This text is part of:
[102]
who had in charge the governmental machinery.
Lincoln's course is all that interests us. Though he may not have distinctly avowed himself a Whig, yet, as one of his friends asserted, “he stood openly on Whig principles.”
He favored a national bank, a liberal system of internal improvements, and a high protective tariff.
The handbill or circular alluded to announcing his candidacy was a sort of literary fulmination, but on account of its length I deem it unnecessary to insert the whole of it here.
I have been told that it was prepared by Lincoln, but purged of its most glaring grammatical errors by James McNamar, who afterwards became Lincoln's rival in an important love affair.1
The circular is dated March 9, 1832, and addressed to the “People of Sangamon county.”
In it he takes up all the leading questions of the day: railroads, river navigation, internal improvements, and usury.
He .dwells particularly on the matter of public education, alluding to it as the most important subject before the people.
Realizing his own defects arising from a lack of school instruction he contends that every man and his children, however poor, should be permitted to obtain at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled “to read the Scriptures and other works both of a moral and religious nature for themselves.”
The closing
1 In a letter dated May 5, 1866, McNamar says:
“I corrected at his request some of the grammatical errors in his first address to the voters of Sangamon county, his principal hobby being the navigation of the Sangamon river.”
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.