At Clary’s Grove, near New Salem, lived a formidable set of young ruffians, over whose somewhat disguised chivalry of temper the staid historian of Lincoln’s youth becomes rapturous.  They were given to wrecking the store of any New Salem tradesman who offended them; so it shows some spirit in Mr. Denton Offutt that he backed his Abraham Lincoln to beat their Jack Armstrong in a wrestling match.  He did beat him; moreover, some charm in the way he bore himself made him thenceforth not hated but beloved of Clary’s Grove in general, and the Armstrongs in particular.  Hannah Armstrong, Jack’s wife, thereafter mended and patched his clothes for him, and, years later, he had the satisfaction, as their unfeed advocate, of securing the acquittal of their son from a charge of murder, of which there is some reason to hope he may not have been guilty.  It is, by the way, a relief to tell that there once was a noted wrestling match in which Lincoln was beaten; it is characteristic of the country that his friends were sure there was foul play, and characteristic of him that he indignantly denied it.

Within a year Offutt’s store, in the phrase of the time, “petered out,” leaving Lincoln shiftless.  But the victor of Clary’s Grove, with his added mastery of “Kirkham’s Grammar,” was now ripe for public life.  Moreover, his experience as a waterman gave him ideas on the question, which then agitated his neighbours, whether the Sangamon River could be made navigable.  He had a scheme of his own for doing this; and in the spring of 1832 he wrote to the local paper a boyish but modest and sensible statement of his views and ambitions, announcing that he would be a candidate in the autumn elections for the State Legislature.

Meanwhile he had his one experience of soldiering.  The Indian chief, Black Hawk, who had agreed to abide west of the Mississippi, broke the treaty and led his warriors back into their former haunts in Northern Illinois.  The Governor of the State called for volunteers, and Lincoln became one.  He obtained the elective rank of captain of his company, and contrived to maintain some sort of order in that, doubtless brave, but undisciplined body.  He saw no fighting, but he could earn his living for some months, and stored up material for effective chaff in Congress long afterwards about the military glory which General Cass’s supporters for the Presidency wished to attach to their candidate.  His most glorious exploit consisted in saving from his own men a poor old friendly Indian who had fallen among them.  A letter of credentials, which the helpless creature produced, was pronounced a forgery and he was about to be hanged as a spy, when Lincoln appeared on the scene, “swarthy with resolution and rage,” and somehow terrified his disorderly company into dropping their prey.