Lincoln's Springfield

Twenty-eight-year-old Abraham Lincoln settled in Springfield in 1837, unmarried, unlearned, unrefined, and with "no wealthy or popular relations to recommend me." By the day before his fifty-second birthday, when he left, he had become a profoundly changed man: a husband and father, financially secure, with intellectual and moral abilities grown to match his towering physical stature and deeply held political convictions tempered by empathy and keen insight into the human condition. On the public square and in surrounding buildings, Lincoln and his family and friends bought goods, attended parties, enjoyed picnics and parades, watched theatricals, and listened to concerts and lectures. In law offices and courtrooms overlooking the square he honed his powers of persuasion, and in storefront discussions and street-corner gatherings he perfected the art of politics. As his understanding matured and his convictions deepened, he took his place among the leaders of his time, addressing the people of the nation in powerful and eloquent words that echoed beyond the small prairie capital. Springfield was the center of Lincoln's world for a quarter century. When he arrived, the town, like Lincoln himself, was shaking off its rough frontier beginnings: the legislature had recently named it the state capital, but there was no statehouse; fewer than two thousand people lived there; the unpaved streets were dusty in summer and hopelessly muddy in winter; cows, chickens, and pigs wandered freely; and frogs croaked in undrained swamps. Yet to Lincoln, Springfield had more grandeur than the backwoods settlements from which he had come. As Lincoln grew in economic status and social position, so did the city. When he left in February 1861 to assume the presidency, Springfield had almost ten thousand inhabitants and many impressive buildings and social institutions. Neither Lincoln nor his city was frontier anymore.

Springfield, Illinois · United States