fected by the "Long Nine" during this session of the
Legislature was the removal of the State Capital from Vandalia to
Springfield. It was accomplished by dint of shrewd and persistent
management, in which Lincoln was a leading spirit. Mr. Robert L. Wilson,
one of his colleagues, says: "When our bill to all appearance was dead
beyond resuscitation, and our friends could see no hope, Lincoln never
for a moment despaired. Collecting his colleagues in his room for
consultation, his practical common-sense, his thorough knowledge of
human nature, made him an overmatch for his compeers, and for any man I
have ever known."

Lincoln's reputation as an orator was gradually extending beyond the
circle of his friends and constituents. He was gaining notice as a ready
and forcible speaker, with shrewd and sensible ideas which he expressed
with striking originality and independence. He was invited to address
the Young Men's Lyceum at Springfield, January 27, 1837, and read a
carefully prepared paper on "The Perpetuation of Our Political
Institutions," which was afterwards published in the Springfield
"Weekly Journal." The address was crude and strained in style, but the
feeling pervading it was fervent and honest, and its patriotic sentiment
and sound reflection made it effective for the occasion. A few
paragraphs culled from this paper, some of them containing remarkable
prophetic passages, afford a clue to the stage of intellectual
development which Lincoln had reached at the age of twenty-seven, and an
interesting contrast with the terser style of his later years.

In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the
American people, find our account running under date of the
nineteenth century of the Christian era. We find ourselves in the
peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards
extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate.
We find ourselves under the government of a system of political
institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and
religious liberty than any of which the history of former times
tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves
the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not
in the acquisition or establishment of them; they are a legacy
bequeathed us by a once hardy, brave and patriotic, but now
lamented and departed race of ancestors.