of Illinois_, 88.
[28] Ford, _Hist. of Illinois_, 81.
[29] See anecdote in _The Good Old Times in McLean County_, 48.
[30] "The jerks" was the graphic name of an attack not uncommon at these
religious meetings.
[31] See Herndon, 104, 118; Holland has some singular remarks on this
subject, p. 83; N. and H., i. 121, say that Lincoln was "clean of
speech,"--an agreeable statement, for which one would like to have some
authority.
[32] Ford, _Hist. of Illinois_, 82-86.
[33] Ford, _Hist. of Illinois_, 55, 86, 88,104; Herndon, 103; N. and H.
i. 107; Lamon, 124, 230.
CHAPTER II
THE START IN LIFE
In Illinois during the years of Lincoln's boyhood the red man was
retiring sullenly before the fatal advance of the white man's frontier.
Shooting, scalping, and plundering forays still occurred, and in the
self-complaisant reminiscences of the old settlers of that day the
merciless and mysterious savage is apt to lend to the narrative the
lively coloring of mortal danger.[34] In the spring of 1832 a noted
chief of the Sacs led a campaign of such importance that it lives in
history under the dignified title of "the Black Hawk war." The Indians
gathered in numbers so formidable that Governor Reynolds issued a call
for volunteers to aid the national forces. Lincoln, left unemployed by
the failure of Offut, at once enlisted. The custom then was, so soon as
there were enough recruits for a company, to elect a captain by vote.
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