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State Capital from Vandalia, and having received such encouraging assurances from Major John T. Stuart and other leading citizens, he felt confident of a good start.1 He had little, if any, money, but hoped to find in Springfield, as he had in New Salem, good and influential friends, who, recognizing alike his honesty and his nobility of character, would aid him whenever a crisis came and their help was needed.
In this hope he was by no means in error, for his subsequent history shows that he indeed united his friends to himself with hooks of steel.
I had up to this time frequently seen Mr. Lincoln--had often, while visiting my cousins, James and Rowan Herndon, at New Salem, met him at their house — but became warmly attached to him soon after his removal to Springfield.
There was something in his tall and angular frame, his ill-fitting garments, honest face, and lively humor that imprinted his individuality on my affection and regard.
What impression I made on him I had no means of knowing till many years afterward.
He was my senior by nine years, and I looked up to him, naturally enough, as my superior in everything — a thing I continued to do till the end of his days.
1 “Lincoln used to come to our office — Stuart's and mine — in Springfield from New Salem and borrow law-books. Sometimes he walked but generally rode. He was the most uncouth looking young man I ever saw. He seemed to have but little to say: seemed to feel timid, with a tinge of sadness visible in the countenance, but when he did talk all this disappeared for the time and he demonstrated that he was both strong and acute. He surprised us more and more at every visit.” --Henry E. Dummer, Statement, Sept. 16th, 1865.
The Herndon's Lincoln Pubishing Company, Springfield, Ill., 1888.
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