LINCOLN A CAPTAIN.

Preparations were quickly made, and by April 22d the men were at Beardstown.  Here each company elected its own officers, and Lincoln became a candidate for the captaincy of the company from Sangamon to which he belonged.

His friend Greene gave another reason than ambition to explain his desire for the captaincy.  One of the “odd jobs” which Lincoln had taken since coming into Illinois was working in a saw-mill for a man named Kirkpatrick.  In hiring Lincoln, Kirkpatrick had promised to buy him a cant-hook to move heavy logs.  Lincoln had proposed, if Kirkpatrick would give him two dollars, to move the logs with a common hand-spike.  This the proprietor had agreed to, but when pay day came he refused to keep his word.  When the Sangamon company of volunteers was formed, Kirkpatrick aspired to the captaincy; and Lincoln, knowing it, said to Greene:  “Bill, I believe I can now pay Kirkpatrick for that two dollars he owes me on the cant-hook.  I’ll run against him for captain;” and he became a candidate.  The vote was taken in a field, by directing the men at the command “march” to assemble around the man they wanted for captain.  When the order was given, three-fourths of the men gathered around Lincoln.[B] In Lincoln’s curious third-person autobiography he says he was elected “to his own surprise;” and adds, “He says he has not since had any success in life which gave him so much satisfaction.”

[Illustration:  A discharge from service in black hawk war signed by Abraham Lincoln, as captain.]

The company was a motley crowd of men.  Each had secured for his outfit what he could get, and no two were equipped alike.  Buckskin breeches prevailed.  There was a sprinkling of coon-skin caps, and the blankets were of the coarsest texture.  Flintlock rifles were the usual arm, though here and there a man had a Cramer.  Over the shoulder of each was slung a powder-horn.  The men had, as a rule, as little regard for discipline as for appearances, and when the new captain gave an order were as likely to jeer at it as to obey it.  To drive the Indians out was their mission, and any orders which did not bear directly on that point were little respected.  Lincoln himself was not familiar with military tactics, and made many blunders of which he used to tell afterwards with relish.  One of these was an early experience in drilling.  He was marching with a front of over twenty men across a field, when he desired to pass through a gateway into the next inclosure.

“I could not for the life of me,” said he, “remember the proper word of command for getting my company endwise, so that it could get through the gate; so, as we came near the gate, I shouted, ’This company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on the other side of the gate!’”