It was not long, however, before all uncertainty about internal improvements was over.  The people were determined to have them, and the Assembly responded to their demands by passing an act which provided, at State expense, for railroads, canals, or river improvements in almost every county in Illinois.  To compensate those counties to which they could not give anything else, they voted them a sum of money for roads and bridges.  No finer bit of imaginative work was ever done, in fact, by a legislative body, than the map of internal improvements made by the Tenth Assembly of Illinois.

There was no time to estimate exactly the cost of these fine plans.  Nor did they feel any need of estimates; that was a mere matter of detail.  They would vote a fund, and when that was exhausted they would vote more; and so they appropriated sum after sum:  one hundred thousand dollars to improve the Rock River; one million eight hundred thousand dollars to build a road from Quincy to Danville; four million dollars to complete the Illinois and Michigan Canal; two hundred and fifty thousand for the Western Mail Route—­in all, some twelve million dollars.  To carry out the elaborate scheme, they provided a commission, one of the first duties of which was to sell the bonds of the State to raise the money for the enterprise.  The majority of the Assembly seem not to have entertained for a moment an idea that there would be any difficulty in selling at a premium the bonds of Illinois.  “On the contrary,” as General Linder says in his “Reminiscences,” “the enthusiastic friends of the measure maintained that, instead of there being any difficulty in obtaining a loan of the fifteen or twenty millions authorized to be borrowed, our bonds would go like hot cakes, and be sought for by the Rothschilds, and Baring Brothers, and others of that stamp; and that the premiums which we would obtain upon them would range from fifty to one hundred per cent., and that the premium itself would be sufficient to construct most of the important works, leaving the principal sum to go into our treasury, and leave the people free from taxation for years to come.”

[Illustration:  Stuart and Lincoln’s professional card.

The professional card of Stuart and Lincoln shows that the copartnership began April 12, 1837.  The card appeared in the next issue of the “Sangamo Journal,” and was continued until Lincoln became the partner of Judge Logan, in 1841.]

THE REMOVAL OF THE CAPITAL TO SPRINGFIELD.

Although Lincoln favored and aided in every way the plan for internal improvements, his real work was in securing the removal of the capital to Springfield.  The task was by no means an easy one to direct; for outside of the “Long Nine” there was, of course, nobody particularly interested in Springfield, and there were delegations from a dozen other counties hot to secure the capital for their own constituencies.