September 2, 1889.

JOB FLETCHER, SR., was born in Virginia in 1793; removed to Sangamon County, Illinois, in 1819. In 1826 he was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives, and in 1834 to the State Senate, where he served six years. He died in Sangamon County in 1872.

WILLIAM F. ELKINS was born in Kentucky in 1792. He went to Sangamon County, Illinois, in 1825. In 1828, 1836, and 1838 he was elected to the legislature. In 1831 he raised a company for the Black Hawk War, and was its captain. In 1861 President Lincoln appointed him Register of the United States Land Office at Springfield, an office which he held until 1872, when he resigned. He died at Decatur, Illinois, 1880.

ROBERT LANG WILSON was born in Pennsylvania in 1805. In 1831 he went to Kentucky; in 1833 removed to Sangamon County, Illinois; in 1836 was elected to the Illinois House. He removed to Sterling, Illinois, in 1840, and died there in 1880. For some years he was paymaster in the United States Army.

JOHN DAWSON was born in Virginia in 1791; he removed to Sangamon County, Illinois, in 1827. He was elected to the lower house of the legislature in 1830, 1834, 1836, 1838, and 1846. He was a member of the constitutional convention of 1847. He died November 12, 1850.

The other members of the "Long Nine" were Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Stone, Andrew McCormick, and Arthur Herndon.

LINCOLN IN THE TENTH ASSEMBLY OF ILLINOIS

In December Lincoln put away his surveying instruments to go to Vandalia for the opening session of the Tenth Assembly. Larger by fifty members than its predecessor, this body was as much superior in intellect as in numbers. It included among its members a future President of the United States, a future candidate for the same high office, six future United States Senators, eight future members of the National House of Representatives, a future Secretary of the Interior, and three future Judges of the State Supreme Court. Here sat side by side Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas; Edward Dickinson Baker, who represented at different times the States of Illinois and Oregon in the national councils; O.H. Browning, a prospective senator and future cabinet officer, and William L.D. Ewing, who had just served in the senate; John Logan, father of the late General John A. Logan; Robert M. Cullom, father of Senator Shelby M. Cullom; John A. McClernand, afterward member of Congress for many years, and a distinguished general in the late Civil War; and many others of national repute.²

ELIJAH PARISH LOVEJOY.

From a silhouette loaned by Mr. Owen Lovejoy of Princeton, Illinois. Elijah Lovejoy was born in Maine in 1802. When twenty-five years old he emigrated to St. Louis, where he at first did journalistic work on a Whig newspaper. In 1833 he entered the ministry, and was soon after made editor of a religious newspaper, the "St. Louis Observer." Mr. Lovejoy began, in 1835, to turn his paper against slavery, but the opposition he found in Missouri was so strong that in the summer of 1836 he decided to move his paper to Alton, Illinois. Before he could get his plant out of St. Louis a mob destroyed the greater part. The remainder he succeeded in getting to Alton, but a mob met it there and threw it into the river. The citizens of Alton, ashamed of this act, gave Mr. Lovejoy money to buy a new press. At first the tone of the paper was moderate, but gradually it grew more emphatic in its utterances against slavery. The pro-slavery element of the town protested, indignation meetings were held, and in August, 1837, his press was thrown into the river. Another was immediately bought, which, in September, followed its predecessor to the bottom of the Mississippi. When it was known in Alton that Mr. Lovejoy had ordered a fourth press, and had resolved to fight the opposition to the end, a public meeting was called, at which many speeches were made on both sides, and he was urged to leave Alton. This he refused to do, and his fourth press was landed on November 6, 1837. The next night a mob attacked the warehouse where it was placed, and in the riot one of the assailants, Lyman Bishop, and Elijah Lovejoy himself were killed.

The members came to Vandalia full of hope and exultation. In their judgment it needed only a few months of legislation to put their State by the side of New York; and from the opening of the session they were overflowing with excitement and schemes. In the general ebullition of spirits which characterized the Assembly, Lincoln had little share. Only a week after the opening of the session he wrote to a friend, Mary Owens, at New Salem, that he had been ill, though he believed himself to be about well then; and he added: "But that, with other things I cannot account for, have conspired, and have gotten my spirits so low that I feel I would rather be any place in the world than here. I really cannot endure the thought of staying here ten weeks."

Though depressed, he was far from being inactive. The Sangamon delegation, in fact, had their hands full, and to no one of the nine had more been entrusted than to Lincoln. In common with almost every delegation, they had been instructed by their constituents to adopt a scheme of internal improvements complete enough to give every budding town in Illinois easy communication with the world. This for the State in general; for Sangamon County in particular, they had been directed to secure the capital. The change in the State's centre of population made it advisable to move the seat of government northward from Vandalia, and Springfield was anxious to secure it. To Lincoln was entrusted the work of putting through the bill to remove the capital. In the same letter quoted from above he tells Miss Owens, "Our chance to take the seat of government to Springfield is better than I expected." Regarding the internal improvements scheme he feels less confident: "Some of the legislature are for it, and some against; which has the majority, I cannot tell."

LINCOLN IN 1863 OR 1864.

From a photograph by Brady, and kindly loaned by Mr. Noah Brooks for this reproduction.