Lincoln's Preparation for Greatness: The Illinois Legislative Years (review)

BOOK REVIEWS81 Lincoln's Preparation for Greatness: The Illinois Legislative Years. By Paul Simon. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971. Pp. xv, 335. $6.95.) Save for his major commitment to the practice of law, Abraham Lincoln devoted more years of service to membership in the Illinois General Assembly than to any of his various occupations or forms of public service. One might well ask what there is in Lincoln's eight years (18341842 ) as an Illinois legislator that would preview or foreshadow, and perhaps even clarify and explain, his remarkable performance as President of the United States a quarter of a century later. Can we, by going to the political "roots" come any closer to the "real" Lincoln? The author thinks so, and with his spare, journalistic style, Paul Simon has produced a work both instructive to the layman and valuable to the professional historian and Lincoln scholar. Though Lincoln naturally assumes the leading role, Preparation for Greatness provides a rich backdrop of early Illinois society and politics which makes it much more than the story of a single legislative career. Simon writes with great feeling about Lincoln's legislative years. He was himself a member of the Illinois General Assembly for fourteen years (1955-1969) and will soon begin a new career as a congressman from the 24th Illinois District. Though it is hardly fair to single out one emphasis above all others, Chapters 3 ("One of the Long Nine") and 4 ("Lincoln the Log Roller") probably represent the most original and permanent of the volume's many contributions. Simon goes to great pains to refute the traditional view that Lincoln and his Sangamon County colleagues engaged in "log rolling" tactics during the 1836-37 legislative session in order to move the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield. Though his arguments are quite plausible and persuasive, the fact still remains that a reckless Internal Improvement measure was passed (over an executive veto) and the state capital was moved to Springfield under circumstances which will always be less than completely clear. Old legends die hard! This volume might well be read in conjunction with Donald Riddle's two fine books, Lincoln Runs for Congress (1948) and Congressman Abraliam Lincoln (1957), which deal with his brief congressional career. Lincoln's experience in both legislative bodies certainly belies any claim to infallibility on his behalf. One of the last to abandon the great sinking ship of internal improvements, Lincoln's record reminds one of his own comment about "hugging bad bargains all the closer." Simon would have us believe that this disaster made him chary of public opinion in general and led directly to his opposition to the Mexican War—a notion which Riddle decisively contradicts. While these authors agree that Lincoln's position on internal improvements and his stand on the Mexican War add little to his stature, in all fairness it must be said that they concede his motives to have been both clear and consistent . In the case of internal improvements he was probably correct 82CIVIL WAR HISTORY on both policy and principle, while on the matter of his Mexican War opposition, and admitting its political overtones, he may very well have been right—but for the wrong reasons. One cannot read either Simon's or Riddle's books without realizing that Abraham Lincoln was first and last a politician. His field of action and expression was thereby limited both by the recurring need to be reelected and his own hopes for personal advancement within the oarty. These books agree that Lincoln was not a political innovator. Riddle finds that the efforts of the Sangamon congressman, particularly his "Spot Resolutions," were generally derived from Whig orthodoxy; Simon characterizes Lincoln's legislative experience as "not particularly creative." What success Lincoln enjoyed in the Illinois General Assembly was founded upon hard work, congeniality, and a steady party spirit. Party regulars rarely strike their colleague as being men of destiny. Lincoln was no exception. It was not so much that the young Lincoln was in the role of "prophet without honor" or "unappreciated genius," but rather that the Lincoln of the 1830's and 1840's, viewed objectively, was neither prophet...