This fruitless warfare exasperated the volunteers; they threatened to leave, and their officers had great difficulty in making them obey orders.  On reaching a point in the Rock River, beyond which lay the Indian country, a company under Colonel Zachary Taylor refused to cross, and held a public indignation meeting, urging that they had volunteered to defend the State, and had the right, as independent American citizens, to refuse to go out of its borders.  Taylor heard them to the end, and then said:  “I feel that all gentlemen here are my equals; in reality, I am persuaded that many of them will, in a few years, be my superiors, and perhaps, in the capacity of members of Congress, arbiters of the fortunes and reputation of humble servants of the republic, like myself.  I expect then to obey them as interpreters of the will of the people; and the best proof that I will obey them is now to observe the orders of those whom the people have already put in the place of authority to which many gentlemen around me justly aspire.  In plain English, gentlemen and fellow-citizens, the word has been passed on to me from Washington to follow Black Hawk and to take you with me as soldiers.  I mean to do both.  There are the flatboats drawn up on the shore, and here are Uncle Sam’s men drawn up behind you on the prairie.”  The volunteers were quick-witted men, and knew true grit when they met it.  They dissolved their meeting and crossed the river without Uncle Sam’s men being called into action.

[Illustration:  A facsimile of an election return written by Lincoln as clerk in 1832.  Now first published.

From the original now on file in the County Clerk’s office, Springfield, Illinois.  The first civil office Lincoln ever held was that of election clerk, and the return made by him, of which a facsimile is here presented, was his first official document.  The New Salem election of September 20, 1832, has the added interest of having been held at “the house of John McNeil,” the young merchant who was then already in love with Ann Rutledge, the young girl to whom Lincoln afterwards became engaged.  All the men whose names appear on this election return are now dead except William McNeely, now residing at Petersburg.  John Clary lived at Clary’s Grove; John R. Herndon was “Row” Herndon, whose store Berry and Lincoln purchased, and at whose house Lincoln for a time boarded; Baxter Berry was a relative of Lincoln’s partner in the grocery business, and Edmund Greer was a school-teacher, and afterward a justice of the peace and a surveyor.  James Rutledge was the keeper of the Rutledge tavern and the father of Ann Rutledge; Hugh Armstrong was the head of the numerous Armstrong family; “Uncle Jimmy” White lived on a farm five miles from New Salem, and died about thirty years ago in the eightieth year of his age; William Green (spelled by the later members of the family with a final “e”) was the father of William G. Greene, Lincoln’s associate in Offutt’s store; and as to Bowling Green, more is said elsewhere.  In the following three or four years, very few elections were held at which Lincoln was not a clerk.  It is a somewhat singular fact that Lincoln, though clerk of this election, is not recorded as voting.—­J.  McCan Davis.]