers

    We are ruled by a purse-proud aristocracy, who control us by our wants, with as sure, as galling, and as debasing a despotism, as was ever inflicted on any people at the point of the bayonet. An honest opinion that exposes the wickedness of that system, which wrings the last morsel from the laborious poor, and turns the naked family into the streets, is sure to expose him who dares give it, to the abuse and proscription of that unprincipled aristocracy of wealth, which sways and governs the country with a rod of iron.

    —Boston Daily Reformer clipped in Vandalia Illinois Advocate, January 7, 1835

    Preparing for duties in the legislature, representative-elect Lincoln knew that he had to look presentable in order to be taken seriously. Coleman Smoot declared: He came to my house one day in company with Hugh Armstrong [Jack’s brother]. Says he, ‘Smoot, did you vote for me?’ I told him I did. ‘Well,’ says he, ‘you must loan me money to buy suitable clothing, for I want to make a decent appearance in the legislature.’ I then loaned him two hundred dollars, which he returned to me according to promise.¹⁶ Smoot was a professional moneylender, and the promise included 10 percent interest.¹⁷ A fellow legislator at Lincoln’s first session remembered, He was a very decent looking young fellow . . . in a very respectable looking suit of jeans—it was practically carrying out the protective [tariff] idea of wearing home manufactures—Henry Clay once went to Congress in a suit of jeans, and it had become a sort of Whig dress.¹⁸ Lincoln’s salary of three dollars a day during the legislative session could allow him to repay Smoot regardless of Berry & Lincoln store debt. Reportedly, Lincoln described the loan as sort of a penalty upon Smoot for having voted for him.¹⁹

    While Abe was away, he had Caleb Carman run the Post Office out of Carman’s house in New Salem.²⁰ Carman recalled: When living with me in Salem, we had two kittens, Lincoln’s favorite pets. He would take them up in his lap and play with them and hold their heads together and say that Jane had a better countenance than Susan. . . . He would not allow them [to be] hurt. The winter he went to Vandalia to the legislature he left very strict orders for the cats to be well taken care of.²¹

    A few weeks before the general assembly convened, one Vandalia resident complained:

    The muddy season is near at hand, and we boast not of a sidewalk, in all of our streets. . . . Among the objections to this place as the seat of government, the badness of our streets and the want of comfortable accommodations for visitors are not the least. . . . The placing of three or four planks side by side, of proper width and thickness, and extending them along, as sidewalks, to some of the most frequented streets; and then a very small appropriation for candles or lamps to be burnt in suitable lanterns at the principal corners; during the session of the legislature, methinks would go a great way towards promoting our own comfort, and at the same time prevent many a curse from being uttered against Vandalia, by those who visit us in the winter season.²²

    A visitor who heard talk of moving the capital wrote that Vandalia’s houses, about one hundred in all, stand on a very broken soil, and since most of them are log cabins, the whole scene is dark and depressing. One can see about five or six big frame buildings containing stores. The statehouse is a common brick building. A solitary bank, a wooden church with a small tower, and two or three state offices complete the community. The visitor added, One can see signs of ague and other diseases on the faces of the people. The city has little or no trade.²³ Disease was encouraged by a swamp on one side of town, a wet prairie on another, and large ditches filled with stagnant water.²⁴ During Lincoln’s first term, the legislature passed a law vacating land to be used exclusively for the burial of members of the Senate and House of Representatives, and other officers of the government, who may decease here in the discharge of their public duties.²⁵ Representative John Stuart declared: There were but few accommodations to be had. I remember that one of the objections that were urged against keeping the seat of government at Vandalia was that they did not feed us on anything but prairie chickens and venison. A piece of fat pork was a luxury in those days—we had such a longing for something civilized.²⁶

    More kindly observation of Vandalia came from Gustave Koerner, who remarked:

    All the State officers had to reside there. The United States Court with its officers was also located there, as well as the United States Land Office. . . . Vandalia was besides the county seat of Fayette County, which required the officers of the Circuit Court and the County Court and many other employees of the county to reside there. . . . Comparatively small as Vandalia was, yet there was, owing to these circumstances, considerable wealth there, and much good, intelligent society.²⁷

    The town hosted meetings of the state Bible society, the state Sunday school union, state colonization society, and state temperance society.²⁸ Literary residents felt a shortage of books,²⁹ but Illinois Monthly Magazine had been published in Vandalia from 1830 to 1832, and two weekly newspapers still made their appearance. Someone touring North America found Vandalia to be culturally cultivated.³⁰

    Abe Lincoln and John Stuart were roommates at a tavern where thirty more guests were staying.³¹ An 1835 guest at the first rate and very large Vandalia Inn said, The bed was free of bugs. I paid one dollar for room and three meals.³² One dollar was enough for an entire month of meals from a board provider in New Salem,³³ suggesting that legislators experienced a frontier version of high living. Drunken revelries attracted attention from county officials.³⁴ A hanger-on at that general assembly session recalled his enjoyment of the plantation song and chorus as conducted by Lieutenant Governor Anderson, a native Tennesseean, with a score or more honorable members to troll the responsive refrain, while he, with resounding voice, bore the main burden of a famous Tennessee corn-shucking song . . . of indefinite length—a hundred verses, more or less.³⁵ Decades later, a venerable Vandalia townsperson explained: The trouble was busthead whiskey. I’ve heard them tell that at Ebenezer Capp’s store, which was the general resort of the legislators of that time, a barrel of liquor was kept with the head knocked out and a dipper hanging on a nail so that thirsty members could help themselves.³⁶ Brawls were so commonplace that an area known as the Bull Pen was reserved for the practice.³⁷ An eyewitness to a conflict near Albion in October 1835 left this account: Two Americans had a horrible fight: a colonel of the militia, who was drunk, and another man slightly more sober, who suffered a facial injury. The affair took place in the tavern and was witnessed by the justice of the peace, the sheriff, and another public officer. These three arrested the colonel for disturbing the peace, and took him to the courthouse (the workshop of the justice of the peace, who was also the shoemaker). The prisoner sat on the bench with a big knife in his hand. He said to me, ‘If you come too near, I will run this knife into your guts.’ His victim lay on the floor, moaning and vomiting. The justice [who had been drinking] picked up the lawbook but either was unable to read or couldn’t understand what it said. . . . The guilty one, so drunk he couldn’t defend himself, was fined five dollars and court costs.³⁸ It was a small body, John Stuart said of that legislature. Members were very much thrown together and learned to know each other very well. We had a very pleasant time.³⁹ Most legislators were inexperienced. Barely nineteen of the fifty-five house members had served a previous term; only a couple of members had served two previous terms—and those weren’t consecutive.⁴⁰ At twenty-five years of age, Lincoln was almost the youngest.⁴¹

    The pace of a state legislator’s life was chronicled by New York state senator William H. Seward, whose career would one day intertwine with Lincoln’s:

    Rose at seven o’clock; read the newspapers, and was shaved; ready for breakfast at eight o’clock; smoked a cigar; set to work at half-past eight; wrote letters on business till nine; sat down at my [law] brief [for an upcoming case]; went to the house three-quarters past nine; senate organized at ten; I took French leave at eleven; worked at my brief till half-past twelve. Enter Mr. P, who had tracked me from the house—wants a new county. Some gentlemen from Cruttenden’s, on the hill, were here to dine with us; left the table at four; went to the register’s office, called at the Tracy’s, and returned at five; enter a bookseller’s agent, refused to sign for his book, got rid of him at six; went down to tea; found Sacket; brought him to my room; talked half an hour; enter Thurlow Weed; enter Mr. Lynde, of the senate, and Judge Dixon; exeunt Messrs. Lynde and Dixon; enter Mr. Fuller, of the senate, and Fillmore, of the assembly; exit Sacket; enter Messrs. Andrews and Julina, of the assembly; enter Mr. Van Buren, of the assembly; exeunt Fuller and Fillmore; exit Mr. Van Buren, of the assembly; exeunt omnes at ten o’clock. Down I sit at my brief; clock strikes eleven; write a letter and throw myself into bed at twelve o’clock. This is life legislative!⁴²

    Reflecting on the era, later Gov. Thomas Ford mused:

    Persons cared but little for matters of government except when stirred up by their demagogues; and then they had no definite object to accomplish except to punish their representatives for a single act or vote which was, nine times out of ten, a good one. The politicians took advantage of this lethargic state of indifference of the people to advance their own projects, to get offices and special favors from the legislature, which were all they busied their heads about. The people asked nothing and claimed nothing but to be let alone, and the politicians usually went to work to divide out the benefits and advantages of government amongst themselves; that is, amongst the active men who sought them with the most tact and diligence. Offices and jobs were created, and special laws of all kinds of individual, not general benefit, were passed, and these good things were divided out by bargains, intrigues, and log-rolling combinations, and were mostly obtained by fraud, deceit, and tact.⁴³

    The Illinois legislature convened on December 1, 1834. The somewhat rundown statehouse was a simple two-story brick structure, measuring about fifty by a hundred feet. Even a visitor sympathetic to the town acknowledged that the statehouse has rather the appearance of an old dilapidated brick fort than a modern temple of legislation.⁴⁴ House members walked into the plain first-floor meeting room and sat three apiece at tables, able to scrape chairs back and forth as convenient. Sandboxes here and there around the room served tobacco chewers, statesmen of great expectorations in the words of one observer. Legislators dipped from the same sand to speed drying of ink.⁴⁵

    Members then organized; thirty votes made James Semple speaker of the house. He had recently resigned as attorney general to accept a general assembly seat. Abe Lincoln, John Stuart, and twenty-three other representatives voted for the unsuccessful speaker candidate Charles Dunn.⁴⁶ John Stuart became Whig floor leader—his mission was to peel away enough Democrats to carry Whig proposals. Speaker Semple appointed Lincoln to the Committee on Public Accounts and Expenditures, giving Lincoln substantial say on any proposal involving payment of money. Other appointments had to be made as well. One observer wrote:

    The number of applicants for doorkeeper and clerks of the different houses is truly astonishing. . . . All urge their claims with a pertinacity altogether invincible. One founds his claims on his revolutionary services; another on services in the last war; a third shows his wounds, and tells of his exploits, and escapes; a fourth was an old ranger; the next, one of the oldest settlers; another can carry a bigger log, and make a better fire than any other man; whilst another insists that he can take up the ashes better, sweep the room cleaner, and bring better water than any other living Sucker, and offers to prove it, by actual experiment, if they will only elect him.⁴⁷

    Newly inaugurated Gov. Joseph Duncan recommended an agenda to the legislature on December 3.⁴⁸ Regarding common schools, he declared that income from the $100,000 fund was insufficient to finance a system, so the fund itself should be expended for that purpose. Duncan’s proposal would provide immediate assistance to children deprived of schooling, but his idea had a drawback: It would turn off the supply of free money that the legislature had been siphoning to finance state government operations without resort to new taxes.

    Duncan showed enthusiasm for internal improvements. He said that settlements would naturally want roads, canals, and/or railways. Rather than disappoint those hopes, he recommended that Congress be asked to donate rights of way across public land, and in addition donate public land along routes, land which the state could then sell to finance construction. Note three things: a project predicated on free money from Congress (via donation of land convertible into cash), an internal improvements system intimately connected with realestate speculators in order to finance it (via sales of land along routes), and an assumption that internal improvements must link all settlements regardless of whether they be prospering or diminishing (a premise based not upon economics but upon ease of forming a coalition of legislative votes if every legislator’s constituents were promised direct gain). The last assumption of something for everybody contained much mischief.

    Duncan turned to the Illinois & Michigan Canal. He noted that Congress had donated land to pay for construction, yet the Canal remained unbuilt. The governor proposed borrowing money to start the project, holding the land until its value rose via proximity to the Canal, and then, after the land was sold, Congress could be expected to provide further means of continuing it—even though Congress had already paid once on the apparent assumption that the one-time payment was sufficient. The governor said water flowing from Lake Michigan through the Canal to the Illinois River should improve that stream’s navigability and healthfulness. No controversy existed about the Illinois River’s peril to human health. Said one observer, Ponds between the river and the bluff, produced by its overflow in the spring, and the prevalence of ague and fever all along its borders, convert the stream to my view into a kind of swamp.⁴⁹ Another observer declared: We found the water tepid and unpalatable, and oftentimes filled with decomposed vegetation to a degree that was quite offensive. . . . The insalubrity of the climate, particularly during the summer season, must be considered as presenting a formidable impediment to its speedy settlement.⁵⁰ Both observers agreed, however, that the gentle current making the river so unhealthful made it ideal for two-way steamboat travel. A consensus seemed to hold that economic benefit of Illinois River commerce justified tolerance of disease endured by settlements that would be established along the swamp. Such was the territory that Canal promoters portrayed as a potential Eden, attracting thousands of immigrants to Illinois, a potential that would become reality if enough money were given to Canal promoters.

    Governor Duncan told the legislature that a canal puts it in the power of every farmer to carry his own produce to market, which renders him independent of that monopoly which must always control the transportation on railroads.⁵¹ A Springfield newspaper letter writer declared in February 1834 that because monopolies had a tendency to an inconvenient, monstrous, and oppressive growth, it becomes one of the most important objects in a free government, to repress their exuberance, curtail their influence, and limit their objects. The writer added:

    Trade through the medium of a railroad must necessarily be subject to the oppressive monopolies of the rich—as this mode of conveyance is immediately available by the wealthy only. They, alone, can compass the expense of railroad cars and propelling engines, and will, consequently, be able to exert an extensive control over the internal carrying trade. Thus, do we see, that the inevitable tendency of the railroad system is to give undue ascendency to the aristocracy of the country.⁵²

    In Duncan’s vision of the Canal, anyone could put a boat in it and travel, paying state-regulated fees. In contrast, railroads monopolized transportation by forcing persons to use cars provided by the railroad, at whatever rate the road wanted to charge. In the Jacksonian view, railroads were undemocratic.

    Regarding internal improvements, the Chicago Democrat commented, If the legislators will now carry into effect the policy recommended by the executive, it will fulfil the high expectations of the people, and secure to the individuals composing it the lasting gratitude and respect of their fellow citizens. Halfway measures will not satisfy the public.⁵³

    Two days after the legislature received Governor Duncan’s message, Lincoln and other delegates to the state common school convention met for a couple of days in the statehouse. Secretary pro-tem was Jacksonville lawyer and Democrat activist Stephen Douglas. On motion of John Hardin, delegates recommended a plan to the legislature: Interest from the seminary fund, intended to finance higher education, was to be loaned to the common school fund. The state could then help finance at least one school in each county. The meeting told Illinois citizens the state had enough money to help build a common school system, but primary funding and effort would have to be local.⁵⁴

    The convention’s proposal to use interest from the seminary fund to finance common schools wasn’t exactly a trick, but was at least a fudge because the legislature lacked authority to make such a transfer. Permission first had to be granted by the federal government, as the seminary fund was furnished by the U.S. government for financing a state college. Morgan County politicians and the Presbyterian Illinois College in Jacksonville had been accused of trying to divert the seminary fund to common schools with the intention of preventing a competing state college at Springfield in Sangamon County. Suspicion was abroad that Presbyterians wanted to monopolize Illinois higher education to indoctrinate the coming generation.⁵⁵ In house debate, Rep. John Stuart said college and common schools were equally important, and separate funds dedicated to each should be maintained. When talent and genius are exhibited by a youth of Illinois, shall he be under the necessity of either going beyond the limits of the state or of being thrown into sectarian establishments, to receive an education? . . . If a state university is not fostered, the youth of our country must be thrown into sectarian establishments. . . . I wish to see . . . a free and liberal institution reared, from whence may flow the purest lights of science to a free people.⁵⁶ Rep. Jesse Thomas disagreed, fearing a state college would too much resemble that of West Point, an institution calculated to benefit the rich and the great.⁵⁷ He declared:

    In such state [college] institutions, the price of tuition is trivial, compared to the incidental expense. None but the wealthy could stand the constant drain. For if a poor young man goes there, he must do as others do. He must live like them, and dress like them, and such an expense few could bear. The poor could not bear it; and we should legislate for them, on this point, and not particularly for the rich. The rich can take care of themselves.

    Arguing against John Stuart’s professed concerns, Thomas added, I am not altogether opposed to even sectarian institutions, when science is correctly taught in them.

    "TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD!!!! Ran away from the subscriber, living near Tuscumbai, Franklin County, state of Alabama, two very likely Mulatto Negro Men, named COLIN & DAVID. . . . They may attempt to pass themselves as Indians, as they are some little acquainted with the Chickasaw language. . . . I will give the above reward . . . if taken in a free state. . . . Whoever takes them must have plenty of help, as they are both very stout; and if taken must be well secured." Signed Wyatt Bishop.

    Vandalia Illinois Advocate, February 8, 1834

    A month after the legislature convened, the state treasury reportedly contained less than $300.⁵⁸ In the grandstanding department, Rep. Charles Gregory of Greene County presented a resolution declaring, Inasmuch as the resident land tax in the several counties of this state . . . is not sufficient to defray the necessary expenses of the state government, . . . the patriotic members of this General Assembly do not demand pay. The sentiment’s appeal to constituents probably accounted for the close vote (twenty-six to twenty-three), which tabled the proposal permanently, Abe Lincoln and John Stuart voting to table.⁵⁹

    The land tax referred to by Gregory received closer attention from the legislature. In a contract between Illinois and the federal government, the United States agreed to donate to Illinois 2 percent of all public land sales income, with that money earmarked for canal and turnpike construction, in addition to the 3 percent for common schools. In return, Illinois agreed that all purchases of federal public land would be exempt from state taxation for five years after sale. As part of the deal, Illinois was also required to grant a three-year state tax exemption on public land donated to military veterans.⁶⁰ Ostensibly these exemptions reduced burdens on settlers starting their farms. In practice, the generosity also lowered costs for large real-estate speculators. In 1835 one person declared, Not less than 75,000 acres is entered monthly at the Springfield Land Office. Speculators are taking it up wherever they can find. Some individuals have entered 20,000 acres in one day.⁶¹ Barely two weeks later, a New Salem resident who returned from a trip wrote, While I was absent . . . speculators were buying up all the land in our part of the country.⁶² Established settlers who had title to their land resented carrying a tax load from which neighbors and real-estate magnates were exempt. In December 1834, the Illinois house of representatives voted thirty to twenty-four to ask Congress for permission to cancel the five-year moratorium on land taxes. John Stuart voted yes, Abe Lincoln no.⁶³ In January 1835, both houses of the legislature passed a resolution asking the state’s congressional delegation to seek permission to end the five-year moratorium. Once again, John Stuart voted yes and Lincoln no, but this time the vote was a more lopsided forty-one to six.⁶⁴ Lincoln’s votes have been interpreted as meaning he was a friend to new settlers, wanting to give them a break.⁶⁵ One could as easily argue he was a friend to real-estate speculators, such as some persons for whom he did surveying. Without more information than raw votes, we can’t say for sure. Evidently Congress didn’t release Illinois from its contract.

    At Washington, DC, Sen. Henry Clay in 1832 proposed that all money from public land sales be distributed to the states. Clever details in Clay’s scheme promoted Whig policies, but President Jackson was acute enough to spy the wheels within wheels. When Congress passed Clay’s basic plan in 1833, Jackson used a pocket veto to thwart it. About a month after the Illinois legislature convened in December 1834, Lincoln introduced a resolution that seemed inspired by Clay’s effort. By Lincoln’s resolution, the legislature would have asked the congressional delegation of Illinois to seek a law granting the state at least 20 percent of all income from sale of public land in Illinois each year. His resolution used standard language requesting Representatives to act but instructing Senators to act, the theory of such language being that Representatives were responsible to the people while Senators took orders from the legislature (Senators were chosen by the state legislature). The principle of instruction was honored in that more civilized era; a state or federal legislator either obeyed instructions from the legislator’s elective constituency or resigned. Lincoln’s resolution got tabled. For once, and probably due to conflict between Jackson and Clay forces at the state-house, the general assembly turned away from opportunity to seek free money.⁶⁶

    Instead, the Vandalia solons tried another strategy to avoid taxes.

    The new strategy was establishment of a State Bank, an approach tried once before that had produced huge debt instead of revenue for the state government. Because the second State Bank was defended by Lincoln and became intertwined with a multimillion-dollar project that would devastate the government’s finances, a project for which Lincoln was a key proponent, let’s see what happened the first time the legislature established a bank, in the 1820s.

    Three basic types of bank existed: banks of deposit, discount, and circulation. Sometimes one institution performed more than one of those functions. A deposit bank accepted deposits from customers and gave access to those deposits via checks. This was a marvel, freeing commerce from having to transfer gold and silver coins across town and across a region. A few pen strokes moved wealth back and forth, speeding commerce. Discount banks accepted interest-bearing deposits and used them to offer short-term loans, making capital more productive than if simply stored in box. Deposit and discount functions didn’t create more money in a community, but had almost that effect, making money more available. Circulation banks, however, did create money. Sometimes called banks of issue, they issued promissory notes, basically bills owed by the bank, which could be passed hand-to-hand and which promised a specified sum in specie if presented at the issuing bank. Paper bank notes circulated as money, though technically only coins minted by the U.S. government were money. Bank notes (bills in standard denominations such as five, ten, and twenty dollars) functioned as currency in the West, where specie was in short supply. Banks emitted these bills in quantities far exceeding the banks’ specie reserves, on the theory that most notes would circulate around the community and never be presented for redemption. Thus a circulation bank with $10,000 in specie might issue $40,000 in paper bills, creating $30,000 out of thin air. Alas, such money returned from whence it came if bank note holders lost faith in the issuing bank and presented bills in excess of the specie reserve. That was a big problem for persons who had accepted bills in payment of debts, and perhaps an even bigger problem for persons who had contracted debts at high prices created by the inflationary pressure of plentiful paper bank note supply, but who then had to pay in deflated specie—a person who took on a $100 debt when inflated bank bills were abundant might have to sell ten times as much farm crop to repay the $100 in scarcer deflated money. Many debtors didn’t understand such a deflationary squeeze, but they readily understood that banks were ruining them.

    Aside from specie reserves, however, banks had another type of asset backing their paper money. Those assets were loans that the banks had made. Suppose a bank originally had $10,000 in specie reserves, had loaned out half that reserve (leaving $5,000 of gold and silver on hand), and had $40,000 of its bank notes circulating. If $7,500 of notes were presented for redemption, the bank would start calling in specie loans instead of renewing them, forcing borrowers to pay in specie so the bank could honor notes being presented. Typically these loan terminations would create the kind of deflationary squeeze noted in the previous paragraph. The bank and holders of its paper bills would be protected, but persons who had borrowed from the bank would have to sell off assets at ruinous prices in order to get enough specie to pay back the bank. Formerly thriving farmers and merchants could be converted to paupers, with their insolvency trickling across a community’s entire commerce, producing hard times for persons who had never borrowed from the bank. People may not have understood what was happening, but they perceived it acutely. In their thinking, as one later authority put it, banks did not await only those who came voluntarily to submit to them as borrowers—no. They reached with their filthy paper . . . those who never came near them. They drove real money out of use, replacing it with trash of their own issue, whose value no one knew and whose holders were at the mercy of wily schemers and scoundrels. In a democracy . . . the only proper money . . . was silver and gold.⁶⁷

    Thus, banks were controversial. They were hated, feared, and eagerly desired. Desired because across the West they had two purposes: to generate revenue for state governments and to loan money to citizens who lacked sufficient collateral to borrow from sources such as loan sharks. In the early twenty-first century, Americans of shaky financial worth turn to sharks for loans; in the early nineteenth century such Americans in the West turned to banks.

    The Illinois constitution forbade establishment of new banks except for a State Bank.⁶⁸ In 1821 the legislature established the first State Bank, with its charter to expire in ten years, and pledged the government’s credit as the basis of bank operations. This credit backed paper notes issued by the State Bank. Legislators chose a director from each county in the state. These dozens of supervisors had no particular knowledge of banking, but all were politicians.⁶⁹ That background heightened the bank’s sensitivity to desires of citizens. In approximately seven days, the entire supply of $300,000 in handsomely engraved bank notes was loaned out. Flush times burst upon Illinois. In the words of a later legislator’s son, The majority of those who borrowed from the bank did so with the deliberate intention of never repaying it. There is always, in all communities, a large class of people commendably honest in their ordinary dealings and business transaction, who have no scruples whatever in swindling the government or State, or town in which they live; and regard defrauding corporations as legitimate, and evidence of superior financial skill.⁷⁰ After touring the United States, Charles Dickens wrote:

    The following dialogue I have held a hundred times: Is it not a very disgraceful circumstance that such a man as So-and-so should be acquiring a large property by the most infamous and odious means, and, notwithstanding all the crimes of which he has been guilty, should be tolerated and abetted by your citizens? He is a public nuisance, is he not?Yes, sir.A convicted liar?Yes, sir.He has been kicked, and cuffed, and caned?Yes, sir.And he is utterly dishonorable, debased, and profligate?Yes, sir.In the name of wonder, then, what is his merit?Well, sir, he is a smart man.⁷¹

    Such attitude was encouraged by the Illinois legislature passing laws allowing borrowers to avoid payment on principal as long as they paid interest, allowing them also to recover any property seized for nonpayment of principal. Lincoln knew about that sort of thing, having served on a jury deciding a case about a debt owed to the bank. For some borrowers, laws rebated up to 25 percent of principal in addition to cancelling all interest, extinguishing loans by allowing borrowers to pay back less money than was lent; representative Lincoln served on a select committee of three handling legislation for such bank debtor relief and favored it in floor voting.⁷² Eventually the Illinois supreme court ruled that the first State Bank was unconstitutional and that borrowers didn’t owe anything.⁷³ As a newspaper letter writer observed, the effect was to transfer loan payment away from debtors and on to persons holding State Bank paper notes cheapened by the decision.⁷⁴

    For persons with deep enough patience and pockets as the 1820s ended, buying up the first State Bank’s notes at severe discount guaranteed a profit, as the state was obligated to pay them off at face value in specie equivalent by 1831. Fulfilling that obligation was the main reason why the legislature resorted to borrowing $100,000 from Samuel Wiggins, a loan already mentioned in context of the common school fund. Reportedly Wiggins increased his profit on the loan by furnishing some of it in depreciated State Bank notes that the state accepted at full face value⁷⁵ and that the state had to repay to Wiggins in specie equivalent of the face value. Public reaction was fierce. One newspaper letter writer shouted, Make haste to redeem ourselves from the millstone of ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS of interest, and ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS more of principal hanging on our necks, for which the state was pledged, ah, delivered over—bound head and foot to Wiggins & Co. last winter.⁷⁶ The credit of the State was saved, Gov. John Reynolds (The Old Ranger) declared, and the legislature was damned for all time to come.⁷⁷ The later Gov. Thomas Ford remembered legislators who consented to the Wiggins loan: They returned to their constituents, went meanly sneaking about like guilty things, making the most humble excuses and apologies. . . . The Wiggins’ loan was long a by-word in the mouths of the people. Many affected to believe that Wiggins had purchased the whole State, that the inhabitants for generations to come had been made over to him like cattle.⁷⁸

    Authorities differ on how much money the first State Bank cost Illinois, figures ranging from $300,000 to $400,000.⁷⁹ That money didn’t disappear, of course; it went into pockets of individuals, courtesy of Illinois taxpayers. They were still paying when Representative Lincoln went to Vandalia. In the winter of 1835, proponents of a new State Bank faced considerable skepticism.

    To understand what Lincoln and his colleagues in the legislature did about a new State Bank, we need to know a little about what President Jackson was doing regarding the Bank of the United States, also called the Monster of Chestnut Street. BUS was a private corporation handling much of the federal government’s finances. BUS acquired notes of other banks and presented them for redemption in specie. That practice compelled banks to be diligent about maintaining adequate specie reserves, enraging bankers who were more concerned about quick personal profits than about reliability of their institutions’ notes. These same bankers had personal wealth, commanding attention from elected officials. Also, President Jackson saw peril in a private corporation having authority to lend out revenue deposits of the U.S. government. Admittedly, BUS was accountable for turning over deposits to the government upon proper demand, but in the meantime BUS could use the government’s money to challenge or thwart government policies. In 1833, Jackson stopped depositing federal tax revenue at BUS. Jackson directed that federal tax revenue be deposited instead at state-controlled banks across the nation.

    State-controlled banks. While Illinois politicians were still shoveling dirt atop the first State Bank’s coffin, they once again scented free money.

    We need but a moment’s attention from our legislature—one single enactment, and we shall find capitalists ready to invest their money in an institution, which will enable the merchant, the miller, and the manufacturer, to receive the produce from our farmers without sacrifice to either. So said a letter in the Alton Spectator.⁸⁰ In the winter of 1833, Billy Herndon’s father, Archie, hosted a meeting at his Springfield tavern. William L. Big Red May was chairman, and Big Red’s law partner Stephen Logan spoke of a new State Bank that could replace the paper money that would disappear when BUS faded away. Logan also explained that if the State Bank became a depository for federal revenue, the bank could make that revenue productive for state purposes while the federal money was in the bank’s custody. In order to jump-start the bank, however, talk emerged about having the state government borrow a million dollars and furnish it to the bank as capital, with investors providing more capital through stock subscriptions. In that scenario, state finances would be intertwined with the bank from the start.⁸¹ The state’s preeminent Whig and Democratic newspapers called for a new bank.⁸²

    As soon as the legislature convened in 1834, Governor Duncan recommended establishing a new State Bank, albeit with considerable hesitation. The Sangamo Journal noted the reappearance of the very same arguments and promises [that] were held out in support of the establishment of the old State Bank.⁸³ The new bank’s charter was drawn up by Democrat Illinois Supreme Court justice Theophilus Tammany Smith, who lobbied for passage.⁸⁴ State senator W. L. D. Ewing thereafter introduced a bill calling for the state to borrow $2.5 million, half of which would be used to capitalize the bank, allowing $7.5 million of bank notes to be issued while generating so much income for the state through its investment in the bank that taxes would no longer be necessary.⁸⁵

    Jacksonville politician Stephen Douglas (who was hanging around the state capital for his own purposes) noted that if the federal government would deposit its Illinois Land Office receipts in the State Bank, such funds could be used for banking purposes, including bank note issuance—and indeed was used for such purposes in other states’ banks that were receiving federal deposits. Under existing circumstances, Douglas said, a bank may be necessary in this state in self defense. We collect in the state about seven hundred thousand dollars of public moneys at the Land Offices, which together with a like sum from Missouri is deposited in the Bank of Kentucky.⁸⁶ The removed money no longer circulated in Illinois. Douglas’s Jacksonville Whig rival John Hardin noted, On account of the great sums paid into the land office there is not much trading among the people, and this I think retards businessmen more than anything else.⁸⁷ The Democratic Vandalia Illinois Advocate and State Register declared that Illinois residents were already financing banking elsewhere, so they might as well retain that money for use by Illinois banking.⁸⁸

    Whigs supported banks in general and typically (though not unanimously) would vote for a State Bank, as would Democrats who supported Jackson’s project to shift federal deposits from BUS to state banks. Old-line Democrats regarded banks and their paper money as devil work, and would vote against. Happily for State Bank proponents, this split in the Democrat Party meant that it couldn’t close ranks on either side of the issue. So while a new bank didn’t exactly have bipartisan support, it had the even more appealing smell of a non-partisan measure.

    Rep. John Hamlin from the Peoria vicinity no doubt spoke for many colleagues, I cannot go for it unless something of importance in the way of our northern interests can be accomplished by so doing.⁸⁹ We can infer acquiescence to northern Illinois interests when bank headquarters was switched from the southern Illinois locale of Alton to the more northerly Springfield. At the climax of maneuvering, Rep. Nelson Nunnally of Edgar County declared, "Three weeks ago there were but few bank men in either house. However the north wanted a state bank (the mother to be located at Springfield), and the south wanted the Shawney bank; here the north and south formed a marriage contract."⁹⁰ The Shawneetown bank was a corporation wheezing along since Illinois Territory days, and now got revamped by the legislature, apparently as one of the trade-offs for getting a new State Bank. The Springfield State Bank’s linkage with managing state government finances strengthened Springfield’s bid to become the new seat of government. Branches of the new State Bank were scattered around the state, generating political support.

    Personal rewards were also a factor. Sen. Thomas Mather voted to establish the bank; he then became its president. Senators Benjamin Bond, William Davidson, Cyrus Edwards, Henry Mills, William Thomas, and Archibald Williams all voted for the bank; all became president or director of branches. All but Mather continued serving in the general assembly while they were State Bank officials. Of the eight Whig members in the house who voted to set up the bank, half became directors: Robert Blackwell, Jesse K. Dubois, John Hamlin, and William Ross.⁹¹ Bank supporters passed out direct personal rewards as well. In addition to alleged straight-up bribery, reports exist of one senator giving his vote in return for bank proponents supporting a road-upkeep tax, and a Democratic representative’s vote was allegedly given for the bank in return for bank proponents helping to select him as a state’s attorney. According to Rep. Nelson Nunnally, Rep. Orlando Ficklin opposed the bank but failed to attend the bank vote, an absence Nunnally described as crucial—the charter passed by one vote. Ficklin was selected as a state’s attorney shortly after the State Bank charter passed the house.⁹² New York legislator William H. Seward described the kind of atmosphere surrounding creation of banks:

    The lobby are becoming corrupt and impudent. Yesterday, after I had made up my mind to vote for the Leather Manufacturers’ Bank, I received a letter requesting me to vote for it, because it would be to the interest of the writer. I threw the letter into the fire. . . . The bank bill passed. To-day the gentleman appeared and told me that any amount of stock I wanted in the bank I could have at ten per cent. I told him I wanted no stock in the bank. . . . I have seen too much of these operations. . . . Though I see those now flourishing who practise mean and corrupt ways, I cannot think it always was so, or always will be.⁹³

    Abe Lincoln voted for the State Bank.

    At the same time as State Bank maneuvers were going on, the legislature was also debating and taking assorted actions regarding BUS. They document Lincoln’s stance on both banking and Jackson. Resolutions regarding BUS and Jackson’s conduct in general provoked what one newspaper called very animated debate.⁹⁴ William Gordon offered an amendment praising BUS. Abe Lincoln and John Stuart voted in favor of the amendment, but it lost.⁹⁵ By a vote of thirty-seven to fourteen, the house then passed a resolution against rechartering BUS (which would go out of business when its charter expired), Lincoln and Stuart voting against the resolution and thereby in favor of rechartering. By a vote of thirty-five to fifteen, the house supported Jackson’s removal of federal deposits from BUS, Lincoln and Stuart voting against the resolution and thereby against removal of deposits. By twenty-nine to twenty-two, the house declared President Jackson was doing an excellent job, Lincoln and Stuart voting no.⁹⁶

    100 DOLLARS REWARD. Ran away from the subscriber . . . Charles, a bright Mulatto, about five feet six inches high, twenty-five years of age, and has a downcast tho’ very mild countenance, and a mole on one of his cheeks. . . . It is supposed he will aim for Canada, as he has a brother there . . . and an acquaintance with several blacks who have made their escape from this place. Signed Joseph Charles, Jr., St. Louis.

    Sangamo Journal, August 2, 1834

    "Fifty Dollars Reward. Ranaway from the subscriber living three miles from New Madrid, Mo. . . . a negro man by the name of DAVE STROTHER. . . . He was seen at Major West’s one mile from Belleville, Ill." Signed Elizabeth Philips.

    Vandalia Illinois Advocate, September 10, 1834

    Internal improvements turned out to be the most important issue ever considered by the Illinois general assembly while Lincoln was a member. Isolation was a foe to be struck down. It had financial impact, cutting off potential markets for crops and raising costs of goods imported from other states. River improvement, canals, roads, and railways were seen as crucial to public well-being. Illinois had a major advantage in construction of internal improvements: The state was flat. No mountains had to be crossed, no canyons bridged. And while forests abounded, so did prairie, where construction crews had to cut down nothing more formidable than grass. The landscape was an internal improvement promoter’s dream come true. If you had a map dotted with settlements of Illinois, connecting those dots looked easy.

    Roads were the most basic of internal improvements. During Lincoln’s first session as a representative, the legislature passed many acts to locate roads.⁹⁷ These were acts of faith rather than expressions of reality. Little attention was paid to grade; a road going into New Salem climbed a hill such as a later era mastered only through cable cars. A traveler wrote of a number of marvelous flying leaps, plunging through slashes, where our vehicle floundered about like some unwieldy monster of the deep in shoal water; going at one time at a hard gallop to acquire the impetus necessary for clearing some difficulty, at another, proceeding with the utmost caution for fear of being precipitated from the ice-covered track into some ravine.⁹⁸ The same person recalled: On passing a house newly built, we had to avoid a deep hole dug right in the middle of the road (the state road, be it remembered), from which the clay for daubing the chimney had evidently been taken. . . . There is nothing uncommon in coming up to a fence which has been thrown across the road.⁹⁹ A highway traveler from Albion to Vandalia in October 1835 recorded: In the woods . . . one runs into stumps, which must be moved out of the way of the carriage. If one doesn’t want to be in constant fear of breaking a leg or his neck, he should travel through this country on foot.¹⁰⁰

    Lincoln introduced a bill allowing Samuel Musick to put a toll bridge near his ferry operation on Salt Creek, a Sangamon River tributary. Bridges were a western rarity. Recalling an 1835 trip, one person said: From the time I left Springfield, Ill., in October to go north, I had seldom found a bridge, except some short one over a deep and impassable ditch. . . . All rivers, creeks, and streams of less magnitude than those ferried, had to be forded, and if swollen, swum. Winter crossings across thin ice were especially grim.¹⁰¹ One traveler described western bridges of the 1830s as "consisting of two trees laid for bearers, crossed at right angles by split rails laid on en corduroy, and unfastened, except by a rail laid over their extremities and pinned down at each end, and which . . . allowed them to roll and clatter in such a way as to render the passage very insecure."¹⁰² Lincoln’s bill granted Musick a ten-year monopoly by forbidding establishment of other bridges or ferries within a mile of the toll bridge. The bill passed both houses and became law.¹⁰³ Supposedly Musick had sought the bridge because traffic on the Springfield-Peoria route was becoming heavy enough that a mere ferry constricted his ability to make money by controlling transit across Salt Creek.¹⁰⁴ Earlier in 1834, Lincoln had promoted a road leading to Musick’s ferry and linking Sangamon County with Jacksonville, designed to divert traffic away from Sangamo Town and through New Salem and Petersburg. Once Musick’s toll bridge was approved, the legislature began throwing more business toward him. From a select committee, Rep. John Dawson of Sangamon reported a bill to build a state road running from Jacksonville to Musick’s bridge.¹⁰⁵ This session of the legislature also passed a law establishing a thoroughfare running from William Crow’s place in Morgan County through Athens in Sangamon County and over to Musick’s bridge.¹⁰⁶

    Experience showed, however, that land roads were no answer to transportation needs. Promoters of canals and railways claimed to have the answer.

    Controversy existed about whether canals or railroads were more suitable to Illinois. Rail advocates noted that cars could run faster than canal boats.¹⁰⁷ Canal advocates questioned whether iron rails would break or become misaligned in freezing weather,¹⁰⁸ reducing railways’ all-weather advantage over iced-up canals. Rail supporters broadened the argument, saying railroads were better for public health: Canals promote the increase of stagnant waters and unwholesome effluvia. Mosquitoes bred along canal routes. In Indiana one young girl has left a bitter complaint, in print, of her various experiences along the way, and added that all the mosquitoes ever hatched in the mud puddles of Indiana were condensed into one humming, ravenous swarm about their heads.¹⁰⁹ Canals had other hazards.

    On Saturday last . . . a large breach was suddenly made in the embankment, between the third and fourth locks. The rush of water was tremendous. A boat crowded with ladies and gentlemen was at the moment passing down and, fortunately, had reached no further than the second lock. Had it been on the short level, where the breach occurred, it must inevitably have been carried out of the canal, and nothing but a miracle could have saved the lives of the passengers in their sudden and almost precipitous descent into the bed of Deer Creek.¹¹⁰

    An intangible but real factor in the internal improvements swirl was state pride. Was Illinois being left behind?

    This is an age of improvement, and it cannot be that Illinois will stand with folded arms, and see Ohio and Indiana rushing forward in the career of internal improvements, and herself make no efforts.

    Vandalia Illinois Advocate, January 7, 1835

    An internal improvement bill, proposing appropriations to the amount of $2,086,188.84, has been reported in the legislature of Pennsylvania.

    Sangamo Journal, January 26, 1833

    Connexion of the Chesapeake Bay with the Mississippi, is already in serious contemplation. . . . At whatever point this great conductor of a nation’s commerce terminates, there will a city spring up like magic.

    —Alton Spectator clipped in Sangamo Journal,

    January 3, 1835

    Should internal improvements be constructed by private corporations or by the state? Whigs tended to favor the corporation approach, in which private shareholders assumed the financial risk but guaranteed public access to the improvement. Many Democrats claimed to mistrust corporations so much as to believe only state sponsorship and ownership could guarantee access and protect the public’s interest in an improvement.

    The Democratic stance disregarded important points about internal improvements. First, under state sponsorship actual construction would be contracted out to private companies. Corporations would still do the work, only without any financial risk to themselves; risk would be assumed by the state government. Under such a scheme, however, officials appointed by the legislature would choose which companies got contracts. In 1834, one promoter who thirsted for the state’s money wrote:

    Now my dear friend allow me to scold you a little, for you deserve it, and no doubt anticipate already the subject—The Charter—The Charters—None have yet come to hand. . . . Away with your ficklenesss my Friend—send me the Charter for a Canal. We have now within our grasp one of the most splendid prizes ever presented before and if we do not seize it, ours will be the folly and the loss—indecision is the ruin of all great undertakings—I have been down into the State three times since the year commenced and have made it my business to prepare the public mind for a canal and for having it constructed immediately and indeed there seems no opposition now and the time is ripe for the work.

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