E.D.  Taylor................   1127
John T. Stuart..............   991
Achilles Morris.............   945
Peter Cartwright............   815

Under the plurality rule, these four had been elected.  The unsuccessful candidates were: 

A.G.  Herndon..............    806
W. Carpenter...............   774
J. Dawson..................   717
A. Lincoln.................   657
T.M.  Neale................    571
R. Quinton.................   485
Z. Peter...................   214
E. Robinson................   169
---- Kirkpatrick...........    44

The returns show that the total vote of the county was about twenty-one hundred and sixty-eight.  Comparing this with the vote cast for Lincoln, we see that he received nearly one third of the total county vote, notwithstanding his absence from the canvass, notwithstanding the fact that his acquaintanceship was limited to the neighborhood of New Salem, notwithstanding the sharp competition.  Indeed, his talent and fitness for active practical politics were demonstrated beyond question by the result in his home precinct of New Salem, which, though he ran as a Whig, gave two hundred and seventy-seven votes for him and only three against him.  Three months later it gave one hundred and eighty-five for the Jackson and only seventy for the Clay electors, proving Lincoln’s personal popularity.  He remembered for the remainder of his life with great pride that this was the only time he was ever beaten on a direct vote of the people.

The result of the election brought him to one of the serious crises of his life, which he forcibly stated in after years in the following written words: 

“He was now without means and out of business, but was anxious to remain with his friends, who had treated him with so much generosity, especially as he had nothing elsewhere to go to.  He studied what he should do; thought of learning the blacksmith trade, thought of trying to study law, rather thought he could not succeed at that without a better education.”

The perplexing problem between inclination and means to follow it, the struggle between conscious talent and the restraining fetters of poverty, has come to millions of young Americans before and since, but perhaps to none with a sharper trial of spirit or more resolute patience.  Before he had definitely resolved upon either career, chance served not to solve, but to postpone his difficulty, and in the end to greatly increase it.

New Salem, which apparently never had any good reason for becoming a town, seems already at that time to have entered on the road to rapid decay.  Offutt’s speculations had failed, and he had disappeared.  The brothers Herndon, who had opened a new store, found business dull and unpromising.  Becoming tired of their undertaking, they offered to sell out to Lincoln and Berry on credit, and took their promissory notes in payment.  The new partners, in that excess of hope which usually attends all new ventures, also bought two other similar establishments that were in extremity, and for these likewise gave their notes.  It is evident that the confidence which Lincoln had inspired while he was a clerk in Offutt’s store, and the enthusiastic support he had received as a candidate, were the basis of credit that sustained these several commercial transactions.