John G. Nicolay, A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln, condensed from Nicolay and Hayes' Abraham Lincoln: A History

[33] real service, not merely to enjoy military rank or reap military glory. On the same day, therefore, on which he was mustered out as captain, he reenlisted, and became Private Lincoln in Captain Iles's company of mounted volunteers, organized apparently principally for scouting service, and sometimes called the Independent Spy Battalion. Among the other officers who imitated this patriotic example were General Whiteside and Major John T. Stuart, Lincoln's later law partner. The Independent Spy Battalion, having faithfully performed its new term of service, was finally mustered out on June 16, 1832. Lincoln and his messmate, George M. Harrison, had the misfortune to have their horses stolen the day before, but Harrison relates:

I laughed at our fate and he joked at it, and we all started off merrily. The generous men of our company walked and rode by turns with us, and we fared about equal with the rest. But for this generosity our legs would have had to do the better work; for in that day this dreary route furnished no horses to buy or to steal, and, whether on horse or afoot, we always had company, for many of the horses' backs were too sore for riding.

Lincoln must have reached home about August I, for the election was to occur in the second week of that month, and this left him but ten days in which to push his claims for popular indorsement. His friends, however, had been doing manful duty for him during his three months absence, and he lost nothing in public estimation by his prompt enlistment to defend the frontier. Successive announcements in the Journal had by this time swelled the list of candidates to thirteen. But Sangamon County was entitled to only four representatives, and when the returns came in Lincoln was among those defeated. Nevertheless, he made a very