In this election year, political aspirants, already churning out those brochures designed to tell voters what they want to hear, might consider a hard lesson learned by Illinois' greatest statesman.

It was while honing his own career as a young lawmaker that Abraham Lincoln came to understand the necessary balance between following and leading. And the experiences of that 19th century politician from Sangamon County might make a useful campaign chapbook today.

After all, state Rep. Lincoln and his colleagues in the frontier-era legislature of the 1830s faced many of the same policy questions, many of the same political dilemmas, as elected officials today. Then, as now, they struggled with the issue of gambling, questioned high interest rates on loans, debated ways to spread education and improve transportation. And all the while, they had to keep an eye to the next election if they wanted their political careers to last.

But Lincoln didn' t need to poll his Sangamon County neighbors to know what they wanted. The "hot topic" in his day was "internal improvements." What the voters in New Salem wanted, along with every other hamlet in the state when Lincoln first took his legislative seat in 1834, was a state-funded transportation system. Reasonably, they saw canals and rail lines as a means to economic development, a way to boost the state' s population and bank account. Farmers wanted it. Retailers and developers wanted it. The state' s powerful media wanted it. And so did Lincoln.

In fact, the plan to build a system of canals and railroads was so popular, wild celebrations broke out in Chicago when word of the legislature' s vote reached that rugged trading post. "Illinois public opinion perhaps was never more insistent and more unanimous than in 1836 and 1837 when the issue of internal improvements was before the people," Paul Simon wrote in Lincoln' s Preparation for Greatness, his 1965 book about Lincoln' s legislative years.

Yet the $10 million plan was badly conceived and executed, and way too expensive. Simon adds, "The most distinguished legislative body Illinois ever had was moved by the pressure of public sentiment to pass a foolish piece of legislation that burdened the state with debt under which it labored for a generation." Of course, many historians argue Lincoln had another purpose - moving the capital from Vandalia to Springfield - and a willingness to trade votes to that end. Though Simon debunks the need for such logrolling or horse trading on the transportation issue, Douglas Wilson, who took his own look at Lincoln' s legislative years in Honor' s Voice, does credit the future president with enough political astuteness to do some dealing.

Whatever Lincoln' s motives in supporting the transportation plan, by the time he moved on to Congress and the presidency, Simon believes he had learned that pop-ular sentiment sometimes needs resisting. He perceived what people wanted, yet employed the wisdom, and the courage, to take them where they needed to go.



Lincoln' s understanding of leadership is revered around the world. And he learned it in the Illinois legislature. 

' In the absence of sharply partisan issues, the wise political aspirant presented himself as the champion of what people already wanted.'
Douglas L. Wilson
Honor' s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln

' Experience taught him both the power of public opinion and how wrong it can be at times.'
Paul Simon
Lincoln' s Preparation for Greatness: The Illinois Legislative Years

4 / February 2000 Illinois Issues