he wrote afterward; but hardly had he “touched the goose quill” before his heart smote him.  Longing for his home; resentment at the whites; obstinacy; brooding over the bad counsels of White Cloud and his disciple Neapope, an agitating Indian who had recently been East to visit the British and their Indian allies, and who assured Black Hawk that the Winnebagoes, Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottawottomies would join him in a struggle for his land, and that the British would send him “guns, ammunition, provisions, and clothing early in the spring”—­all persuaded the Hawk that he would be successful if he made an effort to drive out the whites.  In spite of the persuasion of many of his friends and of the Indian agent in the country, he crossed the river on April 6, 1832, and with some five hundred braves, his squaws and children, marched to the Prophet’s town, thirty-five miles up the Rock River.

As soon as they heard of Black Hawk’s invasion, the settlers fled in a panic to the forts in the vicinity, and they rained petitions for protection on Governor Reynolds.  General Atkinson, who commanded a company at Fort Armstrong, wrote the governor he must have help; and accordingly on the 16th of April Governor Reynolds sent out “influential messengers” with a sonorous summons.  It was one of these messengers riding into New Salem who put an end to Lincoln’s canvassing for the legislature, freed him from Offutt’s expiring grocery, and led him to enlist.

[Illustration:  Elijah Iles, captain of company in which Lincoln served as private in black hawk war.

From a photograph made for this Magazine.

After a painting by the late Mrs. Obed Lewis, niece of Major Iles, and owned by Mr. Obed Lewis, Springfield, Illinois.  Elijah Iles was born in Kentucky, March 28, 1796, and when young went to Missouri.  There he heard marvellous stories about the Sangamon Valley, and he resolved to go thither.  Springfield had just been staked out in the wilderness, and he reached the place in time to erect the first building—­a rude hut in which he kept a store.  This was in 1821.  “In the early days in Illinois,” he wrote in 1883, “it was hard to find good material for law-makers.  I was elected a State Senator in 1826, and again for a second term.  The Senate then comprised thirteen members, and the House twenty-five.”  In 1827 he was elected major in the command of Colonel T. McNeal, intending to fight the Winnebagoes, but no fighting occurred.  In the Black Hawk War of 1832, after his term as a private in Captain Dawson’s company had expired, he was elected captain of a new company of independent rangers.  In this company Lincoln reenlisted as a private.  Major Iles lived at Springfield all his life.  He died September 4, 1883.]

There was no time to waste.  The volunteers were ordered to be at Beardstown, nearly forty miles from New Salem, on April 22d.  Horses, rifles, saddles, blankets were to be secured, a company formed.  It was work of which the settlers were not ignorant.  Under the laws of the State every able-bodied male inhabitant between eighteen and forty-five was obliged to drill twice a year or pay a fine of one dollar.  “As a dollar was hard to raise,” says one of the old settlers, “everybody drilled.”