At the time when Lincoln was visiting Miss Todd at Mr. Francis's house, the Whigs were much excited over the fact that the Democrats had issued an order forbidding the payment of State taxes in State bank-notes. The bank-notes were in fact practically worthless, for the State finances were suffering a violent reaction from the extravagant legislation of 1836 and 1837. One of the popular ways of attacking an obnoxious political doctrine in that day was writing letters from some imaginary backwoods settlement, setting forth in homely vernacular the writer's views of the question, and showing how its application affected his part of the world. These letters were really a rude form of the "Bigelow Papers" or "Nasby Letters." Soon after the order was issued by the Illinois officials demanding silver instead of bank-notes in payment of taxes, Lincoln wrote a letter to a Springfield paper from the "Lost Townships," signing it "Aunt Rebecca." In it he described the plight to which the new order had brought the neighborhood, and he intimated that the only reason for issuing such an order was that the State officers might have their salaries paid in silver. Shields was ridiculed unmercifully in the letter for his vanity and his gallantry. It happened that there were several young women in Springfield who had received rather too pronounced attention from Mr. Shields, and who were glad to see him tormented. Among them were Miss Todd and her friend Miss Julia Jayne. Lincoln's letter from the "Lost Townships" was such a success that they followed it up with one in which "Aunt Rebecca" proposed to the gallant auditor, and a few days later they published some very bad verses, signed "Cathleen," celebrating the wedding.[1] Springfield was highly entertained, less by the verses than by the fury of Shields. He would have satisfaction, he said, and he sent a friend, one General Whitesides, to the paper, to ask for the name of the writer of the communications. The editor, in a quandary, went to Lincoln, who, unwilling that Miss Todd and Miss Jayne should figure in the affair, ordered that his own name be given as the author of letters and poem. This was only about ten days after the first letter had appeared, on September 2d, and Lincoln left Springfield in a day or two for a long trip on the circuit. He was at Tremont when, on the morning of the seventeenth, two of his friends, E.H. Merryman and William Butler, drove up hastily. Shields and his friend Whitesides were behind, they said, the irate Irishman vowing that he would challenge Lincoln. They, knowing that Lincoln was "unpractised both as to diplomacy and weapons," had started as soon as they had learned that Shields had left Springfield, had passed him in the night, and were there to see Lincoln through.