Lincoln received many invitations to speak in New England and delivered addresses in all of the prominent cities, where he created the same favorable impression and awakened the same popular enthusiasm. After his inauguration as President, Lincoln made no formal speeches except his two inaugural addresses, but scarcely a week passed that he did not deliver some pleasant little speech from the balcony of the White House or at one of the military camps, and during his journey to Washington he was especially happy in his treatment of the serious questions which were troubling the public mind. IV A PRAIRIE POLITICIAN When Abraham Lincoln was twenty-two years old and a clerk in Denton Offutt's store he offered himself to the voters of New Salem and vicinity as a candidate for the Illinois Legislature. It was the year that the Whigs held their first National Convention and nominated Henry Clay as their candidate for President; and from that time, as has been seen, Lincoln made politics as well as law a profession, and participated actively in every campaign until he was elected President. In those days nominations for office were made by announcement and not by conventions, and, according to custom, with thirteen other citizens fired with similar ambition, Lincoln issued a circular or "handbill," as it was familiarly called, setting forth in quaint and characteristic candor his "sentiments with regard to local affairs." It was his platform, and no utterance of his entire life is more interesting than the few personal remarks which he addressed to his neighbors: "Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed. I am young, and unknown to many of you. I was born, and have ever remained, in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations or friends to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of the county, and if elected they will have conferred a favor upon me for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined."